Nearing the halfway point of the season, the Tampa Bay Rowdies have created a sizable distance between themselves and their competition in Group H.
That gap is most noticeable between the first-place Rowdies and last-place Miami FC.
The undefeated Rowdies (5-0-2) host winless Miami (0-3-0) Sunday night at Al Lang Stadium. The match begins at 7:30 p.m. EST and will be aired live on ESPN+. Tampa Bay has a 17-point lead over Miami in the group, the largest margin in the USL championship. The Rowdies defeated Miami 3-0 last week on the road.
Since that game, the Rowdies beat Atlanta United 2 by a score of 2-0 on the road on Wednesday. Miami has not played since. Tampa Bay now returns for a two-game homestand on only four days of rest since its last match.
Rowdies head coach Neill Collins doesn’t expect the quick turnaround to negatively affect his players’ performance on the pitch against Miami.
“A lot of these guys are desperate to play games,” Collins said on Friday during a Zoom media availability. “They’re young and healthy and ready to go, and I think when you’re running it’s always easier to recover, strangely enough.”
Tampa Bay is beginning to get into a portion of its schedule where it strictly plays group teams that it’s already faced. Sunday the team faces Miami, Saturday the Rowdies draw Atlanta for the third time and the next match the following Saturday is against Charleston, a team Tampa Bay will see for the second time this season.
Despite the repetition of opponents, defender Jordan Scarlett doesn’t think familiarity will benefit the Rowdies in these games.
“As every game goes by, teams are going to try to change to get a better result for the next game,” he said. So a team might play a 4-4-3, next time they’re playing a 5-4-1, just to bunker down to get protection, so every game is a different look.”
Collins echoed Scarlett’s sentiment and referenced Miami’s recent coaching change as evidence its approach may not be the same. On Monday, Miami announced Paul Dalglish would replace Nelson Vargas as head coach for the remainder of the season. Daglish coached the team in the past but had moved into an executive role with the club.
Collins noted Miami had a week off to study Tampa Bay while the Rowdies were traveling to and from Atlanta for a match making the upcoming match even more difficult.
“Our players will need to be at their best to be in this game, and to win this game,” he said.
Collins added that Miami’s players will be playing for their jobs under Daglish against the Rowdies and will be looking to impress their new coach.
After beginning the season with two wins and then posting two draws, Tampa Bay is now riding a three-game winning streak in which it has outscored its opponents 7-0. Those three clean sheets and the season-best three goals against Miami helped account for the Rowdies’ +9 goal differential, the third-best mark in the league.
Through seven games in 2019, the Rowdies were slightly worse off at 4-0-3. Collins admitted it was hard to draw a parallel to last season, given all of the obvious differences despite a similar record and number of goals (13) and clean sheets (4) up to the same point in the season.
“I think we’re winning games, and I still don’t think we’re anywhere near full potential,” he said, “which I think is a great, great thing.”
Collins has repeatedly said the team has room to improve and in the past few weeks some of those improvements have been evident. But even with a comfortable lead in Group H and the luxury of playing at home against a team the Rowdies handled easily on the road, Collins’ club is not letting up.
“Our players will be under no illusions that this will be a very tough test,” he said.
