A season after falling in the USL Championship Final at San Antonio FC, Louisville City FC’s players and coach Danny Cruz haven’t been shy about their ambitions in 2023.
The boys in purple plan to be back in the final at year’s end, and this time they want to host it at Lynn Family Stadium.
Every point matters on the way, something LouCity demonstrated in Saturday’s 1-0 away win over Monterey Bay FC. City took the lead on Brian Ownby’s 48th-minute goal, then played much of the second half with 10 men after Ownby was sent off for a second yellow card foul.
“The commitment in the shape we worked on previously — we worked on it in preseason and then you look at how many times we had to do that last year — I thought the players did an excellent job in the 5-3-1,” Cruz said.
This marked the eighth game in which LouCity has had a player sent off since Cruz took over as head coach. The squad is a remarkable 6-1-1 in such situations, including a victory in last year’s Eastern Conference Final.
Ownby exited in the 67th minute. After that, Monterey Bay FC managed one lone shot attempted against a shorthanded City side.
“You’ll see these games — and there’s going to be plenty of them, like those mid-summer away games that are tough — every team is happy to get out of there with a point,” said team captain Paolo DelPiccolo, who became the first player to reach 200 LouCity appearances Saturday night.
“But if you grind and get those three points on the road in tough circumstances like tonight, they add up in the end. I can point to five games last year where we dropped two points or dropped three points on the road, and it cost us in the long run.”
Defender Amadou Dia, who assisted Ownby’s game-winning goal, said it’s LouCity’s approach to “suffocate the opponent” this season. But the approach changes when playing down a man.
Immediately after the red card, Cruz subbed on a defender (Oscar Jimenez) for a forward (Enoch Mushagalusa) and a holding midfielder (Carlos Moguel Jr.) for an attacking mid (DelPiccolo).
“We’ve gone through those situations,” Dia said. “What we do is, we know it’s going to be hard to get a second goal. But we don’t want to just sit in and let them come at us. You look at each other, trust each other and lock in.”
LouCity as a result is 2-0 to start its season after last weekend’s 3-1 win at Orange County SC. The boys in purple played seven of their eight preseason games in preparation for this early west coast swing, logging miles to Arizona, Washington and Texas, among other destinations.
“Coming out and playing our first two games away — 10 days on the road away from our family and friends — it’s tough going,” Dia said. “But we came out here and said we were going to leave with six points. That’s what we did. It’s a long season, and we wanted to get off to a very good start. I think we did that.”
“We talked about it before we came on this trip: We wanted to leave with six points,” Cruz added. “That was the goal. That’s the quality we believe we have, and the players executed. They should feel extremely proud but not complacent. If we want to get where we want to go, we need to understand every point matters.”
