Hartford Athletic are looking to build on two good results in the month of May as they head to Oklahoma to take on FC Tulsa at ONEOK Field on Friday night. Back-to-back wins over Detroit City and Brooklyn FC have revived a season that flagged during April as the team failed to score for over 500 minutes of game time.
With that scoreless streak hopefully in the rear-view mirror, and his team now in good position in both the league (fifth in the Easter Conference heading into Friday night’s game) and the cup (kept off the top of Group 5 only via tiebreakers), manager Brendan Burke praised his team’s commitment through that difficult stretch.
"We continue to show real grit, which is the mark of a team that can go on and win something," he told The Blazing Musket. "We haven’t been free flowing going forward, but we’ve been so committed.”
They’ve also been committed through a rash of injuries, with a laundry list of player’s missing time and the team only just bringing a full roster to Brooklyn last weekend for the first time on the season. In that game, however, Hartford suffered two more injuries, with Matt Real going down for the second time this season, and Adewale Obalola also picking up a noncontact injury. While the poor conditions at Maimonides Park were probably a factor in both injuries, particularly Obalola’s, Burke also acknowledged that his team’s preparations may have played a role as well.
“It was a high intensity week to prepare for a shit field," he said. "We pushed the guys hard, so maybe a little of that is on us.”
As for the timeline for the two players return, it’s quite different. Real’s injury is more minor, with the left-back expected to return shortly according to Burke.
“Matt will be relatively short term, maybe 7-10 days, but Addy will be a month or more.”
‘A month or more’ is probably not what Hartford fans want to hear about Obalola, as it depletes an attack that was already struggling to find the right mix, and it’s a particularly hard blow for a player who has done everything that Burke has asked, even if the goals haven’t been there.
Obalola has certainly earned his minutes with committed performances, but when Coffey and Ngalina came off the bench, they made the contributions that won the game for Hartford, which perhaps underscores the way forward for the Latics, as they continue to search for reliable goal production.
But more than any of his other players, Burke believes that the key is Samuel Careaga. Despite dealing with an early-season injury, the midfielder has been critical to Hartford’s position in both the league and the USL Cup, scoring twice (his goal against Detroit was re-assessed as an own goal for City’s Maxi Rodriguez) and making the Team of the Week twice, despite making only six appearances totaling 242 minutes so far in 2026.
“When you take a guy that technical, that aware tactically, that expressive, and have him just run, just cover ground, be accountable to his teammates. You see him defending to his own endline, but also scoring a goal. What he learned last year was to play at a higher level of the USL Championship. We have him playing on both sides of the ball at a higher intensity. He’s twice as fit. He maybe doesn’t love us for it sometimes, but he’s found a new level.”
Heading into Tulsa, Burke feels like his team control their own destiny, but was also quick to point out that “this is where the final was held last year.” 2025 Western Conference champions Tulsa may not quite be playing at that same level, as they currently sit in 7th, just above the playoff line. Nonetheless, Burke views them as a dangerous attacking team, noting that they get a good volume of service from their wide players with Bailey Sparks and Kalil ElMedkhar both providing options down the flanks.
Tulsa also have former Birmingham and Memphis standout Bruno Lapa on the roster, although he has not quite returned to his 2024 level in the USL Championship after an unsuccessful sojourn in South Korea. Nonetheless, he’s a former second-team all-league selection with over 50 goal contributions in his career, and even if he’s not quite on track at the moment, he’s always a danger to click into gear.
And of course up front, Tulsa have Remi Cabral, who is one of the msot efficient finishers in the league. Across his last three seasons split between Tulsa and Phoenix, he’s scored 16 times in barely 2,500 minutes, a level of production that if he can compress it into one season, would put him in golden boot contention.
Tulsa’s attack has a lot of good pieces, but has not been on fire yet this season, reaching a third goal just twice on the year. One of those came against Western Conference struggles Las Vegas Lights, and the other against El Paso which sounds impressive until you realize that Tulsa played almost the entire game against ten men after Gabi Torres picked up a red card in just the 11th minute.
With Hartford having had a very good defense so far – last Saturday’s clean sheet was their 7th of the season – it will be hoping to stifle Tulsa’s attack as well as get something going in the opposite direction. With four goals in their last two games, things are trending in the right direction, but consistency and finding that free-flowing form of 2025 are the keys to continued success.
