Hartford Athletic return to action after a week off as they host Birmingham Legion on Saturday night at Trinity Health Stadium. It’s the first game of a brutal stretch of games for the Latics, who will play a further seven games before the end of September, a total of eight games in just 28 days.
In this off week, the club took the chance to reset a little as they gear up for a season-defining run of games. Hartford manager Brendan Burke emphasized the need for balance when speaking to the Blazing Musket this week.
“It's a reset," Burke said. "Physically and mentally. Last week we really tone the volume down a little bit so that this week we were able to have what will be our last normal full training week for over a month. The reality is we're playing the game every 3.5 days now until we reach October. So we have to be really smart about how and when we train through the month of September. And it's mostly going to be on the mental side, video and and data and prep that happens away from the field because there'll be a lot of rotation and a lot of very quick turn around. So this week was was our last real chance to push the guys a bit physically and and try to prepare for what's going to be a long month.”
A long and important month, as Hartford will not only play in a USL Cup semifinal (September 8 against Colorado Springs), but also try to secure a playoff spot for the second consecutive year. It’ll reach October with just four league games left to play, and the work they do in September will determine exactly how much meaning is attached to any of those fixtures.
The Latics kick this stretch off with a visit from Birmingham, who are struggling on the 2026 season, with just 17 points in the league. Legion are currently 11th in the Eastern Conference, above only league newcomers Brooklyn and Jacksonville, and are in danger of missing the playoffs for the third consecutive season.
Birmingham have no shortage of talent, particularly in the attacking third, where it boasts Romario Williams (68 career Championship goals), Ronaldo Damus (52 goals) and Tyler Pasher (43 goals). And while those players have combined for nine goals so far this season, it’s a far cry from their best. Damus in particular is struggling, heading to his worst season in the USL Championship, tallying just three goals so far after topping ten in every one of his previous season in the league.
Legion’s problems have been twofold. Firstly, they’ve been profligate in attack. They aren’t exactly putting up incredible attacking numbers, but based on the overall quality of their chances, they’d probably expect to be solidly in the playoff places, instead of seven points adrift. However, they simply haven’t been taking those chances at anything like the rate you would expect, with the consequence that they have just 22 goals through 19 games.
If that sounds familiar to Hartford fans, well, it is, with Burke saying that Birmingham have been “similar to us in a lot of situations” this season.
Hartford have, if anything, been less effective in attack than Birmingham, yet sit three places above in the Eastern Conference standings, largely due to Legion’s other problem: their defense is paper-thin. Only three teams (Jacksonville, Miami and Monterey) serve up higher-quality opportunities for opponents, and only a little luck in the defensive third has kept Birmingham from conceding significantly more goals.
It has been especially poor defensively when it had the lead, dropping an astonishing 17 points from winning positions in 2026. Last Saturday against an otherwise listless Jacksonville team, it went ahead 1-nil, only to concede an equalizer almost immediately. After going behind, Romario Williams thought he had rescued a point for his club with a stoppage-time strike, but Legion couldn’t hold out, conceding with essentially the last kick of the game to lose by the odd goal in five.
In particular, Legion have struggled with balls coming into the box from wide areas. Taking just corners, set pieces and free kicks, Birmingham are the worst defensive team in the league, having conceded 12 goals from those patterns of play, more than any other team in the Championship. Hartford will look to take advantage of those opportunities on Saturday night, but it will also be critical to work the ball out into wide areas in open play, relying on Sebastian Anderson and Emmanuel Samadia to put the ball into dangerous areas that Legion have had trouble defending.
Given the situation, Birmingham are almost certainly coming into this game a little desperate. Rumors coming out of Protective Stadium after the loss to Jacksonville were that the locker room was contentious, and that manager Jay Heaps kept his team there for hours, reviewing game footage until late at night. Burke said he thought it might “light a fire under them,” but there’s also the possibility it goes a different direction and Heaps’ late-night film session fails to cure the issue.
Whatever mindset Birmingham bring to the game, this is a true playoff six pointer. A win would keep Hartford in the playoff places – and possibly give a little breathing room over Miami and Loudoun – but leave Legion ten points adrift with just ten games to play. The reverse result would give Birmingham hope that it could make a run at the playoffs and drag Hartford back into the muck below the line. For Burke, this is the first in a stretch of games that will feel that way, with the stakes upping with every match.
“Every game is going to feel like that on the way in," Burke said, "We're either playing against the team that we know we could see in the playoffs, or we're trying to prevent the team from getting to the playoffs. So this is a different time of the year then the first 2/3 of the season.This really is when you start to see separation in the table.”
