With Louisville City FC from the beginning, James O’Connor noticed skepticism about professional soccer’s place in town dating back to his appointment as coach in 2014. Basketball, hockey, arena football and other soccer clubs had come and gone in Louisville over the years, after all.
But O’Connor felt after LouCity’s first season — when the club averaged more than 6,000 fans at games and made a run to the USL’s Eastern Conference Final — his team “showed that we were going to be around.” The boys in purple proved it again last Saturday, knocking off rival FC Cincinnati by a 5-0 score and in front of LouCity’s first sellout crowd.
Attendance has risen each year, the club has plans to build a stadium in the Butchertown Neighborhood, and O’Connor again has his side in contention for a USL championship.
“Not only that — just to speak to people who are from here, you speak about Louisville City and you get a certain pride and passion,” O’Connor said Monday at his weekly meeting with local media. “You can tell it means a hell of a lot to people, which is great. That’s exactly what we’re hoping for, and we’re delighted to get that.
“But our work is not done. We need to get our head down and keep driving forward, which we will do.”
O’Connor said that within 48 hours of the FC Cincinnati victory, LouCity’s players and staff moved their focus to what’s next, a trip to play Bethlehem Steel FC at 5 p.m. Sunday. WMYO-TV, NewsRadio 840 WHAS and USL Soccer’s YouTube channel will broadcast the game.
“It was very enjoyable. It was great. It was a really strong performance,” O’Connor said of last weekend. “But we’re not going to spend the week patting ourselves on the back. You move on.”
Here’s more from O’Connor’s Monday press conference:
On Saturday’s support: “I think for us as an organization, to see so many people come out to support the team, it’s another highlight and another glowing example of how far the football club has come and just what the club means to everybody in the city. To see that amount of people — that amount of passion — I’ve never seen so many people smile after a game, honestly. So many people were delighted, not just with the performance but the crowd, seeing so many people supporting the team and coming out to enjoy it.”
Analyzing Bethlehem: “They had a good win (Sunday) against Toronto. They play Charlotte on Wednesday. Look, they’ve got very good players. They have a lot of pace in the team. They’ve got (Cory) Burke and (Seku) Conneh up front. They’ve got players who are very capable, so again, we’ve got to be mindful of that. We need to make sure we’re prepared, because they’re on a good run themselves. They’ve got some good, quick, attack players and obviously with an MLS 2 team you’re never sure what the lineup will be.”
Managing the week with a Sunday game: “I think we’re a little inconvenienced, as we’ve got a game on the (following) Wednesday as well. It ends up going Sunday-Wednesday-Saturday for us next week, so we’ve got a lot of games coming up in a short period of time. We need to make sure we manage the training load and try to make sure everyone’s fit and healthy and available for selection.”
