Team brings out new look
After great season, early playoff loss, squad has new faces
Echoes from one of the best seasons in Riverhounds SC history still reverberate around Highmark Stadium.
A year ago, the team embarked on a campaign like no other, with a string of wins in the Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup that included victories against a pair of MLS teams in New England and Columbus. They finished by winning the Player’s Shield with the best record in USL Championship and would have hosted the title match had they won out.
But in front of a record crowd of 6,123, their season ended in a 1-0 upset loss to Detroit in their postseason opener.
As the team prepares to open its 25th season on the road Saturday at New Mexico, the organization is turning the page on 2023 in a big way. Not only will the team debut new home and road kits, there will be silver anniversary celebrations throughout the season.
There is also a huge personnel upheaval of the players who will be wearing those new uniforms.
Gone is 2023 Golden Boot winner Albert Dikwa, who took his league-leading 20 goals and signed with expansion Rhode Island FC. Also on the move was starting goalkeeper Jahmali Waite, who is now playing for El Paso.
In fact, the Riverhounds only have 11 players returning from last year’s team and lost six of their top seven goal scorers. The only one who is back is Edward Kizza, who hit the back of the net only four times.
Those six players accounted for 37 of the team’s 50 goals scored last year (74%). That’s a lot of offense the team has to find in a very short span of time.
“We’ve got a familiar face, obviously, in Kizza coming back in a leadership role to lead the attack and the guys that we brought in are good, talented and will learn the system quick,” Riverhounds midfielder Danny Griffin said. “We expect to see goals out of them and more creation in the midfield and the correlation in the wings.”
In an attempt to bolster the scoring, the Riverhounds signed England-native Kazaiah Sterling, who netted 30 goals the last two seasons while playing the last two seasons for South Georgia Tormenta, which competed in USL League One, a step down from USL Championship. There is also the potential for Langston Blackstock, who didn’t score a goal last season but could see his role increase in his second year with the team.
Another player who could take a step will be first-year forward Babacar Diene, a 6foot-5 forward who scored 13 goals in 20 games playing last season at Rider University and could have a big presence in the box.
“Obviously, these guys are athletes and they do things differently,” Riverhounds coach Bob Lilley said. “You’re just not going to find a guy who’s going to play like Arturo (Ordonez) in the back or Dikwa up top.”
Even so, the team will still have familiar faces in the midfield, as the team and league all-time assist leader Kenardo Forbes will be back for his seventh season with the organization, as well as six-year Riverhounds veteran Dani Rovira and Upper St. Clair grad Robbie Mertz, who will be entering his fifth year with the club.
“Kenny’s Kenny, Robbie’s Robbie and the Langston’s and (others), they’ve trained every day and they got better every day,” Lilley said. “The demands are pretty high.”
Mertz won’t be the only Pittsburgh native on the roster this year after the team signed West Allegheny and Duquesne University graduate Nate Dragisich, the 2018 Post-Gazette boys soccer player of the year, to a oneyear deal with an option for 2025.
Another signing of note was the organization bringing in former MLS Minnesota
United goalkeeper Eric Dick.
“It’s part of the journey and, being here with a great locker room and great coach, great fans, I’m honored to be here and I’m just excited for what 2024 has in store,” Dick said. “For me, it’s just bringing in all those days of practices at MLS and days of soccer in my life and put out a product to help the team.”
With all the turnover, the Riverhounds plan of attack has changed.
“The personality could be different because we’re playing differently and we’re looking to hang onto the ball a little bit more,” Lilley said. “We’ll be able to play out of different formations, but what I’m asking the players to do is a little bit different because our personnel is a little bit different.”
Note
The Riverhounds signed forward Emmanuel Johnson on Friday to a one-year deal, pending USL and U.S. Soccer approval, adding another energetic player to the attacking group in time for the opening of the 2024 USL Championship season. Johnson, 20, hails from Fairfield, Calif., and is a product of the Sacramento Republic Academy, where he trained with Sacramento’s First Team under a USL Academy contract.