Louisville City FC evened itself Saturday night with New York Red Bulls II atop the USL’s Eastern Conference standings, but one column on the table — games played — has left the club with plenty of work to do late in its regular season.
New York has the same 47 points even with two games in hand on LouCity, though there’s a major opportunity to make up ground when the clubs meet this week in Harrison, N.J., at Red Bull Arena.
Six games remain before the playoffs for LouCity, while New York has eight left to tally points.
“I can’t say enough about this group,” said defender Ben Newnam. “We’re a band of brothers and we’re going to keep fighting until the end. We definitely believe we can win this league, and we’re not out of it.”
Newnam nearly scored on an 85th-minute free kick against the Rochester Rhinos that bounced off post and to LouCity’s Guy Abend. He centered it before Paco Craig finished for his first goal as a professional player.
The late heroics lifted LouCity to a 1-1 draw with the Rhinos, who they beat 1-1 in June. Four points off Rochester were three better than Louisville managed a season ago, when the Rhinos took two of three meetings, including the Eastern Conference final on their way to a USL title.
The Red Bulls II remain an unsolved puzzle for LouCity. After a pair of losses to New York in 2015, Louisville suffered a 2-0 loss in the clubs’ first meeting of 2016.
“We break them down and that’s an important part of the game,” Craig said. “At the end of the day it’s all in our hands. We know it’s probably one of the biggest games we’re playing, but that just makes it more exciting because that’s what we’re working so hard towards.
“We’ve been waiting all season for a moment like this.”
The Red Bulls have out-scored their last two opponents by a combined 10-1 and will enter Friday in solid form. New York stumbled in two consecutive games last month, same as LouCity, but otherwise hasn’t lost since May 1.
Louisville will get a week between games, a welcome break on the schedule after what coach James O’Connor witnessed against Rochester. Despite extra days off for players, he made significant changes to battle tiredness.
“The thing for me is the fatigue that I’m seeing,” O’Connor said. “We looked jaded tonight, which I don’t fully understand. We made a lot of changes because we expected tiredness. … It’s something that we need to try and manage.”
