Hartford Athletic Head to Charleston Looking to Build Momentum
The Latics have not recorded a point in six games at Patriots Point
Hartford Athletic returns to action on Saturday, heading to South Carolina to take on two-time Eastern Conference finalists Charleston Battery. After a slow start to the season, the Latics have won two on the bounce in all competitions, getting a comfortable 2-0 win over Portland Hearts of Pine in the USL Jägermeister Cup on the back of a 1-0 league win over Birmingham Legion.
The wins were much needed, as Hartford enters a stretch of three games where it plays three of the top four teams in the Eastern Conference, based on current standings. The Battery currently sits fourth on 12 points — albeit with a game in hand on the teams ahead of them in the standings — and the Latics follow this game with visits from Detroit City and Louisville City who are third and second in the Conference at the moment. Any results at all across this stretch would be an enormous boon for a club that is struggling to turn its season around.
Hartford have won only three of its twelve meetings with Charleston, the most recent victory coming at the tail end of the 2022 season, when it triumphed 6-3 as Andre Lewis recorded the first hat-trick in club history. Since then, the Latics have lost three and drawn one of the four games they’ve played against the Battery. There’s been no shortage of entertainment in those contests with the four games producing a total of 17 goals and three red cards, with the Battery twice coming from two goals down to salvage a result and also twice scoring in the 90th minute or later to take all three points.
In 2024, the first game in Charleston was decided by an excellent strike from Nick Markanich, and the return fixture saw Hartford go two goals to the good before keeper Renan Ribeiro was sent off for two quick yellow cards and the Battery stormed back in the second half to earn a point.
Charleston no longer have USL single-season goalscoring record holder Markanich, who is now applying his trade for Castellón in the Spanish Segunda División. In his two seasons with the Battery, the forward scored five goals against Hartford in only four games, one of the best returns of any player. Only former Miami and St. Louis winger JoaquÃn Rivas — who scored the only goal to knock the Latics out of the playoffs in 2020 — has scored as many goals in only four games. There is no doubt that Hartford, along with the rest of the league, are glad to see Markanich move on to other pastures.
Without Markanich, Charleston has turned to MD Myers, its second-leading scorer from a year ago with 14 goals, and former Tampa Bay Rowdy Cal Jennings who has 70 career goals in the Championship.
So far, it’s working: Myers has six goals in four games in all competitions, including a hat trick in the U.S. Open Cup, while Jennings has five goals in six games. Despite this success, Charleston also added well-traveled Guatemala international Rubio Rubin, who scored seven goals in five games in his only stint in the USL Championship back in 2020 with the San Diego Loyal.
Adding in Juan David Torres and Aaron Molloy, Charleston have an attack that is not just fearsome on paper, but is also delivering on the pitch. On a minutes-adjusted basis, the Battery have produced the second-best expected goals in the league, and are functionally tied for the league lead in actual goals scored by the same measure. All of this presents a significant challenge for a Hartford defense that has been good at limiting chances from open play, but prone to losing focus.
At the other end of the pitch, things do not look great on paper for the Latics, but there are some reasons for hope. First, the bad news: while Hartford has to this point fielded possibly the least threatening attack in the league, Charleston has had one of the best defenses, something that would typically be a recipe for disaster. The ray of hope for Hartford, however, is that they will head into Charleston with two players who have not made significant contributions in the league so far: Samuel Careaga and Jack Panayotou. While both players will need time to settle, they give the Latics an additional attacking dimension and should help with the connectivity and fluidity of the team, both identified as areas of weakness by manager Brendan Burke.
A year ago, Hartford played well against Charleston, conceding only one goal at full strength against a team that scored 68 across the entire season. The Battery have another high-octane attack, and given this club’s road struggles, it will be a tall order to take something from this game but Brendan Burke’s men need to find some points from somewhere, and will hope that their performances in the last two games indicate a reversal of fortune as they try to climb off the bottom of the table in the Eastern Conference.