Hartford Athletic suffered their worst loss in nearly two years last Saturday, as they were blanked 4-nil by El Paso Locomotive.
With the game now a few days behind everyone, here are three thoughts on the result.
1 - Everything went wrong
When a game goes as badly as that, it’s important to consider both the micro (the game itself) and the macro (everything going on around the club). The micro was, to put it mildly, poor. After the game, Brendan Burke said that his side got “everything wrong,” and that seems like a fair assessment.
“Our pressing cues [were wrong]. They played in a slightly different shape than they've played so far," Burke said. "There was some confusion. We made some personnel decisions based on all our absences. You know we're missing 5 starters, but that's not an excuse. We've been grinding out results without those guys, but it really showed tonight and we tried one or two things that went massively wrong.”
Among the things they tried on Saturday were Sadat Anaku at wing back, and it’s fair to say that it simply didn’t work. The Ugandan forward conceded a penalty, and was unable to contribute meaningfully in attack.
Hartford also lacked energy and focus, with El Paso simply outhustling them for most of the game. The first goal was a result of Adewale Obalola being unaware of Eric Calvillo and allowing the Locomotive midfielder to steal the ball in a dangerous area. For the last goal, the Latics simply didn’t cover well, and Gabi Torres had an uncontested tap-in after Antony Siaha saved the first effort from Amando Moreno.
The lack of energy and the errors led to Hartford being down 3-nil with barely half an hour gone. At that point, Burke was looking for something, anything, to show him that his team had some fight in them.
“[I was] just [looking for] a response. That's it," Burke said. "Just character. Just response. Just who can fight through a moment like that? That's hard when everything's going wrong and you can feel it and the guy next to you, everything's going wrong for him and the guy next to him and I don't know that we had a guy that didn't have one of those nights. And when you have 10 or 11 guys have those nights, you're just waiting to get out of the building, quite frankly.”
2 - The big picture
The macro is also revealing. Sadat Anaku did not start at wing-back because Burke had some galaxy-brain idea that the Ugandan forward is a Championship-level player at that position. He started because Hartford is missing not one, not two, but three starter-quality players at that position, with Emmanuel Samadia, Baboucarr Njie and Matt Real all unavailable. Burke emphasized this, while owning the tactical mistake.
“You know, we have 3 high end left backs in our roster," Burke said. "None of the three were available tonight and we got a heavily exposed in that position tonight because we tried something that's not on the player, that's on me. We're having to be creative and we really messed that one up.”
Likewise, if Hartford’s midfield is a somewhat uninspiring void in terms of attacking quality, well, both first-choice Samuel Careaga and key reserve Barry Coffey are injured.
“We're going to have to grind until we get our two number 10s back, until we get Barry, until we get Samu back," Burke said. "Samu is one of the best 10s in the league. He's played 20 minutes this season. That's not going to help you win games. So we need those two guys focused on the recovery and get them back moving again.”
All those injuries, many of which are soft tissue injuries, come in the context of an abbreviated preseason. The point can’t be made too often that decisions that are made about preseason preparations reverberate down throughout the entire season.
Hartford did not take an extended preseason training trip, and consequently missed out on a number of training sessions at the Day Hill Dome due to a number of factors including weather. Now, the club is paying the price for those decisions, with players simply unable to be completely ready for the physical demands of competitive minutes.
Burke and his technical staff certainly erred in their preparations for last Saturday’s game but a loss like that doesn’t start the Monday before the game. It starts in the offseason, when budgets for preseason training, for rest and recovery facilities, for injury treatment plans are all being set. Unless Hartford fully embraces the costs of doing business in the USL Championship, there will continue to be games like this; where the consequences of all the previous decisions become apparent on the pitch.
3 - What's the club's ambition?
You could say, straightforwardly, that this is the lower divisions, and there will always be a certain amount of flying-by-the-seat-of-our-pants down here. That’s fair.
But it has to be balanced against the theoretical aspirations of the club. When the USL announced that it was planning to add a first-division league and implement promotion and relegation, Hartford both voted in favor of the changes, and made their aspiration to be at that top table clear. Chief Operating Officer Michele Roux doubled down on the messaging in a recent profile, saying that her “focus is on elevating Hartford Athletic to Division One.”
It’s a laudable ambition, but one that increasingly seems at odds with how the club actually operates. A team that is truly looking to get a seat at the top table is not looking to decrease investment in the sporting side of things – as Hartford appears to have done – but to increase that investment as a prelude to something bigger.
And Hartford has made some investments.
The agreement with Day Hill Dome that gives the club access to that facility for training purposes is a huge improvement over the prior situation, which saw the first team train primarily at Trinity Health Stadium. But these investments are a beginning rather than an end, and if the club is truly trying to pursue an application for USL D1, the incoming costs will dwarf the expense of a preseason training trip to Florida.
If the club doesn't appear to be willing to take on the costs of operating at the level of the Championship, it's hard to see how that will change when the costs only get higher at the next level. Something therefore has to give; either the club makes a commitment to paying what it takes to build success – which might mean new investment – or they adjust their aspirations to their means.
