Hartford Athletic Aim to Bounce Back Against Charleston Battery
A late goal saw the Latics lose again last weekend as they continue to struggle in the 2025 season
With a protest planned by one of the club’s main supporters groups, Hartford Athletic will host Charleston Battery on Saturday night at Trinity Health Stadium. Last Friday’s 1-0 defeat to NCFC followed a 4-4 draw on the road against Indy Eleven, with both games seeing the opposition score deep into stoppage time to cost the Latics points, living them mired on six, ahead of only Tampa Bay Rowdies in the Eastern Conference.
Lack of defensive focus has been a key theme for the club this season, with manager Brendan Burke highlighting focus and discipline in his pregame comments, noting the number of red cards his side have received through the first months of the season.
“Some of it's wild refereeing, there's no question about that,” he said. “But we have to take care of our part of it and not put ourselves in those positions. We have to take ownership of it. We're more experienced than the guys making the decision. So it falls to us ultimately. So we have to be better about that and and we've talked at length about that this week. So hopefully that's done, that's over with.”
Burke’s comments capture both parts of the problem facing the Latics. They have not been helped by questionable refereeing, but they’ve also been the authors of their own demise on too many occasions. Cleaning up the mistakes — the reckless challenges, the yellow cards for dissent, the moments of madness that have come when the game was already over — will put the team in a much stronger position to weather the inevitable iffy decision from the official rather than finding that bad luck compounds poor decision making to place the game out of reach.
For Saturday night, the Latics will welcome back Kyle Edwards from international duty, where he featured for St. Vincent and the Grenadines in CONCACAF qualifiers for the FIFA World Cup 2026. Before joining up with his national side, Edwards had scored three goals and added an assist in his last three appearances for Hartford and his contributions were sorely missed in the loss to NCFC. In his absence, the Latics did not place a single shot on target, squandering promising attacking movements with wayward shots from distance.
And Hartford may need his attacking contributions more than usual on Saturday night, as Charleston brings arguably the league’s strongest attack to town. The Battery have tallied 26 goals, five more than any other team in the league, and are averaging more than half a goal per game better than their next closest competition as they’ve scored in every single league game in 2025. With the Latics’ defense susceptible to losing focus at key moments — and having given up four to Charleston in the reverse fixture this season — the hosts will almost certainly need to find something in attack to claim anything from this game.
The counterpoint would be that Hartford have been, for the most part, rock-solid in defense at home this season, having conceded only four goals in seven games at Trinity Health Stadium, keeping four clean sheets along the way. This might be a mirage, created by a slate of home games that so far has not thrown up many attacking juggernauts, and Saturday’s game will be a true test of whether or not the Latics’ defensive record at home is truly sustainable.
Saturday night will mark Brendan Burke’s 50th game in charge of the club in all competitions, which will be the most by any manager in club history as he surpasses Harry Watling’s previous record of 49. So far, his tenure has been less than successful, and the 2025 season is in danger of getting away as well. Points are desperately needed - and while Charleston is a good side in great form, it was a 2-2 draw against the same club in 2024 that heralded the second-half turnaround that saw Hartford nearly make the playoffs. Inspiration, perhaps, for a club that desperately needs some.