Hartford Athletic closed out its four-game road trip to open the 2026 season with a 2-1 victory over Brooklyn FC at Maimonides Park. The seven points it has accumulated in three USL Championship games over that stretch is the best it has managed since 2020, when the club won its first three games.
As the Latics prepare for their 2026 home opener against Indy Eleven on Saturday, here are three thoughts following that win over Brooklyn.
1 - Return of the road warriors?
For most of Hartford’s history, its road performances have ranged between poor and absolutely dire. In both 2019 and 2023, the club was exceptionally bad, as they failed to exceed 10 total points away from Dillon Stadium.
Even in Brendan Burke’s first season at the helm, his side’s away performances left a lot to be desired, as they accumulated just 13 points on the road in the league, second worst in the Eastern Conference ahead of only a historically poor Miami FC. It’s probably fair to say that their road form cost them a playoff spot, as the 31 points they picked up at home were the fifth-best in the conference, and Hartford finished just five points out of the top eight.
In 2025, however, the story was entirely different.
Their 23 road points were the best accumulation in club history, and the third-best road total in the Eastern Conference, behind only Louisville City and Charleston Battery. At one point, they went unbeaten for 13 consecutive road games, including winning six straight road league games, the third-best such streak in the history of the USL Championship. They also won two critical road games in the USL Cup, including the final.
With four games on the road to open the 2026 season, the Latics really needed to pick up where they left off if they were to avoid a repeat of 2025’s slow start. And in fact, they were almost perfect, getting a result in all four games, picking up seven points in the Championship while also advancing in the Open Cup.
It wasn’t always pretty – Brooklyn dominated them for much of the second half last Saturday – but The Latics gritted out another result away from home to head into their home opener sitting behind only Louisville City in the Eastern Conference. If they can replicate something like their road form from 2025 – and seven points has them well on their way to doing so – Hartford will comfortably make the playoffs for the second year running and should have a great shot at a first home playoff game since 2020.
2 - Something old, something new
For virtually every single USL Championship club, every season is a question of how well the new players will mesh with the old to create success. Hartford is no different.
While The Latics returned 12 players from last season's USL Cup-winning side, they were still waiting to find out how some of the new pieces would fit together. In Brooklyn, they got significant contributions from the new boys, as well as some of the old, with Barry Coffey and Antony Siaha two of the standouts.
Through the first three games, Coffey hadn’t quite settled. In league games against Sporting Club Jacksonville and Birmingham Legion, he had some promising moments but was also quite wasteful, completing just 13 of 27 pass attempts over the two appearances. In the Cup game against FC Motown, he managed just 14 touches in 55 minutes and won only one of his six duels. He showed enough across the three games to suggest why Brendan Burke had brought him to Hartford in the first place, but it very clearly wasn’t properly coming together yet.
Limited to just 45 minutes in Brooklyn, Coffey was by no means perfect, but he showed exactly what his upside is with a great assist for Augustine Williams’ opener and then added a goal of his own for what proved to be the game-winner. That goal was, somewhat unsurprisingly, a header. In 2025, while playing with Cobh Ramblers, Coffey scored 10 of his 26 goals with his head.
There’s some way to go yet for the Irish midfielder, as outside of the assist his passing was somewhat pedestrian and he managed just 14 touches in his 45 minutes, but the show of quality was a great sign. In the absence of first-choice attacking midfielder Samuel Careaga, the pressure on Coffey to adjust to the league and deliver a spark of some kind is even greater, and on Saturday, he absolutely delivered.
At the other end of the pitch, it was Hartford’s keeper who made Coffey’s contributions hold up. His ten saves were the most he’s ever recorded in a USL Championship game, but also the most any Hartford keeper has ever recorded in a league game. Some of the saves were more routine, but Siaha had to produce a couple out of the top drawer to maintain his side’s advantage.
In the first half, he got up very well to tip a CJ Olney screamer over the bar. In the second half, his save of So Nishikawa’s curling effort from outside the box was even better.
American Soccer Analysis assessed that in terms of goals saved, his performance was nearly twice as good as any other keeper who played on Saturday, and he was rightly named to the USL Championship Team of the Week for his efforts. Hartford will be aiming to give him less to do in future weeks, but this was a stark reminder that when he’s at the top of his game, Siaha is absolutely one of the best keepers in the league.
Hartford’s other top two performers on Saturday continued the theme of old and new boys contributing to the win, with Augustine Williams adding his second goal of the season and Sebastian Anderson picking up an assist. Without a fully healthy squad, it’s too early to say that everything is coming together, but with both returning players and newcomers contributing so far, things are certainly off to the right start.
3-How full is the glass?
It’s easy to belabor the point that Hartford’s roster is too thin for the demands of its schedule, but it’s worth addressing once again because there’s also very much a silver lining here. With Galen Flynn and Spencer Gordon once again seeing minutes, there’s no denying that things are getting dicey. Flynn certainly acquitted himself well enough on the night but Gordon was hardly in the game, managing just seven touches in nearly 30 minutes in a situation that probably required him to get stuck in a little more defensively.
The silver lining, though, is that this is not the roster Brendan Burke intends to take into the summer. Missing on Saturday were Michee Ngalina, Samuel Careaga, Adewale Obalola, Baboucarr Njie and Emmanuel Samadia, while Coffey and Anderson also appeared to be on a minutes restriction. Under those circumstances, the result is even more impressive, and it shines a ray of hope that as those players come available, the team won’t need a combination of luck and Siaha superheroics to get results.
First, the bad news: having five key players unavailable and two more unable to go the full 90 is obviously not ideal. It’s also something of a repeat of 2025, where Brendan Burke simply didn’t have the players to get through the early months of the season, being unable to even name an 18 player matchday squad on more than one occasion.
This shines a little light on a bigger problem at Hartford which is that Burke continues to be asked to make do with less than the league really requires. It’s a testament to his perseverance and ability that he continues to make this work, but it’s also fair to ask if this state of affairs can be sustained indefinitely.
The good news, though, is that Burke is making it work. A somewhat makeshift squad racked up another three points and, in theory, should only be getting healthier. Ngalina is likely to be available for the Indy Eleven game on Saturday. Samadia is probably still a month away. It’s believed that his visa issue won’t be resolved until mid-April; he should be available before the club begins its USL Cup defense at the end of that month.
It’s also believed that Burke will be adding to his squad, perhaps as soon as this week. In 2025, the team struggled into the summer before reinforcements arrived, but it seems like there will be new signings in the very near future. Attack, midfield and defense are all evidently under consideration for additions, and given that Burke’s squad could use an injection of depth in all three areas, it’s certainly hoped that the resources are available to make all of these moves happen.
In any event, while the roster is still paper-thin, the talent level is sufficient to manage results in the near term, and the Latics will certainly not reach the summer in the same dire position as 2025 (it’s quite literally impossible; Hartford has already accumulated one more point than they had when they played Loudoun United on the first day of summer in 2025). With the squad only likely to get stronger, whether through improving health or additional signings, it all adds up to a glass that is rather more than half full.
