Lou City 0 Minnesota United 1 As It Happened
Elizabeth’s Gallery
Lou City’s US Open Cup adventure continued (and spoiler alert: ended) on Wednesday night against “Minnesota United”. The visiting team wore the same jerseys as an MLS team, but they definitely put out a weaker side than in the previous match. In fact, the lineup was an all change one for Minnesota and included four players that “signed” from the reserve squad. This theoretically improved Lou City’s chances, but you obviously know the ultimate outcome.
Lou City lined up as:
1-Las; 2-McFadden; 5-Ordonez; 7-Serrano; 9-Goodrum;13-Dia; 15-M. Perez; 16-A. Perez; 17 T. Davila;27-E. Davila; and 32-Adams (C)
4th Minute
Lou City have a nice spell of possession, but I a bit surprised at how organized this Minnesota back liine is and Lou City struggle to find any kind of penetrative pass.
7th Minute
Serrano puts the ball in the net but is deemed to be offside.
16th Minute
Lou City’s offense at the moment seems to be strictly long ball that ultimately do not pay off. Then Goodrum misses a golden opportunity as their belief starts to increase.
19th Minute
Minnesota sure does like to play back to their keeper.
23rd Minute
Lou City pull off a nice corner that has obviously been worked on the training ground, but Taylor Davila’s shot is too high.
30th Minute
Minnesota doesn’t seem super keen on pressing Lou City and trust their defense to keep Lou City at bay.
33rd Minute
After a long spell of Minnesota possession, Lou City is having to expend a lot of energy defending.
39th Minute
Adam’s picks up a “Captain’s Yellow” by tugging the jersey of a runner and stopping a promising Minnesota attack. It is the right decision.
42nd Minute
McFadden does a good job making sure Las can pick up a dangerous ball in the box.
Halftime
Lou City 0 - DEI Rollback 0
While Lou City does often find itself defending quite a bit in first halves, this feels different because the collective group is spending loads of energy.
I really want a Derby City Dog (reviewed here) but the place that sells them isn’t open. I do a corndog instead. It is just fine.
Lambert enters as a second half sub for Evan Davila.
51st Minute
Lou City are starting to get some real opportunities but can’t make any payoff.
58th Minute
Several Lou City players have a chance to get the ball over the line but the keeper covers.
65th Minute
Randell finds the back of the next on Minnesota’s best offensive move of the night.
66th Minute
Morris and Willson come on for Perez and Dia
73rd Minute
Morris earns a yellow for a tough (maybe 50/50) challenge on DJ Taylor. The Louisville crowd is already very unhappy with the officiating on the evening and things are starting to come to a head.
76th Minute
Morris’ night is short as he had to come off injured and Isaac Cano replaces him
80th Minute
Some of the calls in the match have been questioned (by the very vocal Waterfront Supporters End) but this miss by the official is just bizarre. Goodrum’s shot is blocked but the official awards a goal kick.
84th Minute
“REF, YOU SUCK!” I can’t offer any evidence to contradict those sentiments. He hasn’t missed every call that the fans have complained about, but I wouldn’t classify this match as one of the best officiated matches I have ever witnessed.
Full Time
Lou City 0 - Minysota United 1
Lou City desperately try to find an equalizer, but it just won’t come.
Danny Cruz thought the effort was poor in the first half. I can’t necessarily whole-heartedly agree with that, but he’s the best arbiter of what he expects.
I thought the effort in the second half was great, but the execution just wasn’t there.
After the match a player who I will not name very loudly gave the officials an earful describing them as “awful”. I am sure that officials get this all of the time and have thick skins. I don’t want to pile on too much, but I will say this:
The center official that called this match was the type of official that I find the most irritating. While he seemed to want to demonstrate micromanaging control (delaying restarts for no apparent reason and chasing down San-Bin Jeong to make sure he walked off the pitch in the correct direction), he deployed my least favorite referring trick to avoid having to make tough calls. He constantly blew the ball dead in the box for soft fouls. I hate when officials do this. In my opinion, many of them do this to shirk responsibility for making the tough calls that you sometimes have to make in the box. The easiest way to avoid making these tough calls is to minimize the amount of time that the action is live in the box. Several times in this match I thought the official was guilty of this. I don’t think it dictated the outcome, but making soft calls in the box to order to avoid having to make difficult calls is officiating cowardice at its worst.
The good news is that the city of Louisville wasn’t really interested in this competition (shame on us), so the Lou City staff doesn’t have to drum up interest anymore. Hooray!
There are much more winnable competitions this season, so I wouldn’t take it as hard as Aiden McFadden seemed to take it. My immediate concern is the amount on energy expended and whether Lou City will have enough in the tank for Pittsburgh on Saturday evening. The good news is that they also played tonight. The bad news is that they won. That probably won’t impact their effort on Saturday, but I hate all Pittsburgh sports teams and wish them continuous and never-ending bad fortune. I will have more terrible stuff to say about Pittsburgh on Saturday so be sure that you come back for that!
