Charlotte FC’s special run is over. ‘Crazy’ MLS rule didn’t do team any favors
Karol Swiderski called it “crazy.”
Brandt Bronico explained that he thought it “was a bunch of BS.”
Head coach Christian Lattanzio, who took over the fledgling Charlotte Football Club in May and watched the team embark on a remarkable run in September and October, was just as blunt: “I don’t agree at all,” the interim coach said. “I think it’s just a way of thinking it’s fair, but it’s not.”
Charlotte FC (13 wins, 17 losses, 3 draws) saw its Wednesday night battle with Columbus Crew (10-7-16) end in a 2-2 draw in Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte — an admirable, come-from-behind result for the Queen City team that used two second-half goals (one of which was an extra-time equalizer) to keep its playoff hopes alive until the very end.
It wasn’t quite enough, though. Charlotte FC needed a win to stay in MLS playoff contention.
There was plenty of finality in the team’s postgame remarks. Players spoke about how magical the home crowd had been all year, about how much the players individually and collectively had improved, about how they “left it all out on the field” and how they “fought to the end” — the cliches that perfectly fit difficult moments and that seem to translate across sports and generations and languages.
But there was also plenty of that aforementioned frustration about a rule sent down by MLS — because, through no fault of the club’s own, this wasn’t the latest and best Charlotte FC team this city had seen the past month.
Wednesday’s soccer action didn’t feature a full match. It was a restart of a match that started in July but had to be postponed because of inclement weather. The match clock on Wednesday began at 15:57. The game started scoreless and was initiated with a drop-ball.
Per MLS roster rules, the match had to recommence with the same players on the pitch and the same substitutes available from the initial match. Players who were “subsequently injured or unavailable due to a trade, loan or transfer” could only be replaced by “a substitute on the official match roster of the postponed match.” And any lineup adjustments made before Wednesday’s start would go toward the team’s five-player substitution quota.
Those league requirements, as a result, transformed Charlotte FC into a different team than the one that had won three matches in a row coming into Wednesday, one of which being a 4-0 clobbering of league-best Philadelphia Union: Two key defenders and regular starters who were acquired by the club in August, Adilson Malanda and Nathan Byrne, couldn’t play at all. And Daniel Rios, who has now scored six goals in the team’s last four matches, came off the bench. (The team was also without Christian Fuchs, who was serving a suspension during the initial match against Columbus and thus was ineligible Wednesday.)
In a game where so much was on the line — where two teams who needed every point in the Eastern Conference table to make their playoff dreams come true faced off — the match featured two teams that, in a sense, were August versions of themselves.
And Charlotte FC players and its head coach didn’t like that.
“I don’t agree with the rule because I think it’s a false sense of fairness,” said Lattanzio, who aired out his disagreement with the rule earlier in the week as well. “You play two teams, and the thing you want to play is a showcase. You want to give the freedom to the two teams, together, to put their best teams possible that they have in that moment. That would be ‘just’ to me and also the players who are in the club.”
‘We should just start the game over’
The Queen City side got into a hole early when Columbus’ Lucas Zelarayan, in a moment of brilliance and skill, set up a free kick from midfield and saw that Charlotte goalkeeper Kristijan Kahlina wasn’t on the goal line and fired a shot that gave Columbus a 1-0 lead when it sailed true.
At halftime, Lattanzio replaced midfielder Ben Bender with Rios and Derrick Jones for Quinn McNeill. (Lattanzio fervently defended his decision to start the players who were on the pitch when the match was halted in July, explaining, “They deserve respect from me... and if I made a substitution (before play began Wednesday), I might as well not bring the guys who were in that game here.”)
After another Columbus goal, Rios scored in the 58th minute. And then the team’s final substitution, Andre Shinyashiki, scored in extra time to make the score its final version, 2-2.
Bronico, the mulleted midfielder and UNC-Charlotte alum who in some ways has been the heart and soul of this team, said he agreed with the idea that “we weren’t one goal away, we were one minute away” from winning on Wednesday — which reflected on another part of the rule, he said, that didn’t make any sense.
“Personally, I think it’s a bunch of BS, but at the end of the day, we like to focus on what we can control,” Bronico said. “So like I said, we have 30 guys on the roster who we all believe in. And we went out there and we fought to the very end. Maybe we were a little unfortunate, but, you know, we gave everything for this club, we gave everything for the fans, and we’re going to look to build and be more next season.”
He expounded on the “BS” comment: “We played 16 minutes, the game gets postponed, we make additions, we lose some guys. ... I mean, it’s 0-0, we should just start the game over, and everybody should be allowed to play with whatever they have in that point of the season.”
Swiderski largely agreed with his teammate and his coach.
“This rule is crazy,” Swiderski said. He added that some of the players who started in Wednesday’s action hadn’t played for CLTFC in over a month, like Yordy Reyna (who was arriving back from his Peru national team participation) and McKinze Gaines (who’d been battling an injury). “We cannot say we want to be fair. ... For me, it’s crazy, and we should start this game from the beginning.”
Charlotte FC playoff hopes come to an end
Charlotte FC president Joe LaBue was near the team’s locker room on Wednesday night, congratulating the players and coaches on a season well-done.
So much had gone right in his team’s first year: The team, after all, averaged 35,244 attendance per game on the year — a feat only ever outdone by Atlanta in 2017 — and the club now only has to play one “inconsequential” game in its inaugural season, when it travels to New York Red Bulls on Sunday.
Even so, did he feel at all robbed of a playoff bid — of what could’ve been?
Not at all, he said.
“Would we have preferred a 90-minute match and a full roster? Certainly,” LaBue said. He then added: “It would’ve been great to have them, but I was happy to have everybody who was out there. Everyone represented this team and this city very, very well.”
This story was originally published October 6, 2022 at 10:26 AM.
