Good Charlotte

Photo courtesy of Tormenta FC

Hi friends, busy week this week for yours truly so just the one post this week leading up to Saturday's match with Charlotte. (Certainly thankful it's a Saturday game this time.) Lest you think I forgot about Sunday night's game with Greenville, I did not, but I was writing for the Statesboro Herald and my story is posted over there. (There may be a paywall, but that helps pay me so consider subscribing if you're in a position to do so.)

Needless to say, Sunday night did not go well. We're not going to dwell on goalkeeper Ford Parker's dropped cross in the first half that led to Greenville's first goal. Every player on the field makes mistakes from time to time, but it's magnified when it's the goalkeeper and comes with the territory. It happens to the best players and Parker answered questions about it after the game.

For the first 15 minutes of the second half, Tormenta looked really, really good. They were moving the ball well, creating space and creating chances. Unfortunately nothing found the back of the net and at that point, frustration set in and, as Manager Ian Cameron said postgame, players went off script and started trying to do too much. The chances dried up and Greenville's Lyam MacKinnon was able to score two second half goals to put the match away.

Cameron was clearly frustrated with his team's performance following the match. Two quotes stood out to me. 

"For the amount of times we arrived (in the box), there has to be a more dynamic edge to us," Cameron said. "The forward guys had lots of opportunities and have to get more production. I feel sorry for our fans because they should have watched more action, more goals, more attempts on goal, more creativity. That was lacking and we've got to address it." 

The second one is the "off script" comment I referred to earlier. Here's that one in full.

"Individual players start to get frustrated and not taking the passes in front of them or taking too long on the ball or overcomplicating the game instead of sticking to the formula and doing it time and time and time again," Cameron said. "When multiple players on the field go off script and start doing their own thing, the chemistry breaks down and when the chemistry breaks down, there's no rhythm and no pattern to what we're trying to do and it becomes frustrating."

"It's a long season," Cameron continued. "They need to stick to the rhythms of the game that are taught to them. Too many young guys were going off script and that's for me to correct."

Tormenta will have a chance on Saturday to show they corrected their mistakes and learned from them when the first game of the Jagermeister Cup kicks off at 7 p.m. at Tormenta Stadium against Charlotte.

A quick refresher on the Jagermeister Cup. The league moved to a balanced schedule for 2024 with each team playing home and away against the other 11 teams in the league. That led to 22 games, down from 33 last season. So the Jagermeiter Cup was introduced to create more games and another trophy for the teams to compete for. Each of the 12 teams were placed in three groups of four. Tormenta's group includes Greenville, Charlotte and Richmond. The teams in each group will play home and away for six total games and then play two teams from other groups for a total of eight games. 

Teams will get three points for a win and one point for a tie, but in the event teams are deadlocked after 90 minutes, the game will immediately go to a penalty kick shootout where the winner will get an additional point. The winner of the three groups will move on to the knockout round.

"But Luke," you may be thinking to yourself. "That's only three teams. Where does the other semifinal team come from?" Well, I'm glad you asked. The final team in the bracket is the team from the remaining nine that scored the most goals in the group stage games. Goals will also be the first tiebreaker used to determine group winners. This should, in theory, create higher scoring matchups and prioritize offense in the games. 

Jagermeister Cup games do not count in the regular season standings and have no impact on the playoffs at the end of the year.

So Charlotte will come to town for the first Jagermeister Cup game for the two teams. In the regular season, the Independence are tied with Tormenta with seven points, though they've only played four games to Tormenta's six. Also like Tormenta, Charlotte is one of the three remaining USL1 teams in the US Open Cup where they will face Atlanta United. If both Charlotte and Tormenta win, they would face off in the round of 16. Including their two regular season matchups, their two Jagermeister Cup matches and a potential US Open Cup meeting, Tormenta and Charlotte could face off five times, not counting potential Jagermeister Cup knockout rounds or League One playoff games. 

Charlotte, who finished runners up in the 2023 League One playoffs, has scored four goals in their four games, but that's enough for two wins and a draw so far. They've had four different goal scorers so far, with Juan Carlos Obergon Jr. and Luis Alvarez each having a goal on eight shots to lead the team. 

Goalkeeper Austin Pack, meanwhile heads up a defense that has allowed just three goals in four games and has two clean sheets so far. Pack has 19 saves in those four games, which is both good, as it means he didn't allow any goals, but also it means Charlotte surrenders a lot of shots on goal.

Tormenta, meanwhile, averages nearly nine shots per game, but thus far has only had about a third of their shots on target. The good news for Tormenta is that 44% of their on-target shots find the back of the net. 

Lest we get bogged down in stats, the bottom line is that there should be shots available against Charlotte, but getting a shot through the defense and past Pack has been a challenge for the Independence opponents so far this season. 

At the beginning of the season, Cameron was asked if there would be any prioritizing of one competition over another. He quickly shot down that idea, saying if there's a trophy to be won, they want to win in. The goal this season is to win the League One regular season, win the playoffs, win the Jagermiester Cup and, ideally, win the US Open Cup, or at least be the last Division III team standing. 

"When you're professional players, professional coaches, a professional organization, and you're given one game a week to go an win, you better be sure our full focus will be on, every single week, going and winning that game," Cameron said back in March. "So there will be no going for this trophy or going for that trophy. We have, on the pro men's side, three cups to go and win."

Kickoff is set for 7 p.m. at Tormenta Stadium with the game being available on ESPN+.