Hartford Win 2025 USL Jägermeister Cup: 3 Thoughts

The Latics lift the first trophy in club history as the complete an incredible turnaround

On Saturday night, Hartford Athletic downed Sacramento Republic 1-0 to claim the USL Jägermeister Cup. It’s the first trophy in club history, and demonstrated exactly how far the club has come from their early-season struggles. It also showed exactly how they’ve managed that turnaround, as fullbacks Emmanuel Samadia and Sebastian Anderson once again demonstrated their value.

Here are three thoughts.

1 - An Efficient Attack Yields Results Again

On a very surface level, it would be easy to say that Sacramento were in control of the final. It had 64% of the ball - edging up to nearly 70% in the second half - and completed 81% of their passes, compared to 65% for Hartford. Those are high-level statistics that, at a glance, often spell disaster: only having one-third of the ball and completing less than two-thirds of your passes can indicate that a team was under a lot of pressure and struggled to get the ball out of their own half.

Watching the game, though, apart from a stretch over the last 20-25 minutes of the first half, it rarely felt like Republic were in control. And when you look a little more closely, the numbers start to tell the story of why it felt that way. Sacramento might have had two-thirds of the ball, but only one-third of its possession was on Hartford’s side of the pitch.

All that possession translated into only 11 shots, with just one requiring action from Antony Siaha, and its expected goals from attacking efforts was just 0.67. Apart from that period in the first half where they were finding joy down their right-hand side, it rarely felt like Republic was doing the things they wanted to do with possession, but were rather being contained by a Hartford defense that had them playing into blind alleys more often than not. It’s no surprise that two of Sacramento’s best opportunities came via set pieces, rather than through open play, as the Latics largely frustrated its attacking intent.

On the flip side, when Hartford had the ball, it had it in the Republic half about half the time, and turned the lesser share of possession into 14 shots, with four going on target and producing 1.9 expected goals. That kind of efficiency has been one of Hartford's calling cards this season. In the Championship, it ranks 23rd out of 24 teams for average possession, but have the fifth-most touches in the opposition box which makes it less surprising that it also ranks sixth for shots on target per match and seventh for goals.

On Saturday, this was on full display, as the gap narrowed between the two teams the closer they got to the opposing goal. Despite Sacramento’s overwhelming advantage in overall possession, the edge in the attacking third was barely noticeable: 101 passes compared to Hartford’s 90. The comparative efficiency showed up in other ways too: Sacramento attempted 27 crosses, but only five were accurate. Hartford had more accurate crosses (6) on just over half the attempts (14).

2 - The Latics Complete The Turnaround

The win completes a stunning turnaround for Hartford. In mid-April, it looked like the season might already be on life support. After crashing out of the U.S. Open Cup against Portland Hearts of Pine, it was also winless through their first four USL Championship games. Things did not dramatically improve in the following weeks, and as summer loomed in June, the Latics had one win — and just six points — from 11 league games.

At that juncture, the singular bright spot for Hartford was that it had two wins from two in the Jägermeister Cup. A 2-0 win over Hearts brought some small measure of revenge for the U.S. Open Cup exit, and a 3-2 victory over Westchester SC, in which the Latics twice came from a goal down positioned them strongly in Group 4. It wasn’t much, but it was a glimmer of hope, and manager Brendan Burke seized on that glimmer early, noting after the victory over Hearts that it was “the quickest path to a trophy that anyone in USL is going to get.”

Once summer arrived, however, Hartford suddenly got hot. On the first day of summer, it battered Loudoun United 3-0 in a game that was even more one-sided than that, with the Latics recording an expected goal of 6.35, the best outcome by that measure since American Soccer Analysis began recording data for the USL Championship in 2017. And Hartford simply didn’t relent, across the entire summer, it played 14 league games and amassed 29 points, while outscoring opponents 27-9. Hartford also secured advancement to the knockout stages of the Jägermeister Cup, and then dispatched San Antonio and Greenville Triumph by a combined score of 5-1 to reach the final.

As for how they’ve managed that turnaround, well, see part I above. Saturday’s final was not an outlier, as the Latics have gone from a side that could barely muster a shot on goal to one of the most dynamic attacking forces in the league. As late as their home game against Louisville City on May 17th — seven games into the Championship season — Hartford were managing a mere 7.43 shots and 0.57 goals per game, both the worst in the league. Its expected goals were hardly much better, 0.98 per game, better at that point than only PIttsburgh and Las Vegas.

Since then, it’s entirely different. In 19 subsequent league games, the Latics are average 2.23 expected goals per game, easily the best in the Championship, and their 1.84 goals per game is behind only Louisville and Charleston across the same span.

However, Hartford haven’t got there by simply laying siege to the opposing goal. Yes, they’re taking more shots — 12.68 per game — but that’s “only” the sixth most in the league. What the Latics have done — and what the demonstrated on Saturday — was that they’ve developed a deadly efficiency in attack.

That turnaround — which they’ve achieved by becoming perhaps the most dangerous attacking side in the Championship — is how they’ve gone from the idea of even playing for silverware seeming like a pipe dream to bringing home the first trophy in club history.

3 - The Outside Backs Are The Key

Winning silverware is a team effort, and everyone who has seen the pitch for the Latics this season deserves a share of the credit. Brendan Burke and his staff deserve an enormous amount as well. The turnaround discussed above simply doesn’t happen if Burke wasn’t able to get his team back on track.

That said, Saturday’s game highlighted two of the players who have been key to Hartford’s resurgence: Sebastian Anderson and Emmanuel Samadia. Samuel Careaga got the man-of-the-match award — scoring the only goal of the final will earn you that almost every time — but Hartford’s outside backs were once again in excellent form at both ends of the pitch.

When understanding how Hartford accomplished the turnaround in part II above, it’s critical to consider Burke’s switch to a back three, with Anderson and Samadia moving up the pitch to play somewhere between wing-backs and right and left-sided midfielders. This has freed both up to push forward more, often with devastating effect. The pair have combined for 10 assists in the USL Championship; easily the most by any pair of fullbacks in the league. Only Gennaro Nigro of Las Vegas Lights (seven) has more than the five tallied by both Anderson and Samadia.

In all competitions, they now have 16 assists between them, and Anderson’s nine are the second-most by any player in club history, behind only Danny Barrera’s 12-assist campaign in 2021. It’s not simply the assists either: the two top the list of fullbacks for chances created, and both are in the top 10 for all players, regardless of position. Samadia has also been credited with 14 “big chances” created, behind only Juan Torres of Charleston in the entire league.

A critical factor in Hartford’s resurgence has been the ability of both outside backs to get forward. While they might sometimes prefer to go to their left — where Samadia is often overlapping with Michee Ngalina, to great effect — Anderson is also a creative force in the final third, and opposing teams have to pick their poison, which works to Hartford’s benefit more often than not.

On Saturday, both players displayed the full range of their abilities. Samadia created four chances — more than anyone else in the match — and Anderson picked up the assist, perfectly executing his part of a “straight off the training ground” corner that resulted in the only goal. The pair also combined for nine defensive contributions, as they graded out as the two best players on the pitch. Other players may get more plaudits, but Hartford’s outside backs might be the most important cogs in the engine of the club’s success.