Hartford Athletic "Right on Track" Despite Recent Setbacks
Hartford Athletic "Right on Track" Despite Recent Setbacks
A look a the club's mentality after a 6-0 hammering in Louisville, a trip to the league leaders, a possible Renan Ribeiro debut and more ahead of the weekend's clash with Charleston.
After a 2-0 start to 2024 — the best start to a season in Hartford Athletic history — life under Brendan Burke and Nick Sackiewicz got off to a dream start for the Green and Blue.
However, a pile of preseason injuries and a tough early schedule eventually caught up to Burke’s side and a 6-0 thrashing at the hands of Louisville City FC on Saturday was the most recent in a string of three straight losses that have seen the club seemingly come crashing back down to reality.
However, while Burke was understandably unhappy with the result, he also was not concerned with the trajectory of the club; which is still in the early stages of a “massive rebuild”.
“Obviously, Louisville was a focal point of a difficult stretch,” Burke said. “We always knew this was going to be a difficult stretch very early in a rebuild. And I look at the Charleston team we're playing this weekend, and they lost 7-0 last year, and 4-0 a couple weeks later, and you go through these ups and downs in a rebuild. So I'm not going to make any excuses for who was on the field or who wasn't. We were nowhere near good enough.”
Another crucial aspect of Hartford’s recent struggles have been an increasing injury report that has followed them since the start of the season, according to Burke. While the club has been “nowhere near” fielding their best 11 through the opening eight weeks of the season, several key players are continuing to return the the lineup and the head coach said his team was “really close” to returning to full strength as they continue to experiment with the right combinations as players continue to return to match-fitness.
“I've never dealt with nine injuries in preseason, and six of them being long-term,” Burke said. “That's not a thing I've dealt with before, so we've had to be really patient with each other. And I will say everyone around the club has been really patient. At the end of the day, we dealt with nine injuries early and we're 3-3. So we took one whopper of a bad result, but the reality is we're 3-3 and right on track.”
One of the higher-profile injuries comes the way of former Sporting CP goalkeeper Renan Ribeiro, who was sidelined with a quad injury in the lead-up to the club’s season opener at El Paso Locomotive FC. The veteran goalkeeper was active in full team training this week and according to Burke, might see his debut in Green and Blue as soon as Saturday’s match in Charleston.
Ultimately, while Burke stressed the need not to panic so early in a rebuilding phase, there were still clear flaws in Hartford’s trip to Louisville last week and signaled a clear need for change after an “unacceptable” performance on the weekend.
“One is just the effort piece, we can't be scared,” Burke said. “We were scared last weekend.We look scared. We relate to everything. We just kind of got put in a wash cycle by a really good team. So you look for personnel to come back into the picture, and some of our veterans haven't played a minute yet this season. You look for them to come into the picture at some point soon. But the reality is just if the energy and attention to detail and effort isn't there, there's only so much we can change to move us forward.”
Hartford Athletic’s job doesn’t get any easier in the coming weeks — A trip to the league-leading Charleston Battery awaits them on Saturday. Kickoff from Patriots Point is set for 6:30 p.m. on ESPN+ as Hartford look to down the red-hot Battery and return to winning ways.