Riverhounds looking for ‘killer edge’
Postseason begins with a rematch against Detroit FC
There was a general consensus that ran throughout Riverhounds SC this week.
Their effort in a scoreless draw with Detroit City FC in their regular season finale was nothing to write home about.
“It wasn’t like we locked it up and took a game off,” Riverhounds midfielder and team captain Kenardo Forbes said. “It was business as usual. We just didn’t perform well enough.”
It’s easy to look back on the Riverhounds’ performance last week with a certain skepticism. In reality, they came into the match with nothing to play for while Detroit was desperate for a result to keep their faint postseason hopes alive.
In the end, the tie didn’t do anything to help the Riverhounds. They were locked into the No. 1 overall seed in the USL Championship playoffs and were guaranteed homefield advantage throughout their presence in tournament.
For Detroit, it meant everything.
Because of the draw and a later Miami FC road loss at Sacramento Republic FC, Le Rouge slipped into the eighth and final Eastern Conference playoff spot and will visit Highmark Stadium on Saturday at 7 p.m. in the opening round of the tournament.
“For me, we just lacked that killer edge and, in the playoffs, you have to have that, and hopefully we will so we can be a little more focused,” Riverhounds coach Bob Lilley said. “Most people would say if a tie on the road is your letdown, that’s pretty good.”
It’s not often that a team has an immediate turnaround to play the same opponent as it did the week before, but it’s certainly not unheard of.
In fact, the Riverhounds did it in 2019 the last time they won the Eastern Conference, when they went to Birmingham Legion FC and won 1-0 in their final regular season match, then hosted them in a playoff game six days later and rolled to a 7-0 blowout.
A romp of that magnitude would certainly be surprising, given that Detroit has a solid defensive club led by goalkeeper Nathan Steinwascher, who finished the year tied for second in the league with 11 clean sheets, allowing 33 goals in 32 total appearances and tying for fourth with 93 saves.
Le Rouge needed to be solid on the backline because the team was dead last in the league with 30 goals scored, and their minus-9 goal differential was tied with Birmingham for the second-worst among postseason qualifiers behind minus-10 by El Paso Locomotive FC.
Conversely, the Riverhounds were eighth in the league in scoring with 50 goals and had the Golden Boot winner as the league’s leading goal scorer in Albert Dikwa, who notched 20. Forbes tied San Antonio’s Jorge Hernandez for the league lead with 11 assists.
In their only other meeting at Highmark Stadium this year, the Riverhounds got goals from Edward Kizza and Burke Fahling, and goalkeeper Jahmali Waite did not need to make a save in a 2-0 victory on July 15.
“For us, we knew Detroit pretty well going into that game last week,” Lilley said. “They gave us problems the game we won here, and I think they were pretty good in the game we won 2-0.”
Like that prior match, Waite will be making his return to the lineup after a stint with the Jamaican national team.
He missed last week’s meeting at Detroit as Christian Garner filled in and posted the team’s leagueleading 15th shutout.
Playing matches in the Pittsburgh fall weather will certainly be a change of pace for Waite after a stint in the Caribbean.
“That’s kind of something that’s out of your control because you can’t control the weather,” Waite said. “You just have to get yourself ready to play.”
Having Waite back will certainly be a change. Another will be having Forbes in the starting lineup. He only played the final 10 minutes of regulation and stoppage time, ceding the start to Robbie Mertz to get a little bit of a break to rest him for the playoffs.
But the 34-year-old veteran knows there is no downtime for anyone from here on out. Nor can there be a letdown like the one they had in Detroit.
“We just have to erase it because we can’t take anything from it,” Forbes said. “It’s a desperation game for both of us this week, not just desperation for Detroit. If we lose, we go home, so we have to approach it as a final this weekend.”