As Louisville City FC prepares to take to its home pitch again at 8 p.m. Saturday, coach and sporting director John Hackworth continues to reflect on lessons learned from last weekend’s defeat.
The boys in purple allowed three unanswered goals in a 3-1 loss to Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC in Lynn Family Stadium’s inaugural game, making for a rocky restart to the USL Championship season.
“What we took away from it is that we can’t play with fear,” Hackworth said. “We were tight, we were nervous, and that showed. Pittsburgh presented us with problems, and we didn’t go through the normal things that we go through to solve those problems.”
But, Hackworth added, “This is a group that’s always had a good response when we do have a setback, and that’s the expectation for us.”
LouCity hosts a familiar rival in Saint Louis FC, which has a new look under first-year coach Steve Trittschuh. Saint Louis also lost its first game back from the COVID-19 pandemic, dropping a 2-0 away decision to Indy Eleven.
“We’re very anxious about setting this right and showing our fans that we are much better team than what we showed this past Sunday,” Hackworth said.
RELATED: Watch pregame interviews with Hackworth, Souahy
Hackworth spoke of LouCity fine-tuning its mental game and fixing simple mistakes from the loss. Twice in the second half’s first five minutes, for example, the boys in purple turned the ball over in their own half leading to opposing goals.
“It’s like a fumble on the 2-yard line,” Hackworth said. “You do not do that. It’s bad tactics.”
LouCity won’t change how it plays but rather reinforce its philosophies.
“It’s just the style that we believe in,” the coach said. “You watch other teams and they won’t even try to play out of the back. We try to play out of the back. We do it so that we bring the opposition to us to create space to play in behind them.”
Third-year defender Alexis Souahy, who was part of that back line last weekend, says he and his teammates are ready to apply what they’ve learned against Saint Louis FC.
“I think the biggest thing for us was reviewing the game with the details and see what we did wrong and what was not right, and how to correct that — always having that problem-solving mindset,” Souahy said. “Obviously we don’t like losing games. We’re a championship team…
“The game is behind us, and now we are just looking forward to the next game and making sure we do the right things.”
Saturday’s game is the first of four this season — two at home, two away — against Saint Louis FC. That’s because LouCity’s Kings’ Cup rival is also part of the USL Championship’s “Group E” along with Indy and Sporting KC II.
Hackworth has described occasions such as Saturday’s as “mini-playoff” contests.
“These games, because of the aspect of only the top two advances (to the playoffs), are like six-point games,” Hackworth said. “Especially coming off of Sunday, where we don’t have the kind of result that we want…both teams, having lost on the weekend, are coming into a position playing their first divisional opponent. This game has added importance because of that.”
