The 2025 season concluded last weekend for Huntsville City FC as the club from northern Alabama saw their playoff run come to an end in the Eastern Conference Semifinals following a 1-0 defeat to Philadelphia Union 2.
It was a year of firsts for Huntsville, as the club witnessed its first playoff berth, followed by its first playoff win in the road in Chattanooga.
It was also a very successful first full season for head coach Chris O’Neal, and the 2025 season saw first Nashville SC appearances for Alan Carleton, Ethan O’Brien, and Chris Applewhite.
But what defined the 2025 campaign for Huntsville?
The season was defined by three things, and those three things simultaneously explain how Huntsville got to where they did, and ultimately why they may not have been able to get further.
First is a lack of consistent production from the number nine position. Huntsville primarily five players in that position throughout the year. For the first half of the season, it was one of Gunnar Studenhofft, Adem Sipic or Gio Miglietti.
That trio combined for just six goals, with Studenhofft accounting for five of those. Then, in the back half of the year, the club was able to get Alioune Ka and Maximus Ekk healthy and in the lineup.
While it was more of the same from Ka, who found just one goal from eight appearances, Ekk was able to provide a spark late in the year, with four goals in seven appearances.
All in all, that’s eleven goals from the number nine position. That’s just under 19% of the team’s 58 goals (including playoffs). For all too often, Huntsville just wasn’t getting production from a key position in the forward line.
That’s probably part of the reason Huntsville found themselves so reliant on the second defining factor of the year. The individual performances of Christian Koffi and Alan Carleton.
Koffi and Carleton combined for 23 goals in 2025, or 39.6% of the team’s total count. So a number 10 and a winger accounted for basically double the goals as all of the five different strikers Huntsville tried out.
This limited Huntsville’s top end ability against the best teams in the league. You can’t expect a number ten and a winger to be your biggest volume scorers, and also expect consistent results.
This is reflected in the team’s overall form as well. There’s several big winning streaks in Huntsville’s schedule, but it also includes runs like matchdays 8-12, where Huntsville collected just 10 of a maximum 21 points, owing to two regular time losses, and two shootout losses.
There was also the run from matchdays 22-25, where the club lost four straight, coming immediately on the heels of the preceding six games, in which the Rocket Men collected 17 of 18.
Long story short, Huntsville’s over-reliance on positions you don’t normally create bunches of goals from meant they were often a team defined by their form rather than accented by it.
The club will, as always, have plenty of roster decisions to make in the coming weeks alongside the staff in Nashville as the season winds down there as well.
The likes of Ekk, Knight and Carleton seem sure to stick around, and challenge for first team minutes in 2026, but there’s questions around others, including star man Christian Koffi.
He already trains in Nashville almost exclusively, and were it not for his international status, would probably be on an MLS roster somewhere. Nashville is going to have a bit more flexibility this offseason, but it remains to be seen if tagging Koffi with an international spot produces enough juice to make it worth the squeeze.
But, let’s focus on the good to wrap up this article, and this season.
Huntsville, you as fans showed up and showed out consistently throughout the season, and truth be told probably deserved a home playoff game. While that wasn’t in the cards, the traveling support in Chattanooga (in the triple digits!) was more than loud enough to be heard on the broadcast.
This club, whatever the roster looks like, has a bright future.
New director of Soccer Operations Alec Dufty will work alongside the front office staff in Nashville, such as GM Mike Jacobs, Director of Soccer Operations Chance Myers, and assistant GM Oliver Miller-Farrell, not to mention Nashville head coach BJ Callaghan, and Director of Methodology Rumba Munthali will make sure the roster is fine.
Now is a time to pat yourselves on the back, you helped create the first of what will be many magical seasons in northern Alabama. See you in 2026!