It's Jäger Day!
Here are a few things to know for Madison's first USL League One Cup match
Our Mingos begin their first-ever run at the Jägermeister Cup today in Lexington!
It’s a 3 pm kickoff! You can watch on ESPN+ or come down to the Forward Club for the watch party.
If you’re watching at home, but don’t want to watch alone, David Magness — aka FlorMingos — hosts a Zoom watch party at this link.
So wait, what’s the deal with this Cup thing again?
Today’s match has no bearing on league standings. It’s the first of 10 matches we’ll play in the group stage of the first-ever in-season cup tournament, which is sponsored by Jägermeister.
The 12 teams in USL League One are divided into three groups. Our central group includes Forward Madison, Lexington SC, One Knoxville and Chattanooga Red Wolves. We’ll play each of those teams twice — home and away — and also play one team from each of the other groups. (In Madison’s case, those other two matches are at Charlotte in May and against Omaha at home in August.)
As usual, a win will get you three points in the group standings, and a draw gets you one point. Here’s the wrinkle: if a game ends in a draw, each team gets one point, and the match goes to a penalty shootout, with the winner getting one more point.
Last night, incredibly three of the four matches went to penalties. Spokane vs Central Valley, Greenville vs Richmond and Tormenta vs Charlotte all ended in 1-1 draws. Central Valley, Richmond and Charlotte all won the shootouts for that extra point.
Meanwhile, in the central group, One Knox was the only team to actually win a match, beating Chattanooga 1-0. That means Madison could really use a win today to keep pace with three points.
Here’s the other wrinkle: The three group winners will move on to the semifinal in September, and whichever of the other nine teams has scored the most goals in cup matches will get the fourth spot. That led to some speculation that this competition would be a goalsfest, but so far… it hasn’t been.
What can we expect today?
Due to red cards issued in our last home match against Richmond, defender Timmy Mehl and head coach Matt Glaeser are suspended for this one. It’ll likely be Neil Hlavaty managing the match, but I wouldn’t expect anything vastly different than what we’ve seen thus far. In the absense of Mehl, we’ll expect to see Michael Chilaka, Mitch Osmond and Jacob Crull across the back. Chilaka and Crull are both used to playing on the left, so we’ll see which of them takes up the right side — and whehter Stephen Payne stays a bit deeper than usual to provide a little extra defensive support.
Last we heard from Christian Chaney, he intended to be back for this one. Cherif Dieye is also here, finally, and played in the friendly vs. UW last weekend. We’re told there are no other injuries, so it’s going to be a matter of which combinations the managers feel are going to work the best.
On the other side, it’s no secret that Lexington’s start has been disappointing, given the level of talent they signed in the offseason. That’s no reason to assume it’ll be an easy match, though — it’s more or less a matter of team cohesion, and that’s going to come. If it clicks into place today, Madison could have their hands full.
Given the lack of production, though, Lexington did add another piece this week, snatching League 1 veteran Alexis Cerritos back from MLSNP. Frankly I’m not sure that an additional finisher will address Lexington’s concerns, but he’ll certainly be another issue for Madison to prepare for.
Both sides will come in well-rested, as neither has played a competitive match in two weeks. Both of those matches ended in disappointing 2-2 draws.
Anything else happening in the league?
Besides a pretty fun first day of Jägermeister Cup competition, we’ve gotten quite a bit of league expansion news lately.
First, we got the official announcement that Eugene, Oregon will join USL League One, though the league didn’t announce when. It seems that this is an evolution of Lane United, which has successfully competed in USL League 2 and USLW for years.
Next, we learned that New York is also getting another USL League One team, this one in Westchester County, next season. Strangely this announcement came from the club, via Gary Stern at the Rockland/Westchester Journal News, but the league hasn’t confirmed it. The principal owner is Mitch Baruchowitz of Rye, co-founder and managing partner of Merida, a private equity firm focused on the cannabis industry. So. Go ahead and begin speculation about what the crest will look like.
Finally, speaking of crests, we learned just yesterday that the new club in Portland, Maine, joining the league next year, will be called the Hearts of Pine and be represented by a pretty unconventional, but also pretty great, crest.
We’re hearing that social media admins across the league are already brainstorming tweets based on the theme of “breaking hearts.”
We’ll be back in your podcast feeds this week.
Alex and I will break down today’s match as well as some of the other notable moments from the first Jägermeister weekend. Watch this feed or your favorite podcast app!