Overhauled Athletic looks to bring winning soccer to an avid fan base
Elvis Amoh knows how much the fans at Trinity Health Stadium can make their presence felt. He has felt them.
“Because I’ve played here in Hartford a few times, it will just be a different feeling,” said Amoh, one of 14 new players the Hartford Athletic has acquired for 2023. “As a visitor it was a difficult place to play. It was always like a fortress where you see the fans cheer for their team, it makes it difficult for the away team to play well. You notice how they support a team throughout a whole game.”
During their existence the Athletic have not had a problem attracting fans in an area with pockets of avid soccer folks, forming supporter groups like the Bonanza, the Raza Brava, The Boonies and East Side Rising. They averaged 5,178 fans last season, selling out the last five home games despite winning only 10, tying six of 34 games and getting outscored, 57-47.
Now the franchise’s new technical team wants to give them something to cheer about besides the Athletic’s mere existence.
“We need to build the thing up,” said technical director Ray Reid, the former SCSU and UConn coach. “We all concurred that we wanted to bring some new blood, some fresh air. Talent, speed, what their character is like in the locker room. When I came here I was impressed with the commercial side, “Game Night.” We have to get the players’ side up.”
Excitement began to build after Reid, who came aboard last June, tracked down and hired his man, Tab Ramos, to coach. Ramos, with his vast experience with the USA under-20 team and in MLS, coached the last few games, then went to work in the offseason with assistants Omid Namasi and
Dan Gaspar to overhaul the roster. Seven players, plus two developmental players, return and there are 14 newcomers.
“We’re going to have a better team,” said Ramos, sitting amid proposed lineups on the white board in the team’s Windsor offices. “This team is going to be more skillful on the ball, it’s going to be a team that’s going to be a little bit hungrier to win the ball back and go on the attack. We have some special players we didn’t have last year and hopefully they will have the intensity to feed off this crowd we have.”
Amoh, 31, from Accra, Ghana, has 34 goals in four seasons of USL Championship play, including 13 for Colorado last season. In Hartford he’ll get the chance to be the featured scoring threat at center striker.
“Every player wants to be an important vessel on the team,” Amoh said. “It is also an opportunity and I’m grateful for that. I don’t take it lightly.” Antoine Hoppenot, 32, born in Paris, who led the league in assists (11) with Detroit last season, has also joined the Athletic. “I know how passionate the fan base is here and I promise to bring them passion and determination every single day,” Hoppenot said.
The 57 goals allowed really chafed Ramos, who says that must improve
“by at least 30 percent.” He brought in veteran goalkeeper Richard Sánchez, who he had coached against when Sánchez played for Mexico. The chance to be a No. 1 keeper attracted Sánchez, 28, to Hartford from LA Galaxy.
“The staff was pretty attractive to me,” said Sánchez, who has 29 MLS games on his resume. “Being able to work with guys that are expecting highly of their players and hold a certain standards was really what sold me for wanting to come here. I wanted to work with professional people. It’s a great opportunity to be ‘the guy’ here.”
Niall Logue, 27, from Northern Ireland, was signed from Memphis
901 to bolster Hartford’s backfield as a left-footed defender. These are just the beginning of the new-look Athletic roster. With
Ramos here there is the chance MLS teams could loan high-level, developing players to Hartford as their rosters shake out.
The Athletic scrimmaged UConn last week and will soon scrimmage Fairfield, then will train and play a series of games in Florida next week to get ready to start the 34-game regular season March 11 at Monterey Bay FC. The first of 17 home games is against Birmingham Legion on March 25.
“For me it’s just about focusing on getting to know the players,” Sanchez said, “so that on the field it translates to where we are all doing well and it’s a cohesive unit so that we can bring a title to Hartford.”
And more for your Sunday read:
SC-UConn: Must watch, getting personal
The South Carolina-UConn women’s game not only sold out the XL Center on Feb. 5, it was a ratings winner, drawing 1,087,000 viewers, the most ever for a women’s college basketball telecast on Fox, and the mostwatched regular-season game on any network since these teams played in February 2017. The number of viewers would be a better-than-average number for men’s games.
“Some people don’t watch women’s basketball, they don’t come to women’s basketball,” South Carolina coach Dawn Staley said after the Gamecocks’ win. “We are marketable, we are a valued sport, and once people start treating us like that, we’re going to see us be a multi-hundred-million-dollar sport. We’ve got the product, we’ve got the coaches, we’ve got the players, we’ve got fans. We have it all.”
The feel-good element faded later in the week after Geno Auriemma criticized the officiating. (“I don’t know what that was, but it wasn’t basketball,” he said), maybe planting a seed for a rematch to be officiated differently. Staley, construing that as a knock on her team and maybe wanting to make sure such a seed doesn’t sprout, fired back.
Sounded like a couple of combative, chip-on-theshoulder Philly folk sticking up for their players, poking fingers in the chest. A March rematch? Bring it on.
Connecticut guys on Super Sunday
Steve Spagnuolo, who was a defensive coach, including coordinator, during his time at UConn (1987-91), is in his third Super Bowl as Chiefs’ DC. He was the Giants DC when they knocked off the Patriots in 2008, and won with the Chiefs in 2020. His shot as a head coach with the Rams didn’t go well, but if he comes up with a plan to slow down the Eagles maybe Spagnuolo, at 63, deserves another shot.
Two former SCSU guys are on the Eagles’ staff. Jeff Stoutland (Class of ‘84) is the running game coordinator and offensive line coach, and Roy Istvan (‘89) is assistant O-line coach.
On the playing side, Hand-Madison’s Jack Driscoll is backing up on Philly’s offensive line, and former New Canaan High lineman Lucas Niang, out much of the season with a knee injury, has been active in the postseason.
Sunday short takes
◼ So Staley wore an Eagles hoodie last Sunday? So what?
◼ Unfortunate that Tage Thompson, the first from UConn ever selected, couldn’t play in the NHL All-Star Game due to injury. It won’t be his last chance.
◼ Superstars gathered together don’t necessarily make for a Super Team. They do not play together figuratively or, as in the case of the Nets, where Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and James Harden played together all of 16 games, literally.
◼ As I recall, Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” was always popular among school pep bands, a fairly easy arrangement to learn. Gets in my head whenever Alex Karaban is mentioned at a UConn game. Just putting it out there.
◼ We’ve learned to question the Yard Goats’ promotional genius at our own risk, but one wonders if next year’s plans to play a game as the Bouncing Pickles might finally be the one that’s over the top. “The Bouncing Pickles refers to a blue law in Connecticut,” the team Tweeted. “If a pickle doesn’t bounce, it ain’t a pickle.” If it falls flat, they should try a game as the “Hartford Shark Jumpers,” with appearances from Anson Williams and Don Most, Potsie Weber and Ralph Malph.
◼ Remember Brendan Adams? The transfer from UConn is averaging 17.7 points and shooting 40 percent on threes for George Washington. He scored 35 and hit a school record nine 3-pointers (9-for-12) in a double OT win over Richmond last week.
◼ Bloomfield’s Dwight Freeney didn’t get the call from the Pro Football Hall of Fame committee this week. But for the master of the spin move, it’s just a matter of time. He belongs in Canton.
Last word
As long as both exist, UConn will play men’s and women’s basketball games in the XL Center, despite what anyone says. It’s good for all, as the two sellouts last week attested. Just go make the numbers work.