More experimentation, loanee futures, Briggs' sideline presence and Hamouda's World Cup dream
My Birmingham Legion talking points following Sunday's USL Championship defeat to Miami FC
After a season of disappointments, Birmingham Legion’s final home game was a fitting finale.
Individual errors, possession with no end product and officiating mistakes abounded as the Three Sparks failed to defeat the previously-bottom team in the league despite playing up a man for 70 minutes. They now sit dead last in the Eastern Conference on tiebreakers.
With one final game on the road to second-place Charleston Battery to come, Legion need at least one point if they hope to avoid the bottom spot in their conference. Should Las Vegas Lights (26pts, 12th in the West) defeat Monterey Bay (28pts, 11th in the West) in their final game, Birmingham could even end up holding the wooden spoon for the entirety of the USL Championship if they do not leave South Carolina with a result.
A lot will need to take place this offseason to turn fortunes around in the Magic City. Though there were positives in the previous three games, Sunday’s outing raised more questions than it answered.
When experimentation goes wrong
Last week, I spoke of the one small benefit of having nothing to play for: it allows you to experiment with lineups and positions, essentially getting a head start on the next preseason preparations.
But while that allowed for the success of Stephen Turnbull’s move to centerback, Sunday’s experiment fell on the other end of the spectrum.
Edwin Laszo, a defensive midfielder by trade, lined up at centerback. Ramiz Hamouda, previously used at centerback or left back, took over the Colombian’s midfield role to make up for it.
“We worked on it in training and we felt that Raz had done really well in training as a six and moved the ball well with Sam and Sam (McIllhatton and Shashoua),” Mark Briggs said. “The relationship was good throughout the week.
“Edwin the same, at the back” he continued. “And then obviously it didn’t work out today.”
The thinking was not crazy. Laszo’s biggest flaw this season has been his short passing. There’s never been a question about his defensive ability, it’s in possession that he becomes a liability. So in a three-man backline, with Turnbull and AJ Paterson either side of him, there was a belief that those two players, far more comfortable on the ball, could take it off the Colombian and allow him to do what he does best: defend.
Instead, Laszo showed that, even with fewer touches, his limited passing ability could still hurt the team. Though only officially credited with one error leading to goal — the second one technically led to the crossbar shot, not the goal — he was undoubtedly responsible for two of Miami’s three goals.
It took him just four minutes to fire a warning shot, misplacing a simple back pass under no pressure to gift Miami a corner. Four minutes later, he passed a ball straight to a Miami forward, and it took the visitors just a couple of passes to take advantage for the 1-0.
In the 38th minute, it was a similar story. An underhit pass found a Miami player rather than its intended target. The subsequent shot cannoned off the crossbar, and the rebound was then turned in for 3-1.
If trying Laszo at centerback was a last throw of the dice to find some use for him before making a decision on his future, it failed dramatically. After the third goal, he and Hamouda exchanged positions to their more natural roles. Briggs then hooked the Colombian at the break, marking the third time this season Laszo did not reemerge for a second half.
It’s a pity how much Laszo’s passing has limited his contributions, because even with the mistakes he still showed he is a reliable off-the-ball defensive presence. Despite playing only half the game, only two Legion players won possession more than the Colombian across the full game (four times, behind Paterson on six and Amir Daley on five), and none made more than his two clearances.
But at the end of the day, you have to look at the overall contribution, and Laszo’s skills simply do not make up for his shortcomings. It was no surprise to see him near the top of the “Sell/Release” category on my recent polls with nearly three quarters of Legion fans (72.22%) wanting to see him gone.
At this point, I would be genuinely shocked at any other outcome.
Samuel Shashoua and the loan army
When thinking about player futures, there’s been one big question surrounding a good portion of Birmingham Legion’s current roster. What of the loanees?
The Three Sparks currently have five players in on loan, and four of them are fairly regular contributors to the team. Sunday saw the return of one of them, Samuel Shashoua, following a heel injury, and the Englishman did not need long to show what the team had been missing in his absence.
Though nominally a winger, Shashoua had been moved with great success to a deeper central midfield role right before his injury. He lined up in that same position on Sunday and was one of the team’s brightest players throughout the 90 minutes.
Shashoua led the game for touches (84), chances created (3), successful crosses (2) and successful dribbles (2). He completed more than 90% of his pass attempts, including a team-leading 25 in the final third (nobody else completed more than 14).
He wasn’t the only loanee to prove his worth either, with Amir Daley providing the assist for Ronaldo Damus on the second goal, two more loanees combining. Daley now leads the team on four assists for the season despite playing just 11 games, while Damus is far and away the team’s highest scorer on 14, 10 ahead of second-place Sebastian Tregarthen.
Daley also won the most fouls of any Legion player against Miami, while also winning the second-most duels, winning the ball on more occasions than anyone other than AJ Paterson and being joint-first with Laszo for most clearances.
Damus has started all-but-two games this season, Daley has started every game since his Three Sparks debut at the end of August, and Shashoua started all-but-one before his untimely injury. But while it has been widely reported that Damus has an option to purchase at the end of his loan stint, neither Shashoua nor Daley have the same.
As such, Sunday’s decision to play two players with seemingly no future at the club was an interesting one by Briggs, when these final games are essentially being used with 2026 in mind.
I asked him after the game if that was any indication that he hoped to keep the two loanees beyond their temporary stays at the club, and the head coach was quite clear in his response.
“I’d love to be able to keep them,” Briggs said. “I’d love to be able to keep both Sam and Amir. They’re both very good players, first and foremost, but also when you watch them play you see that they leave it all out on the field.
“And they both have quality, so those are players that we would love to keep,” he continued. “But they’re obviously on loan at the club, so time will tell with that.”
There is no indication as of yet if either Daley or Shashoua have an interest in extending their stay in the Magic City, but such an answer leaves no doubt about Briggs’ stance on the matter. It will now be up to the front office to try and make a deal with their parent clubs and convince both players that the Birmingham Legion project is the right place for their development.
A potentially troublesome trend
It probably went under the radar because of all the other talking points from Sunday’s game, but Mark Briggs picked up a yellow card deep in stoppage time for criticising the referee.
While his frustration was understandable, and the booking doesn’t hold much significance for this season, it is part of a larger trend when it comes to the Englishman. In his 27 games at the helm, that was his sixth yellow card (incidentally, the same number of wins as he has for the club). That’s a booking every 4.5 games, with only five Legion players accumulating more yellow cards across the season.
Add in that Dan Barlow, the team’s director of sports science and performance, got himself sent off in the USL Jägermeister Cup quarterfinal, Sebastián Saucedo picked up two yellows from the bench for protestations, and Jay Heaps got an impressive two yellow cards in his three bench appearances during Eric Avila’s interim stint, and Birmingham Legion have probably the worst-behaved bench in the league.
Briggs admitted after his first yellow card, against Detroit back in May, that his lively sideline presence is a calculated gambit.
“I think, as a coach, I’m a big believer in the energy that I bring transmits to the players,” Briggs said. “Now, the way I coach you walk a fine line. You don’t want to go too far one way and then players lose confidence. But if you can walk that line and stay on the trapeze, so to speak, give them confidence, give them moments of well done, but also teaching moments, I think that’s the way the energy is so important for the group.”
The thinking is understandable — it’s easier to get fired up if your coach is leading the way, but so far it doesn’t seem like it has been working. And what the Three Sparks need to avoid then is gaining a reputation as an unruly group.
Though we would like to believe that referees are always unbiased, there is little doubting that such a reputation could predispose an officiating crew to come into the encounter with prejudice. Especially if they’ve previously been on the wrong end of Briggs’ tirades, that could lead a referee to lean towards Legion’s opponent in case of 50/50 calls or not believe the players or coach when they call for a foul.
Birmingham was all-too-familiar with poor refereeing this season, you certainly don’t want to be doing anything that could make it worse.
Ramiz Hamouda, World Cup bound
A lot of players likely played their final game at Protective Stadium Sunday, and perhaps even their final game for Birmingham Legion should they not feature against Charleston.
Most believe Ramiz Hamouda should not be one of them, but he has played his final game of the 2025 USL Championship season. That’s because the 18-year-old has now joined up with his USYNT teammates in the United Arab Emirate ahead of representing the United States national team at the U17 World Cup, held next month in Qatar.
“It’s a big honor and a privilege,” Hamouda said. “The preparations for the last two years have finally paid off. When I finally got the email, I was very happy, a lot of emotions, but now I’m ready to go out there and work.”
Hamouda has been an ever-present in the U17 age group throughout the qualification process, and his inclusion in the World Cup roster therefore felt almost like a given. However, he admitted it was still a lot of relief to have that official confirmation.
Hamouda had a chat with USYNT head coach Gonzalo Segares at the end of the latest camp, where he essentially confirmed the news for him, but the email he received last week finally made it official. The youngster said his roommates were the first to find out, and he then quickly went on to call family members, several of whom will make the trip to the Middle East to support him.
In a roster filled mainly with MLS talent and a few teenagers already plying their trade in Europe, Hamouda is one of just two USL Championship representatives. As a result, he’s one of the team’s leaders for senior minutes played, but said the U17 games can be quite different, with an emphasis on the tactical side rather than the physical.
What is sure is that with that tag of “USL player” hanging over him, the centerback is determined to show the talent in the Championship can be just as good as elsewhere.
“Me and Pedro [Guimaraes, of Orange County SC] go into that team and we know we’re different,” Hamouda said. “These guys don’t see us play every single day, and we want to come and show that the USL is a good level. It’s a high level and we can compete with these other guys.”
Several former USL talents are testament to that fact, Diego Luna most notably these days. But another former USL man is much more familiar to Hamouda and showing the path he could take. Matthew Corcoran was the first player to represent Legion at the U17 World Cup back in 2023, and has continued his USYNT presence with a spot at the recent U20 World Cup.
Though he now plies his trade for Nashville SC, in the MLS, he and Hamouda have remained close friends. The pair got to catch up after Legion’s trip to Rhode Island, where Corcoran was briefly on loan, and the midfielder has been giving his former teammate plenty of advice.
“When I got [to Birmingham] last year, he was my roommate,” Hamouda revealed. “I asked him a bunch of questions about being at the U17 World Cup. He knows I wanted to be there. He knows I’ve been wanting to be on that squad for a while now.
“He pretty much told me ‘Get out there, take everything in,’” he added. “‘It’s a great experience and there’s not another one like it.’”
The United States will be in Group I at the tournament, alongside Burkina Faso, Tajikistan and Czechia. They will kick of their World Cup campaign against Burkina Faso on Nov. 5, live in English on Fox Sports platforms and in Spanish on NBC platforms.
The goal, according to Hamouda, is to go one step further than the USYNT’s best ever finish, a semifinal appearance back in 1999.