Charlotte FC takes first MLS victory in 70 days. And dominated. Is the team’s mojo back?
Is Charlotte FC ... back?
Forgive the meme-inspired lexicon and consider what Charlotte’s MLS franchise did Saturday afternoon to be worthy of such a cultural query:
CLTFC, in front of a home crowd whose impact reached well beyond its 29,022 attendance in Bank of America Stadium, earned a 4-0 win against the New England Revolution. The win marked the first time Charlotte has scored four goals this year. It also marked the team’s ninth clean sheet.
It also — and this requires context — marked the team’s first win in MLS play in 70 days. Its first home MLS win in 98 days. That context: The team played Leagues Cup in the middle of the summer, meaning there was about a month when no MLS competition was going on, and the team had notched three draws mixed in with its three losses since coming back from Leagues Cup.
Still, the win felt like more than three points in the Eastern Conference playoff standings — where Charlotte FC now sits sixth. The top nine teams make the playoffs; the top seven avoid the play-in game.
Bring this question to head coach Dean Smith — does this mean Charlotte FC is back? — and he’d acknowledge the confidence boost a 4-0 win could bring a team.
He’d also probably politely answer:
No. No, it doesn’t.
“I actually got offended yesterday because someone suggested that we’re boring,” said Smith, the manager with Premier League credentials who is leading Charlotte FC on its best run in the team’s three-season history. “That suggestion — we’ve not been any different in our game at Philadelphia, where we won 2-0. We’ve not done anything different in training. We’ve not worked any different.
“I watched Miami against New York City before this, and it was an untidy game. And I said it takes teams a lot to find a rhythm after that break.”
That’s not to say Smith didn’t have any coaching tricks up his sleeve during his team’s relative rut. Those tricks included switching up the starting lineup this summer. Most prominently: The team’s most electrifying and second-leading goal scorer Kerwin Vargas — you probably know him from the celebratory backflips he does after he scores a goal, which has happened six times in 2024 — came off the bench Saturday. So did the team’s leading scorer, Patrick Agyemang, who’s scored eight.
They both scored in the 4-0 effort.
What did Smith want to see from them, specifically?
“A reaction,” he said. “That’s what we want. We want a reaction from the players. There are a few players who have gone through a bit of a tough time. And that happens in football. It’s a long season. You’re after consistency as a head coach. I’d much rather have a seven-out-of-10 each week then a five one week and a nine the next week.
“You want consistency because you can build on consistency. And make it better. That’s what we’ve been preaching to the players. We got reaction, which is what we wanted.”
Charlotte FC earns ‘deserved’ win
The win was certainly welcomed by the players, who openly discussed the mojo the team had struggled to find and the gratification a result like Saturday’s would bring.
Take Pep Biel, who finished with the second and spiritual-game-sealing goal in the 65th minute and said that this type of outcome was one the team “deserved” after a run of oh-so-close soccer. Or take Andrew Privett, who played with poise Saturday after a summer that has admittedly been a bit up and down — for the team as well as for himself, as he was a casualty of the aforementioned starting lineup shakeup.
Privett said a 4-0 win could go a “really long way” to reminding people of what the team could be.
“The way we’ve been struggling to create chances, to score goals, to put four up at home, it boosts everyone’s confidence going into the games ahead,” Privett said. “I just think it wasn’t clicking for the past couple games. We just kind of looked flat. Kind of just weren’t connecting with one another. And today I just think things started to click a little bit. So we gotta keep that going.”
Charlotte FC scored in all sorts of ways Saturday. The gritty kind. The pretty kind. The kind that championship teams score and brandish without compunction — that deflate opponents of life and force them to collapse in on themselves. (New England forward Dylan Borrero was sent off with a red card late in the match after a heated discussion with the official; the game was already in hand.)
When talking of Saturday’s win, it’s difficult to avoid discussing that July 13 game, that 3-1 win against Cincinnati FC, one of the best teams in the conference. That win signaled what the team could become.
At that point, the team was vying for fourth in the East. Then came an offensive lull. The team emerged from the Cincy win with three straight draws, mostly thanks to one of the top defenses in the league. And then the team followed that up with three straight losses — with Charlotte FC only scoring once in the last three games.
That game seemed close and far all at once Saturday. Instead of talking of white-knuckling into the postseason, players discussed the possibility of hosting a playoff game for the first time in the team’s three-season history. Instead of discussing how the team had gotten to where it was — previously seventh in the table, fallen deep from where it was at the outset of the summer — the conversation centered around on whether the team was back to its old form, whether it had rechanneled its mojo.
When asked about the minutiae of the team’s final four regular-season matches and the math required to establish a playoff spot, Smith shrugged.
“I didn’t even know we were seventh,” he said, smiling away a question about what this win meant by the numbers.
Because to everyone who bore witness, numbers were only part of the answer. This win meant more.
This story was originally published September 23, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
