Game Preview: Charleston Battery v. Birmingham Legion

Winter is coming

The 2025 Birmingham Legion season ends tomorrow in Charleston (4:00pm, ESPN+). It’s been a rough one, to say the least, and the sooner the team puts it behind them the better. However, it’s not going to be an easy finale.

The Battery technically has nothing to play for. They are locked into 2nd place in the Eastern Conference and have also secured home field advantage if they get to the championship game. Additionally, they played Wednesday in Sacramento (a 0-1 loss) and thus will not have had much rest or training time. On top of that they played a weather-delayed game against the Colorado Springs Switchbacks a week ago Monday and against Detroit City last Saturday (a 5-0 win and a 1-1 draw). They have had a tough closing schedule.

The question then becomes: who will they play on Saturday? When I spoke with Mark Briggs earlier this week he was of the opinion they would rest players against Sacramento and field a first-choice lineup tomorrow as a warm-up for the playoffs. It looks like he was more or less right.

The Battery have two of the top three goalscorers in the league. Cal Jennings has led the Golden Boot race for much of the season but his 16 goals are now 1 off the lead (taken by the Oakland Roots’ Peter Wilson). Matt Myers is just 1 behind Jennings. They each played 45 minutes against SacRep. Left attacking mid Arturo Rodriguez (who has 6 goals) played about 30 minutes. Regular starter in goal Luis Zamudio (who is among the league leaders in both saves and clean sheets) was rested entirely.

Expect a high-quality opponent tomorrow. Briggs is not under any illusions about that. “I think Louisville and Charleston are streets ahead of everyone. And then you look at Louisville…they’re streets ahead of Charleston…but those are the two benchmarks for everyone in the league.”

Back in early July the two played to a 0-0 draw at Protective. It was a heavily defensive game for the Three Sparks. Charleston had 60.5% possession and outshot the home team 13-7 overall and 5-1 on target. In that game the Legion played a 5-4-1 but a good few members of that lineup will not feature tomorrow. Danny Trejo is gone, of course, Sebastian Tregarthen and Moses Mensah are both injured, Tiago Suarez seems to have fallen out of favor and who knows what the coach will do with Edwin Laszo after last weekend’s failed centerback experiment. Ramiz Hamouda didn’t play in that game and of course will not in this one either. Lastly, Tyler Pasher’s wife is having a baby so he will probably not travel.

On the upside, Phanuel Kavita was rested last week as he recovered from jet lag and will almost certainly start tomorrow. To bolster the back line Suarez may get out of whatever doghouse he is in. We shall see.

Charleston plays almost exclusively in a 4-2-3-1. For the Legion players who’ve been around a while that will be something they are entirely accustomed to and so should make the game just that little bit easier.

As far as what Briggs wants to see, he seemed only moderately optimistic. “[It will] be nice to just have a good performance in a hard place to go. It’s a difficult place to go, obviously, Charleston, but to just see a good performance playing the football that we want to play and effort and energy and just finish on a positive note.

It has been a hard week for the Legion. “I think people are anticipating change and so it’s a difficult week, you know…knowing that there’s nothing to play for and knowing that there’s only one game left. People wondering, ‘What’s next?’ People wondering, ‘Am I going to be here?’ So there had to be a hard conversation this morning about making sure that we carry ourselves the correct way and we represent ourselves in the correct manner.”

As for players being here next year he added, “Myself and Jay [Heaps] are looking for, you know, people that want to be here, people that don’t make excuses, people that are accountable and people who want to be successful for this club.” People, who, quite frankly, the club has been very short of the past two seasons.

Prediction: It is hard to see the Legion getting anything from this game. If they do, it will be against the odds. At best the Three Sparks can hope for a draw. But whatever the result, expect the lineup sheet to get ripped to shreds after tomorrow.

(Excerpted from the Football Forge)