Habits take time to form. After 10 games, the Charlotte Independence has yet to put together a full 90 minutes at it commences the second third of the USL season.

“For pretty much the whole time I’ve been here, I’ve felt like we’ve been the better team,” said Independence defender Bilal Duckett. “It’s just figuring out how to get the results.”

With 12 points, the Independence is looking for more consistency.

“I’ve broken it into thirds more so,” said coach Mike Jeffries. “I feel like the first nine games were the first third of the season. That was sort of a building period—a developing period. It was also a fairly difficult stretch in terms of the teams we’ve played, and also the fair number of road games.”  

Charlotte (3-4-3) spent five of the first 10 matches on the road. A 2-1 win over the Pittsburgh Riverhounds (goals from midfielder Carlos Alvarez and penalty kick from captain midfielder Jorge Herrera) at home gave them more the momentum they lacked on the road against Charleston and Richmond.

“This is the stretch we felt was very important for us to start pushing and getting points, and becoming a team that was consistently winning games and strong,” said Jeffries. “We found a way to win, and we created a lot of chances.”  

Charlotte’s remaining June games as well as an Independence Day match will be played at home, where they stand 3-1-1.  

“We’ve held up pretty well physically,” said Jeffries. “(Strength and conditioning coach) John Lytton’s done a very good job fitness-wise. We’ve tried to manage a lot of different things. It’s inevitable to have injury issues and fatigue. We’ve got a lot of games coming up. We’re just trying to manage it and manage the roster over the next week of two—we have a lot of games.”

Since announcing that the Independence would join the USL as an expansion team to replace the Charlotte Eagles (self -elegated to the Premier Development League), finding a consistent starting 11 has been a challenge due to injury as well as player acquisitions. “For me, I didn’t join the team until the third game of the season,” Duckett said. “We’ve had a couple other changes—Mechack Jerome joined. Guys in what’s been our starting 11 kind of moved around a bit. So it took us maybe a little bit longer to gel than we would have liked. You’re starting to see that we’ve had a bit of consistency with our back six for the last few games.

“Typically those are your positions where you don’t sub as much, and now we’re starting to see that all across the field. In that front four, people are coming in and stepping up in big ways. That’s going to be massive for us going forward. This is the second third of the season starting for us. We’re 1-0.”     

Also:

Charlotte building big-league soccer dream and aspirations

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