IT'S GAME DAY, FLOCKERS
The long winter is over! The 2024 campaign gets underway TONIGHT in Statesboro!
Kickoff will come at 6:30 pm. The game will be broadcast on ESPN+ and the club will host a watch party at the Forward Club. Doors open at 5:30.
South Georgia Tormenta dropped their first game of the season 2-1 to defending Wooden Spoon winner (for finishing last) Central Valley Fuego. (Yes, Central Valley, under new coach Jermaine Jones and with a completely retooled roster, might actually be good this year. Look out.)
For Tormenta, Jake Dengler was given a red card at the end of that match for uttering an insult at a Fuego player, which was apparently misunderstood as being worse than it was. That red card was rescindend, and Dengler will be available tonight.
For the Mingos, we have two roster notes.
First, Cherif Dieye is the only player not yet in camp, as he awaits visa approval in his home country of Senegal (which is notoriously slow at paperwork). So while we have no insider info, we’dll be looking for Juan Galindrez or Augustín Dávila up top alongside Christian Chaney.
Second, Nazeem Bartman may not be at full strength because Ramadan started Monday and he’s fasting during daylight hours. That will have impacted his training this week as well as his energy level at game time. Last year he played during the month but his minutes were somewhat limited; if he does start tonight, we wouldn’t be surprised to see him subbed off relatively early.
The boys will be wearing their new away kits tonight, which, it turns out, weren’t quite as fan-designed as they could have been.
As always, kudos to the club for letting the Flock take the lead on designing the away kit for the season.
We spoke with Andrew Schmidt, who led the design team, which consisted of him, Kate Forbes and Chris Patterson, with additional creative direction from Chris Fox. The idea was to incorporate supporter voices, and the diversity of the club’s supporters, in the design of the kit.
The color gradient on the stripes is meant to represent the diversity of the club’s fans, Schmidt said. That didn’t make it into the club’s press release, for whatever reason.
The original design submitted to the club in October actually had those stripes on a solid pink background. However, apparently, this year the league decided to enforce its rule that away kits always have a white background — which the Flock didn’t hear until February.
In any case, it’s a banger of a kit, in this podcast host’s humble opinion. Dubbed “The Rhythm of the Lakes,” the shirt features a wave form of the supporters chanting “We are Madison” on the sleeves and front of the collar, as well as a visual representation of the drum line played during that chant on the back of the collar. The offset jaggedness of the stripes also gives it the suggestion of the sash that’s such an important element of the home jersey. The original design also had stripes down the back, but the league is a bit persnickity about leaving “space” for “numbers” on jerseys, apparently. The back does include a color gradient and the familiar “DCVIII” — 608 in Roman numerals — across the bottom.
THERE ARE TWO GAMES THIS WEEK YOU GUYS. After tonight’s match, the Mingos return to Madison to host Duluth FC on Tuesday in the first round of the US Open Cup. Duluth was the best team in NPSL last season, posting an unbeaten 11-0-1 record.
We went to check on their roster and maybe even invite a coach onto the podcast but it appears Duluth FC didn’t pay their GoDaddy bill.
Whoops.
On the Madison side, given the quick turnaround, we’d expect a lot of rotation for that match. That’s not to say the Mingos won’t take the match seriously — Madison lost to an amateur side last year in this tournament, and I know Coach Matt Glaeser doesn’t want a repeat of that. So it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.
And a programming note: This season, we’re going to try hard to get podcasts out every Wednesday morning, though Rob’s day job and Alex’s coaching schedule might cause a delay now and then. This week, however, with the Open Cup match on Tuesday, we’ll likely record on Wednesday, analyze both matches, and drop an episode Wednesday evening or Thursday morning. Stay tuned!