Game Preview: Birmingham Legion v. North Carolina FC
4 games to go and everything on the line
It’s crunch time. With 4 games remaining for all teams involved, here’s the playoff situation for the Birmingham Legion:
The Legion must win at least 3 of its 4 remaining games, finishing with 32, 33 or 35 points.
Detroit City is on 32 points. Detroit wins the tiebreakers at 33 and 35 points. The Legion wins the tiebreaker at 32 points. At most Detroit can earn 2 more points.
Indy Eleven is on 32 points and holds the tiebreaker so must end with fewer points than the Legion, i.e., no more than 2 more points.
Rhode Island is on 31 points and holds the tiebreaker so must also end with fewer points than the Legion, i.e., no more than 3 more points.
The Tampa Bay Rowdies are on 27 points and hold the tiebreaker so again must end with fewer points than the Legion, i.e., no more than 7 more points.
The Miami FC is on 21 points. The Legion plays Miami October 19th in the home finale. If Miami drops any points they are eliminated.
Note that Tampa Bay plays both Detroit and Rhode Island in the final 4 games so must at least draw with Detroit and beat Rhode Island. That’s 4 of the maximum 7 so they have to lose at least 1 of the 2 other games.
It gets tougher; this weekend Detroit plays…North Carolina FC. At home. Uh oh. Granted, Detroit has been very inconsistent all season but that’s a lot of travel for North Carolina this week, who are using up a game in hand. Sometimes those are not as useful as they otherwise might seem.
All of which is to say that the Three Sparks’ season is hanging by a thread. As if you weren’t already aware.
The Legion obviously can’t go easy on North Carolina tonight (7:00pm, ESPN+) regardless of their tight schedule. NCFC will be aware that the Legion beat them 3-2 in Cary back in July in one of just 2 conference wins for the Legion this season (the other being over Miami). They will probably also be aware that 2 of those 3 goals were scored by Danny Trejo. Yeah, that doesn’t help.
They are moreover in a playoff fight of their own. Currently in 3rd with no option to improve they have 3 teams trailing them by 3 points or fewer (Loudoun United, Hartford Athletic and the Pittsburgh Riverhounds). They will want to hang on to that position but are not playing all that great. 2 wins and a draw in the last 3 games, but the 2 wins were both 1-0 affairs over Miami and El Paso and they drew 2-2 with Tampa Bay. Not overly impressive.
However, they have a lot of firepower. Scoring leader Evan Conway has 9 goals and Pedro Dolabella is not far behind on 7 goals. As a team they are 9th overall with 38 goals. They are pretty effective with their shooting: they are just 18th in shots, which makes them tied for 4th in shot conversion. Here’s the odd thing though: their xG (per American Soccer Analysis) is 31.17, 20th overall in the Championship and way under the actual goal production. The Legion is in fact slightly better in 19th with 32.49 (and somewhat underperforming at 28 goals). That implies that not only is North Carolina very good at converting its shots, it is also very good at converting low-probability shots.
Given all that, the game in Cary was something of an outlier for the home team. They put up a hefty 21 shots with 4 on target. Of those, 14 were from inside the box. 5 of those were blocked and 6 were off target. 2 of the 3 on target scored.
Which means that the Legion will have to put up another defensive display like they did this past Saturday in San Antonio. The Three Sparks 5-man back line combined for 3 tackles, 11 clearances and 8 interceptions. Despite a very physical approach they managed to earn just 1 yellow card (by Stephen Turnbull in a pretty soft call).
The midfield will also need to keep NCFC as far away from shooting range as possible since NCFC does tend to take long-distance attempts.
Last week’s game was also only the 3rd clean sheet in league play for the Legion this season. The other two were against Sacramento Republic and the Charleston Battery. That goes to show that this team can play with the best of them when they want to. Which has ben the issue for this squad all season: half the time they haven’t seemed like they want to.
Prediction: The winless streak has to end. The Legion will have to overcome the issues with the largely empty cavern that is Protective Stadium and play at their best. I have a sense that the strong play from last weekend will flow over into this one and the desperately needed 3 points will be earned.
(from the Football Forge)