Charlotte Independence on track to bring a pro soccer championship back to the Queen City
Two months ago, the Charlotte Independence celebrated the 40th anniversary of the city’s first championship team, the Carolina Lightnin’, with a 1-0 win over division rival Pittsburgh, a team that stood ahead of them in the USL Championship’s Atlantic Division.
The question now is, can the Independence replicate what the Lightnin’ did four decades ago?
After starting the season with eight wins, three draws, and eight losses, the Independence has gone 10-2-1 since the beginning of September to finish second in the division and won their first playoff match in seven seasons at home against Memphis 901 FC, 3-1, last Saturday.
The team has moved from middle of the pack to legitimate title contender, a quest that will continue on Saturday night at Louisville FC, the top team from the Central division.
Devon Kerr, the lead analyst for the USL Championship broadcasts, says the measuring point for most teams is about 10 to 12 games into a season.
“They had good results early on. They just weren’t consistent enough,” he said. “They were one of the few teams to beat the Tampa Bay Rowdies this season.”
The Rowdies were the best team in the USL with 71 points from 23 wins, 2 draws, 7 losses. After a 3-0 loss in the season opener at Tampa, Charlotte won the next two head-to-heads at home, 1-0 and 2-0, before losing away to the Rowdies 2-0 on Aug. 28.
From that point, the Independence would find the consistency they lacked, winning 10 of their last 13 regular-season games with only one loss, outscoring the opposition 31-9 with 5 shoutouts. Charlotte finished with 59 points, fourth-best in the conference.
“We felt like we had a good group, even from the beginning,” said coach Mike Jeffries, a former All-American at Duke where he was awarded the MAC Hermann trophy in 1983 as the nation’s outstanding collegiate player.
“As those guys were coming on board, we felt we were a good team that could compete in USL and we needed to make sure we could keep ourselves in a good spot so we could make a run at the end of the year.”
That run coincided with significant mid- and late-summer roster additions that added significant depth and quality to the team, specifically the top-tier European experience of Christian Fuchs, Sylvain Marveaux, and Gabriel Obertan.
The team had been in talks with Marveaux early on but had to wait until his season at French Ligue Une club FC Lorient had ended. He joined in late June. Fuchs came on loan from Charlotte FC, signing in late July.
Obertan, who had played with Marveaux at Newcastle after a spell at Manchester United, was an unexpected surprise for coach Mike Jeffries. The French midfielder had come to Charlotte to visit his close friend, joined the team for some training sessions and then signed to stay in the latter part of August.
Two other Charlotte FC players are on loan to the squad, including High Point native and former Charlotte 49er Brandt Bronico, who spent five seasons with the MLS Chicago Fire, and Adam Armour from Cary, who previously played with Raleigh-based USL One club North Carolina NC and FC Nurnburg in Germany.
In early August, they deepened the defense acquiring Chilean defender José Bizama on loan from MLS side Houston Dynamo FC.
But players with the top-tier experience of Fuchs, Marveaux and Obertan are different.
To know Fuchs, who has captained the Austrian National Team and won an EPL title with Leicester, is to understand that he’s anything but a tourist. He wasn’t going to coast until his MLS pre-season began and he let his new teammates know that at his first practice, tackling hard and informing them he was there to play to win.
“It’s been phenomenal since I came in and it’s picked up a lot,” Fuchs said. “Everybody is pushing toward the same goal.
“That was the conversation I had with Mike Jeffries the week before I came in. I am coming because I need the challenge and the training but when I commit to a club, I will (do) more than just play here and train. I am committed because I want to win something.”
All this added to the solid core which included team captain Enzo Martinez, who starred at Northwestern High School in Rock Hill and later at UNC, Hugh Roberts, Joel Johnson, Marcelo Palomino, Jake Areman, and two dangerous strikers in Irvin Parra and Dane Kelly who lead the team with 11 goals each this season. Kelly is the all-time USL Championship top scorer with 99 career goals.
Kerr also rates Johnson as a key difference-maker along with the three European additions. The son of a Liberian father and Spanish mother, Johnson came up through the youth system of Spanish La Liga club Valencia CF. After dealing with injuries that kept him out early this year, the defender has three goals and three assists in 20 games.
“The talent was always there. Eighty percent of the team was already there and finding some results,” Kerr said. “Those four put them over the top. This team was going to be in a scrape for the number four spot in the division all season long without those players.
“With one of them, they might have made the playoffs, but it wouldn’t be a team that most people are looking at and saying, this team has a chance. Pundits, analysts, play-by-play, whoever you want to talk to who thoroughly feel that this team is a favorite to win this right now, and I’m one of those people.”
With upsets of the top teams in the Western Conference, if the Charlotte Independence can win its next two playoff games, against Louisville and the winner of Tampa Bay-Birmingham, the national title game of the USL Championship, the nation’s second-tier league behind MLS, would be hosted in Charlotte.
Where to watch
Saturday night’s match will be broadcast at 7:30 p.m. on ESPN+. The Independence has announced watch parties at Devil’s Logic Brewing (1426 E 4th St.) as well as Hooligans on Elizabeth (1523 Elizabeth Ave.).