Fury have no margin for error
Back when Ottawa Fury FC began its regular season that first day of April, only a fool would have predicted that 25 games in the club would find themselves in their current predicament.
With just seven games to go, including their next one on the road Saturday against a playoffbound Rochester Rhinos squad, the Fury FC season is virtually down to seven games of suddendeath soccer.
“It’s (get) three points ... or (get) three points,” said Fury FC’s hottest scorer Steevan Dos Santos, who is riding a four-game goal-scoring streak for seven goals on the season, just one shy of the club record set by Tommy Heinemann in the championship year of 2015.
“It’s do-or-die every game,” continued Dos Santos.
“At this point one point a game is not enough ... not when there’s four or five teams ahead of you.
“The team we have here is a playoff team. We were thinking we had a top four team here headed for a playoff game at home.
“Now that’s impossible to get and to not achieve the playoffs would be a huge disappointment for us and Ottawa.
“We can’t think of playoffs right now. We can’t even think ahead. We just have to get three points at a time.”
Sitting all the way back in 12th position in the United Soccer League’s Eastern Conference table, and needing to climb all the way to eighth, the numbers are unfriendly to the Fury FC post-season hopes.
For starters, the “magic number” for the club to clinch a spot is 23 points when there’s only 21 available. So with a task like that ahead of them, it means almost the equivalent of wins in say six of their last seven games. And that’s just not going to happen, not with four on the road.
So they need help, lots of help. Maybe even too much help to ask for.
The top five spots are all but conceded to Louisville City FC, Charlotte Independence, Charleston Battery, Rochester and the Tampa Bay Rowdies.
That leaves three of seven teams from sixth to 12th — with six points all that separates the sixth-place team from the Fury FC — to fill out of the Eastern Conference field.
It’s bad enough the Fury FC have to make up five points just to get into the eighth. What’s worse is they have to jump over four teams to do it.
And the fourth-place Rhinos are hardly an easy mark, in a game that will mark Carl Haworth’s 100th in a Fury FC jersey, an amazing feat for last year’s player of the year on the team.
And then the following Saturday, it’s on to Charlotte for a meeting with the second-place side before returning to TD Place Sept. 24 to go up against firstplace Louisville.
“Rochester and Charlotte are comfortably in playoff spots,” said Fury FC head coach Julian de Guzman.
“Perhaps we can take advantage of that.
“Anything short of six points on the road trip puts us in danger. And then we still need other results to go our way.
“But I didn’t want to look too far into (the playoff ramifications). We’ve got to worry about Rochester and we’ve got to worry about ourselves.”
The head coach said if his charges could just play like they did in the first half last Sunday, his worries would be minimal.
“If we did that, there’s not much to worry about,” said de Guzman.
“That first half was some of the best football I have seen in Ottawa. Now, can we do it for 90 minutes?”