Mark Madden: Riverhounds could be next Pittsburgh team to win a championship
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As a talk-show stooge, I constantly get asked cliched questions. One of the more frequent: Which Pittsburgh team is closest to a championship?
It might be the Riverhounds.
Sure, it’s only Class AAA soccer. But the Riverhounds are quietly becoming a phenomenon, selling out five of their six home games this season at Station Square’s Highmark Stadium. The official capacity is 5,000 but standing-room tickets have swelled crowds to over 6,000.
The Riverhounds are one of two AAA teams in the quarterfinals of the U.S. Open Cup, the annual tournament that’s open to every team in the country. (The other six are from Major League Soccer.) The competition dates to 1914. This year’s U.S. Open Cup included 99 teams, including 71 pro sides.
In addition, the Riverhounds sit second in the Eastern Conference of the USL Championship league, one point behind Charleston, S.C.
The Riverhounds have won six straight and are undefeated in their last nine. Their record in the USL is six wins, five draws and two losses.
Big games are coming thick and fast: The Riverhounds visit MLS club Cincinnati for Tuesday’s Cup quarterfinal. The Riverhounds beat MLS teams New England and Columbus to reach this point in the tournament.
Then, on Saturday, the Riverhounds host Charleston at Highmark. If the Riverhounds win, they move into first.
It’s been a slow climb since Connellsville construction magnate Tuffy Shallenberger bought the Riverhounds in 2013.
But things got good when Bob Lilley became coach in 2018. Lilley has guided the Riverhounds to playoff berths in each of his five seasons.
Lilley’s teams get stuck in. They’re fastidiously organized. He’s won two-thirds of his games in 22 seasons coaching professionally.
The Riverhounds haven’t had much luck in the postseason: During Lilley’s five campaigns, the Riverhounds have exited the playoffs twice on penalty kicks. They lost once after extra time. In 2021, they forfeited out when a rash of covid hit the team.
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This year’s team has Jamaican national team goalkeeper Jahmali Waite, rock-ribbed defender Arturo Ordonez and forward Albert Dikwa, who leads the USL in goals with nine. But the midfield is the team’s heart. It features all-time USL assist leader Kenardo Forbes, Energizer bunny Danny Griffin and Upper St. Clair product Robbie Mertz.
Can the Riverhounds win a championship?
That’s impossible to predict. That’s one of the USL’s flaws.
The USL uses a single-elimination playoff format. That randomizes the result in any sport. In soccer, perhaps even more so. It’s an absolute crapshoot. (MLS also uses a single-elimination format.)
A proper soccer championship, as per Europe’s top leagues, is determined by playing every other team in the league twice, home and away. Whoever finishes atop the standings is champ. It’s the fairest method possible of determining a winner.
But USL has 24 teams, so that’s impossible. Same goes for MLS, which has 29.
U.S. soccer doesn’t use promotion and relegation, so there’s no way to split up into smaller leagues and annually have, say, the top three finishers jump to the next highest league and the bottom three drop to the next lowest.
MLS expansion teams cost $500 million. USL expansion teams cost $20 million. The finances nix promotion and relegation.
Anyway, America is the land of do-overs. We expect a playoff.
The Riverhounds may or may not win a championship. (They would have to beat at least two more MLS teams to win the U.S. Open Cup. That’s a tall order.)
But, under Shallenberger, the Riverhounds have become a first-class organization and a perennial playoff team. They set their bar higher all the time.
Source: TribLIVE
