This past weekend, Dean Smith, the head coach of Charlotte FC, led his side into a Leagues Cup group-stage game against the Philadelphia Union. It was both teams’ first fixture in the 2024 Leagues Cup, the competition pitting all MLS and Liga MX teams in one tournament. Philadelphia’s Tai Baribo scored the only goal of the game to give Philadelphia a tournament-opening win. However, the game was far from sensational.
Charlotte and Philadelphia are not bad teams. They hover around the middle of the Eastern Conference table in Major League Soccer. Yet, this contest was enough to draw harsh criticism from Dean Smith.
“I don’t think it was one to watch back, it would have scorched my eyes,” Smith said. “If we had won the game, I would have said exactly the same thing. It was just a bad game.”
Smith, who has ample experience coaching in England, was reminded of some of his lower moments. His brother was in attendance, and he compared the performance on Saturday to his stint managing a League One side. It was his first managerial job, and Walsall was in the third tier for each of his seasons. Now, though, Walsall is in League Two, finishing 11th in the English fourth tier in the 2023/24 season.
“My brother came to watch his first game, and he actually said to me after the game, my Walsall team would have beaten both teams, and that was a League One team. So, that tells you. After 20 minutes, I turned around to the bench and said, ‘This is not a good game.’ We have to accept that and take responsibility for it.”
While the performance was an issue with the players and likely the coaching staff in the battle between two MLS clubs, Dean Smith also looked elsewhere. Smith criticized the state of the pitch in Philadelphia. Although cameras at the game did not show many issues with the pitch, Smith said it directly impacted the play between the two teams.
“A pass that was completed was a collector’s item on that pitch. The amount of passes that went out of play from our team and their team was incredible, really. I was on the pitch before the game and I said, ‘What’s happened here?’ We played there four or five weeks before, and it just looked different. It felt different, and you could see it scarring very quickly. I don’t know what it was, but it was just one of those games that it didn’t happen for both teams.”
Fortunately for Dean Smith, Charlotte FC will not have to return to Subaru Park. The second Leagues Cup game in the group stage is against Cruz Azul at Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte FC’s home stadium. Charlotte will not know whether it advances until the completion of the group stage on Aug. 4 when Philadelphia hosts Cruz Azul. Charlotte, in all likelihood, needs a win against Cruz Azul to advance to the knockout stage of the competition. Only two teams out of the 30 to advance in last season’s Leagues Cup did not win a game in regulation during the group stage.
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