In their first of two home games this week, Birmingham Legion struggled to make any real impact against a visiting Rhode Island side.
The Three Sparks conceded early and failed to muster a meaningful attacking threat. Sam McIllhaton then got sent off just before the halftime break to compound the hosts’ misery. Only great defending by Phanuel Kavita prevented worse than the 1-0 defeat.
This was the third time the Legion faced off with last season’s Eastern Conference champions. Rhode Island have won all three encounters.
Things had seemed to start brightly for the Three Sparks, who won their first corner just 30 seconds into the game. A rehearsed short corner routine led to a blocked shot for Enzo Martínez, but it was to be one of very few scoring chances for the hosts.
Legion looked to press aggressively and turn the ball over high up the pitch, but committed numerous fouls instead. The game quickly became a stop-start affair as nearly every Legion press resulted with a RIFC player on the floor and a whistle from the referee.
In the 5th minute, McIllhaton was the first to suffer from the strict officiating.
The Australian midfielder arrived late for a challenge and picked up the first yellow card of the game. Forty minutes later, a similar incident resulted in his second booking, sending the Legion down to 10 men.
“It impacts everything when you go down to 10 men,” Briggs said. “You’re already not playing that great, so it’s just a significant impact.
“For Sam, he’s got to understand he’s on a yellow card and you don’t go in for those kind of tackles,” Briggs added.
In between the two bookings, Rhode Island opened the scoring in the 14th minute.
After a turnover in midfield, the visitors found way too much space down the right flank to cut open Legion’s defense. A simple cutback to Maxi Rodriguez left the RIFC man in acres of space in the box, and it was a straightforward enough finish to place it inside Matt van Oekel’s near post.
It could have gotten worse 10 minutes later.
Another attack down the right hand side resulted in van Oekel rushing out to close down the angle. The Rhode Island player opted to pass instead of shoot, and Kavita’s last-ditch tackle was all that prevented the forward from passing the ball into an open net.
“Frustrating, [I’m] a little embarrassed,” Kavita said of the team’s performance. “I think we got to take ownership on coming out and performing. The first 20 minutes was not good enough. We didn’t start the way we should have. How you start games is very, very important to how it carries out into the first half, second half. It was just not good enough.”
Legion’s best chances all came in quick succession in the 35th minute, starting with a Tyler Pasher cross to Damus. The opportunity was cleared but quickly came back to Martínez. His first shot was blocked and the second went out for a corner. Soon after it was taken, Pasher sent an effort from distance just wide of the far post.
Ten minutes later, McIllhaton picked up his second booking of the night. With just stoppage time left in the first half, it changed Mark Brigg’s entire halftime team talk in just an instant.
“It’s a completely different halftime talk,” Briggs said. “You’re trying to figure out how you can adjust, how you can be best connected to go out and impact the performance in the second half. So it completely changes, but that’s the life of a coach.”
Briggs, in his home debut as Legion head coach, opted against any major halftime changes. The team reemerged with the same personnel and in the same formation. But with a man down, it meant playing a 4-4-1.
They repeated their first-half start to draw another early corner, but struggled to threaten anything else after that.
In the 51st minute, Kavita was at it again to keep his team in it. After an impressive van Oekel double-save, the Rwanda international made it onto the goal line and cleared a point-blank shot onto the crossbar with his head.
“Of course I care because that stops goal scorers, that stops the ball going into the back of the net,” Kavita said. “Obviously those things are important, but in the overall sense of things, getting results is very important and that’s why we play this game, to win. And we got to get that mentality of winning and being hungry and ruthless.”
It would end up being the only thing worth celebrating in the second half for a sparse home crowd.
Though the team controlled the game better in the second period, they never threatened the Rhode Island defense. The Black and Gold finished with just one shot on target, taken in the 10th minute.
“Forget tactics, forget the quality,” Briggs said. “If you don’t run, if you don’t compete, you don’t win games. And for me in the first half there was a lack of effort. […] You can’t play in this league, in any league, without running, without giving everything. That’s the biggest problem and what I’ll take that needs to change.
“Whether the quality’s there or not, you’ve got to put teams under pressure,” he added. “You’ve got to be physical. You have got to put your foot in when you need to put your foot in, not just dangle your foot. You’ve got to go tackle, you’ve got to go fight, you’ve got to communicate, and that’s the things that we didn’t do.”
“The speed of play… I could have played. You could have played. The speed of play was that slow.”
Briggs will want to quickly forget his home debut. Fortunately for him, he will get a chance to do so in just four days.
Birmingham will be back out at Protective for another USL Championship game Sunday, hosting Detroit City FC. Briggs and Kavita both said picking the team up might be hard, but they were thankful for the opportunity to flush out this performance as soon as possible.
“When you lose a game like this, you’re very up for the next game,” Kavita said. “You want to get back on the field to fix what just happened. So it’s exciting to have a game coming up because then we know we can step back on the field and get a result.”
Birmingham Legion host Detroit City FC at 4 p.m. Sunday. It is already the second time the Three Sparks face the Michigan team after a 2-2 draw up north earlier this season.
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