Last week, as Louisville City FC prepared for Saturday’s game against the Richmond Kickers, coach James O’Connor fielded a question inquiring why, following a pair of 1-0 wins, his club suddenly looked more defensive-minded than normal.
O’Connor asked his players for a more consistent shape and better communication. He continued to see results with a third straight clean sheet against the Kickers.
But O’Connor didn’t call for less of an attack. Offense started clicking along with defense Saturday as LouCity recorded its first multi-goal game in a month, a 2-0 win.
“Overall,” the coach said, “we have to be pleased when you get a performance like that. It was good.”
It was truly LouCity’s best outing since the club found itself amid a 17-game unbeaten streak that started in the spring and didn’t end until a July 23 loss at FC Cincinnati. Louisville dropped consecutive games for the only time this year, falling on a pair of stoppage time goals July 30 to Orlando City B, but has since then been nearly unbeatable.
Only the USL regular-season champion New York Red Bulls II have come away with the full three points against LouCity in its last seven games, during which O’Connor’s bunch is 4-1-2.
“I thought we had a very good team performance tonight — kept a clean sheet, and I don’t think they were dangerous as well,” midfielder Magnus Rasmussen said Saturday. “I thought we had some good opportunities, and the whole team played well tonight. I’m happy for the team.”
Rasmussen, slow to return from offseason hip surgery, has taken command of a starting role in the 10 spot. He scored his first goal of the season against the Kickers, a 55th-minute screamer that tacked on to an earlier penalty kick by Cameron Lancaster.
“It’s obviously a big moment for me to get a goal and feel like I’m making a difference on the team again,” Rasmussen said. “It’s hard to go through a surgery. When I started, it was my first start in 10 months. Now that I’ve got a few starts, I feel like my game is improving every game. It feels great to be back.”
Up top, Lancaster has rotated lately with Chandlher Hoffman at forward. The latter remains in the USL’s Golden Boot race with 14 goals this season, second behind only LA Galaxy II’s Jack McBean and FC Cincinnati’s Sean Okoli.
Elsewhere on the field, O’Connor has seen big contributions from Tarek Morad, who has starred in central defense, the midfield and left back all over the past month. In goal, Ranjitsingh returned last weekend from his first international call up to play for his father’s native country, Trinidad and Tobago, in recent World Cup qualifiers.
“I definitely think I left a good impression back at Trinidad and Tobago camp and hopefully look for another call coming soon,” Ranjitsingh said. “I’ll just have to wait it out and see.
“…I feel like I deserved to be there. That’s the level I want to be at. I just have to keep working hard to stay there.”
LouCity now sits a win away from clinching the USL Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed entering the league’s 16-team, single elimination playoffs. Already, the club has secured home field advantage for the opening round played the last weekend of September/first weekend of October.
O’Connor said disappointment remains in the locker room over missing out on the regular-season crown. But LouCity, a second-year club, also finished second in the conference last season while racking up 45 points. Through the same number of games in 2016 — 28 — Louisville has 53 of them.
“I think sometimes people can take things for granted, and I think it speaks volumes about the group that we have here,” O’Connor said. “…People need to understand you don’t go and get home games in the playoffs without being a good team and without having great team spirit.
“We are really really pleased with the group tonight, and I think we gave a really strong performance.”