An early Rios goal, a late Fuchs red card — and one last Charlotte FC playoff chance
Charlotte FC dominated, survived, then celebrated in its 1-0 win at Bank of America Stadium on Saturday — its second win over playoff-bound New York City FC this season and one it desperately needed to keep its slim playoff hopes alive.
The question: “What should you make of it?”
Here are three big takeaways from Saturday.
Charlotte FC’s dominant game proves ‘what could’ve been’
It’s hard to imagine head coach Christian Lattanzio wouldn’t look at the beginning of Saturday’s match and wonder “what could’ve been.”
For weeks, the coach has said that his team has been the superior one — but missed opportunities and mental lapses have turned wins into losses, hope into frustration. Take the Orlando game for example. Or the Cincinnati game last week. Against Toronto, in the team’s most recent home game before Saturday, he was asked what it was like to feel as if he’d outplayed his opponent and still lose.
“I feel like I’m always commenting on the same game,” he responded. “It’s like Groundhog Day.”
On Saturday, though, those strokes of bad luck didn’t come. A blown assignment wasn’t lethal.
If only it had been this way all year.
The Queen City side still dominated in the first half — controlling possession (58% to 42%) and outshooting NYCFC 6-4 — but it had and maintained a lead while doing it.
How? Charlotte FC started fast — like it has so many times before — and in the fifth minute, the team’s most talented player, Karol Swiderski, saw a 2-on-2 in the box, an opportunity he couldn’t pass up.
His right-legged cross found Daniel Rios’ head for the game’s only goal.
“I saw I had space to control the ball and cross it, and I saw Dani, and I don’t know, I think Kamil was also in the box — and when we get two against two, we need to cross it always,” Swiderski told The Observer postgame. “Something can always happen. On this action, we scored a goal, but even in the next one we could get a corner or something, you know. It’s what we needed.”
Swiderski on playing with Rios: “I like to play with Dani. He’s a good striker. Everybody knows he’s really strong, and I think this also gives us space behind him, and we can create more opportunities for him or for our wingers. I think Dani today was really, really good.”
A Charlotte win, despite Christian Fuchs red card
That dominance started to fade in the second half, and any advantage Charlotte FC held was erased in the 56th minute.
After consulting a video assisted referee (VAR), Saturday’s head official gave Christian Fuchs a red card. It came on a corner when the veteran defender appeared to elbow NYCFC’s Tayvon Gray in the face.
Charlotte FC played a man down the rest of the way and was in survival mode.
New York still struggled for scoring opportunities, but more opened up: There was an Alexander Callens header in the 76th minute that forced goalkeeper Kristijan Kahlina to leap into action and fall on the loose ball — and there was also a Maxi Moralez free kick from about 25 yards out, which turned out to be the final play in what turned out to be a nine-plus-minute stoppage-time second half.
Neither led to goals, though.
Charlotte escaped.
Toward the end of the match, there was a bit of a scrum after a hard foul. Lattanzio said that he thought there were no malicious intentions in the shoving match and that he was proud of how the team supported each other and “showed unity.”
It seemed to be an omen for the match at large.
“I’m proud of them for standing their ground,” Lattanzio said. “I really am.”
Lattanzio also said that he hadn’t yet had a chance to review the play that earned Fuchs his red card, but admired his team’s togetherness to prevail without the leader.
Postgame and playoff implications
Saturday’s win was important. Being a handful of spots below the seven-team Eastern Conference cutoff line, the team came into the game essentially needing to win its remaining five matches to have a chance at the postseason.
But what can this win tell us of what this team is and can be?
New York City FC isn’t the same one Charlotte beat on the road last month. And it’s far from the team that began the 2022 season.
The team’s coach (Ronny Deila) left in June. NYCFC’s best player — and perhaps the best goal-scorer in MLS — Taty Castellanos left in June, too.
Ahead of it, Charlotte has Chicago (a team to which it lost, 3-2, in August); then Philadelphia (a 2-0 loss in April); then Columbus (a 1-1 draw on the road); then the NY Red Bulls (the teams have split their two matchups).
But regardless of what’s ahead, Lattanzio said his team began its “mini season” — a cousin of the “one-game-at-a-time” coach-speak favorite — “really well.”
“We have four games left, and we want to go and be a difficult team to play against every game,” Lattanzio said. He added, “First and foremost, we need to fight under all different circumstances, and we did that today.”
