Louisville City is completing its final preparation for a visit from Charleston Battery Saturday at Slugger Field. It’ll be Louisville City’s third game in seven days as the club continues to compete in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup.
“You look ahead and you schedule as much as you can, but any time you have this many games in this short of time it can challenge a roster,” Louisville City coach John Hackworth said. “But we planned for it and we expecr a high level of play for anyone on our roster.”
Louisville City played drastically different lineups between the two matches Sunday vs. Bethlehem Steel and Wednesday vs. Birmingham Legion. Wednesday’s lineup included the first in-game minutes for forward Brian Ownby and midfielder Paolo DelPiccolo since March.
“Tomorrow is a re-gen day for guys that played,” Hackworth said. “I would think that with Paolo and Brian 30 minutes is about what we thought the max would be and they ended up playing 36 so they will probably have a pretty easy day, and try to just get everybody ready. The guys that didn’t play you know they will have a bit of a run a small sided game just cause we like to keep it competitive and they need that. But it will be a day that we have two groups going at it, then we will turn our attention towards Friday and tactical preparations for Charleston.”
Charleston is in a similar position, having played Wednesday night as well. Charleston beat Nashville SC in the third round of the Open Cup and will host MLS juggernaut Atlanta United on June 12.
Louisville City and Charleston Battery are separated by just one spot and one point after the first 12 games of the season with LouCity sitting in eighth place in the Eastern Conference with 18 points and Charleston Battery in ninth with 17. Charleston is 1-3-1 in their last five matches while Louisville City is 2-2-1.
Saturday’s game will be broadcast locally on WBKI TV and streamed on ESPN+. The radio broadcast will be carried on WKJK 1080 AM.
