After facing a former player and assistant Saturday, Mark Briggs will face the club he coached for five years tomorrow.

Birmingham Legion host Sacramento Republic at Protective Stadium as the first of two home games this week.

“Team I’ve got fond memories with,” Briggs said. “It’s been home for the last five years, but I’m no longer there. Like every other day, Birmingham Legion’s my focus now, and how we beat Sacramento.”

The head coach said the challenge of facing a team he’s so familiar with will be an intriguing one. He recognized that he knows many of their players “inside and out,” but that it also means they are intimately familiar with him and what he will be asking of his own team Wednesday night.

One change that might lend itself even further to that familiarity is Saturday’s switch to a 3-4-3 formation. Briggs opted to remain consistent with Tom Soehn’s 4-1-4-1 since his arrival in Birmingham, but he reverted to the style that brought him success in California for the first time this weekend.

Players have said they enjoy the switch and feel they have personnel well-suited to the system, but it remains to be seen if it becomes a permanent shift. This week in particular, with two more games in the same 7-day stretch as Louisville, could come down to availability as much as tactics.

“We’ve got to reassess,” Briggs said. “We’ve got to look at things and see if a three[-man backline] is right for us tomorrow, if a three isn’t right for us tomorrow or Saturday. And a lot of that is dictated by players you have available. We’re fortunate in the fact we do have players who can play in a number of positions and help us, but it’s not as impactful when you don’t have a player there in that exact position.”

With Moses Mensah and Dawson McCartney both absent in recent weeks through injury, the team lacked a natural fit in the left wingback option at the weekend. Ramiz Hamouda and Jake Rufe can both play left back but are more defensive options less suited to the wingback role, with the right-footed Erik Centeno and Stephen Turnbull preferred there instead.

McCartney remains unavailable for the Sacramento game, while Mensah is back in training but still a doubt. Turnbull, himself only recently returned from a serious illness, could well be asked to start another two games after getting 78 minutes Saturday.

Despite the difficulties that have kept him out, the right back said he is ready to go and eager to play in both games.

“I think I’ve responded really well considering I’ve been out for so long,” Turnbull said. “I feel good. Especially with a quick turnaround like this. I feel really fresh, so that’s got to be a good thing.”

Turnbull is one of the players who expressed support for the new formation. Signed from Rhode Island in the offseason, the defender played the majority of his previous season in the league as a wingback.

Being on the left, however, is a new challenge.

“The left side’s a little tricky,” he said. “Obviously you’re not on your strong foot, but there’s pros and cons to it all. You can come inside a little bit more. There’s different things that you can do to kind of make yourself comfortable.”

Another welcome returnee is AJ Paterson, who made his first appearance of 2025 when he came off the bench Saturday.

Despite a prolonged absence, the left-footed defender did not look out of place, putting in a solid 23-minute shift. He said he was delighted to be back, but also surprised at how well he coped.

“Just to get back on the field, put the jersey on, hear my name get called, it was an amazing feeling,” Paterson said. “It didn’t feel like I was out for five, six months. It felt like I was out for a few weeks and just back to normal, back to doing my job. There was no nerves, I felt comfortable.”

Paterson said he knows he has to build the match fitness back up, but he feels ready to play as much as the coach asks of him. With his left-footedness and versatility — he can play centerback, left back or midfield — he could provide a welcome balance to the backline. For now, however, he said he will likely focus on that left centerback spot as it’s the least demanding fitness-wise.

Paterson added that it has been a weird situation to be out for the entire start of the season, watching from the sidelines as the team has struggled. But now that he’s back, he’s as eager as everyone else to turn the team’s fortunes around.

The Sacramento game will be a good place to start, with the California team in a similar position to Birmingham over in the Western conference.

“I think every game’s key right now,” Briggs said. “We’ve got to try and gain some confidence, gain some momentum and start to put a strong foot forward, especially on our home field. We have to improve our home record. With me, before me, we have to be better at home.”

This week’s back-to-back home games will be a perfect opportunity to strengthen that home form, with Sacramento and Oakland Roots 10th and 11th in the West, respectively. But to do that, Briggs said the team needs to find its identity.

“I think for us as a team and us as a club as we move forward, we have to create an identity, and then have a system that matches that identity,” Briggs said. “That’s where we have to go as a collective. Have an identity based on our city, based on the values of our people in the city, based on our club.”

Once the team can do that, he said, only then can he truly work on molding in his game model and system. Taking on the team where he achieved both so successfully might be the perfect time to start.

Birmingham Legion host Sacramento Republic at 7 p.m. Wednesday. The Three Sparks follow it up with a second home game against Oakland Roots at 7 p.m. Saturday.

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