Rhode Island returned home for some mid-week action as they welcomed Detroit City FC to Centreville Bank Stadium on Wednesday night. Winless in their last five matches, including their final group stage match-up in the USL Jägermeister Cup, the Amber and Blue have found themselves in a rut they desperately need to pull themselves out of.
Pulling off the win in front of an electric crowd in Pawtucket, this hopefully can mark the beginning of another late season push for RIFC, similar to the one they made last year.
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1 - Need to Get Active
During the first half of Wednesday’s match, there was one glaringly obvious issue among the Rhode Island offense: the lack of movement off the ball while trying to generate an offensive drive. Without attempting to make any sort of runs to create space and generate momentum, players were almost doing the Detroit defense’s job for them.
As a coach once told me, players need to be proactive and not reactive when they’re out on the field. If everyone is just waiting to see what’s going to happen next instead of taking the initiative to create their own opportunities, nothing is going to be accomplished.
It doesn’t have to be anything complex or complicated; if even just one member of the offense recognizes those opportunities and takes advantage of them by making something happen, it could cause a domino effect that leads to more active attack efforts going forward.
2 - Scoring Struggles Continue
Despite squeaking out the win against Detroit, Rhode Island continued to struggle to find the back of the net in the run of play. Throughout the course of the match, Rhode Island had only seven shot attempts, only two of which were on net, and they did not have another shot on net for thirty minutes following Maxi Rodriguez’s 60th-minute penalty.
RIFC has failed to score a goal in the run of play for more than a month now, which obviously sparks concerns about the club. Fans had high expectations for the squad coming into the season, and with so many established goal scorers on the roster one can understand why.
Last season Maxi Rodriguez scored 10 goals, Albert Dikwa and J.J. Williams each scored 11 goals, and Noah Fuson scored eight just to name a few.
So far this season, with 19 regular-season and 4 USL Cup matches played, their current leader in goals scored has three. Something needs to fall into place soon to hopefully knock this goal scoring block once and for all.
3 - Return of the Captain
Wednesday’s match-up also featured the anticipated return of goalkeeper and team captain Koke Vegas, who made several spectacular saves early in the game to keep the match scoreless. Not to discredit Jackson Lee’s contributions as he stepped up to fill in for the injured keeper, but you could tell what it meant to the other players to have their captain back on the field with them.
Despite being sidelined with what Vegas himself referred to as the longest injury of his career, the Spaniard looked as sharp as ever, putting on a performance between the posts that could see him take a clean sweep on the Save of the Week podium.
