Charlotte FC’s march to playoffs continues at New England

TROY HULL | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Kerwin Vargas celebrates his goal in Charlotte FC's 1-0 win Aug. 23 against New York Red Bulls at Bank of America Stadium. Charlotte has won seven straight matches going into today's game at New England Revolution.

Charlotte FC’s objective at New England Revolution Saturday is winning their eighth consecutive match. 

The current streak of seven has mitigated a five-game losing streak earlier this season and put the Crown (15-11-2) fourth in the MLS East and seventh in the Supporters Shield standings. They are equal on points with Orlando at 47 but have two more wins after 28 games for both teams.

The seven-game run that Charlotte rides now is the longest in the league this season, two more than what Inter Miami and FC Cincinnati have put together, and the second longest in the modern era of MLS. Since 2000, only five other teams have won at least seven straight. Including a draw against Orlando on July 3, Charlotte hasn’t lost in two months.

A win Saturday will close August in spectacular fashion. Kickoff is 7:30 p.m. The game will be televised on Apple TV’s MLS Season Pass. 

One game at a time

While Charlotte coach Dean Smith is laser-focused on the game, he surely wouldn’t mind seeing his charges equal and surpass the record of the nine straight wins achieved by Seattle in 2018. Charlotte is already level with Sporting Kansas City (2012), Los Angeles FC (2022), and FC Cincinnati (2024) for second best with seven.

“We just take it one game at a time,” he said. “What’s gone before us, we can’t do nothing about. We’re just looking forward to the next game. If we win the game on Saturday, then Sunday becomes a celebration day. And then you get back to work again on Monday. That’s the way we look at it, and that's the way I've always wanted to. Just concentrate on this game, do what we have to do in this game, and then move on to the next one.”

He does add that his team must learn from every game, win or lose. “The Red Bull game, for instance, we turned over the ball too much in the second half,” Smith said, “so that’s something that we've been working on this week.” 

There will be no resting on laurels either. 

“You can get ahead of yourself very quickly, and if you do, you become complacent,” Smith said. “My job is to make sure the players don't do that.

“I’ve always said this is no different now to what it was in the middle of the ten away games. The results weren’t going so well for us then, but it was, ‘OK, what can we improve on the last game? What didn’t we do so well? What did we do really well and how can we move on to the next game?’ So, I’ve been consistent in that level, and the players, I think they can feed off that consistency as well.”

You can still dream

Fans, however, have no limits on what they can hope for. A new top score for wins would be very cool.

To set the new record, the Crown will have to conquer New England on the road, Miami at home, and NYCFC in New York. Possible, if not probable, that would be a formidable challenge in any circumstance. Both Miami and NYCFC are fighting for playoff position, and the Revs proved to Charlotte in April that even a good performance by the Crown may not cop three points as they stole the match 1-0 at Bank of America Stadium.

As form goes, this should be a win for the Crown. New England have lost three of their last five matches, but that can be deceptive as they beat Columbus 2-1 on the road last Saturday. 

What bodes well for the Crown is that five of the seven wins have been shutouts and they’ve outscored the opposition 12-3. Only two of matches had two-goal margins. That the others have been one-goal wins shows the tenacity to see a tight game through, but also the inability to put teams away.

For Smith, who claims to love a 1-0 result, getting the win takes priority.

“I felt the second half of the game against Red Bull wasn't aesthetically pleasing, but we did what we needed to do to get the victory in that game,” he said. “We starved their better players of the ball. We allowed their two centerbacks to have lots of the ball, and they struggled to create big chances until the last minute, when they had the header.

“There’s been a lot of games where we've been aesthetically pleasing and not won games. The idea is to go and win football games, and you have to be pragmatic at times to do that. We have a style that suits us.” 

M.I.A.

One of CLTFC’s shiny new transfer objects, left-back Harry Toffolo won’t be available after straining a hamstring during his debut last weekend against Red Bulls. He started but came out three minutes into stoppage time in the first half. Smith projects two to three weeks for recovery. 

Pep Biel is getting closer to a return but must regain fitness after missing three weeks.

While in Croatia for his daughter’s wedding, Charlotte general manager Zoran Krneta picked up a gift for the team before the close of the transfer window with the reported acquisition of Benin national Rodolfo Aloko, an 18-year-old offensive midfielder/winger with NK Kusto?ija, a team in the Croatian second division. While he has not been announced by the team, Smith said on Thursday that his paperwork had yet to come through. 

As of Friday, though, he was still playing in Zagreb. Coming on as a halftime substitution, Aloko scored twice in NKK’s 5-0 win against Dragovoljac.

Streaking  

Teams have won more than nine straight games. If there’s a modern era in a league that’s only 30 years old, for the MLS, it might be considered the post-penalty kick tiebreaker in regular season matches epoch, which began in 2000. The top three single season winning streaks in Major League Soccer history all happened in the first four years of the league, when ties were considered anti-American and undigestible by fans brought up on the NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLB. 

The Los Angeles Galaxy won the first 12 games of their existence, two of those in PK shootouts, in the MLS inaugural season of 1996, including five on the road, before the Colorado Rapids, New England Revolution, Kansas City Wiz, and Dallas Burn gave them a streak of four consecutive losses. 

A double asterisk goes to the Galaxy, who won 15 regular-season games in a row across the end of 1997 and beginning of the 1998 season, but lost twice to Dallas in the ’97 playoffs. Even with those runs, the Galaxy wouldn’t win an MLS Cup until 2002.

The Chicago Fire, coached by Bob Bradley, won 11 straight games, the fourth in a shootout, in 1998 on their way to claiming the MLS Cup that year over the Columbus Crew. In 1999, DC United equaled that feat with three shootout wins. 

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