RIFC head to Texas to take on San Antonio FC on Saturday night. It’s another critical game for both sides, with San Antonio just below the playoff line in the Western Conference and RIFC battling in a congested Eastern Conference. The two teams couldn’t be coming off more different results. San Antonio lost 4-0 away to Phoenix Rising last time out. RIFC used a dominant 2nd half to get past FC Tulsa 2-1 at home last weekend. Let’s take a look at what we should expect to see Saturday night.

As always, we start with the good guys. Our win last time out against FC Tulsa was massive. We were coming off of consecutive losses for the first time all year and needed to get the 3 points to turn things around. It was a great win in front of the home crowd but we need to try to carry that momentum into this next game. We haven’t won any of our last 5 away games, drawing 2 and losing 3. The last away win was against Birmingham Legion on July 17th. So the big question coming into this game is: How can we turn our recent away form around?

For me, it always starts with our starting 11. This is what I would like to see Saturday night:

I’ve talked about this a lot in recent blogs and on the Quahog Corner, so there’s a good chance I’m going to be repeating myself here. But there’s two main reasons I think that this lineup is the way go to. First, I like our setup with a back three, two wingbacks and two central midfielders. It really comes down to what we do with those remaining three players in attack. There are a few different options, but lately we’ve been going with two attacking midfielders (Noah Fuson and Jack Panayotou) with one forward in front of them. We started the Tulsa match this way and as I mentioned in the Postmatch Beacon, things didn’t turn around for us until we switched to one attacking midfielder and two forwards. I think there’s a huge benefit to having both JJ Williams and Albert Dikwa start up top. It gives both Dikwa and the attacking midfielder more freedom. Dikwa benefits from having another forward who can stay in and around the box and the attacking midfielder benefits from not having anyone next to him who may try to take up similar positions.

The second reason I like this setup addresses the elephant in the room. There’s no Jack P in this lineup. I don’t want to be harsh on him because I think he’s a really skilled player with great vision as a creative midfielder. But in this setup, there isn’t room for both Jack and Noah. In the last Prematch Lookout, I called for this exact lineup but with Jack playing instead of Noah. This ended up being a bad call on my part, so I’ll own up to that. I have a lot of faith in Jack’s ability, but I don’t think he’s done enough since he returned to us on loan. Noah meanwhile has improved throughout the season and was our best player last Saturday night. I think it’s best for us to give Noah the start and let Jack come off the bench against more tired players late in games, where we can possibly better utilize Jack’s skill and creativity.

The last note about this lineup is that I have Clay Holstad and Zach Herivaux starting together in the midfield. While Marc Ybarra has been very solid for us this season, I think Clay and Zach are the best options here. They are both great at progressing the ball forward and can break up play defensively when needed. They worked well together last game once Clay was moved to the center during the second half. I really hope we get to see them playing together from the start.

Finally, before moving on to our opponents I wanted to point out another issue we’ve been having lately. In addition to our poor away form, we’ve conceded first in 7 of our last 10 games. This goes back to our 2-1 win over North Carolina FC on July 27th. Just like this last game against Tulsa, NCFC scored in the first half and we scored twice in the second half to win 2-1. As for the rest of those 7 games, we had late goals against Detroit and Oakland to give us 1-1 draws and losses to Indy Eleven, Pittsburgh and Orange County. From all of this, it’s clear to see that we need to start better defensively and cut out any individual errors that have led to some of these goals. If we can do that, we have enough attacking strength to have a great finish to the season.

Now on to our opponents. San Antonio FC are currently sitting 10th in the Western Conference, 4 points behind Orange County SC in 8th. San Antonio have played one less game though, and a win for them on Saturday night is crucial if they want to have any chance of sneaking into the playoffs. They have had some good results recently, drawing 1-1 with Charleston before back to back 1-0 wins over Monterey Bay and Oakland Roots. However, as I mentioned at the top, they followed this up with a 4-0 loss at Phoenix Rising last time out. It was San Antonio’s worst result this season and they will hope that it’s just an aberration.

San Antonio are near the bottom of the league in goals scored with 27 on the season and they are right in the middle of the league with 37 goals conceded. If you look at their results from earlier in the season, San Antonio didn’t have much of a problem scoring but they also conceded too many goals. Compared with those earlier results, their recent trend has been interesting. Outside of that last game against Phoenix Rising, their defense had been much improved lately. They had only conceded 2 goals in the 6 games prior to that defeat in Phoenix. However, their attack has also stalled recently. They haven’t scored more than 1 goal in any of their last 10 games, with only 5 goals total over that period.

I bring all of this up to point out that if San Antonio can correct their issues from their last game, this could very well be a low scoring game. Regarding those issues against Phoenix Rising, San Antonio had a lot of trouble dealing with Phoenix’s midfield and struggled to defend the left side of Phoenix’s attack. If San Antonio can’t correct this, it should bode well for us. Holstad and Herivaux are capable of running through their midfield and Kwizera and Fuson could give San Antonio fits. So at the end of the day, the big question is: was this last game just a one-off or did Phoenix expose some underlying issues for San Antonio?

Lastly, there are a few players to look out for. A lot of San Antonio’s goal contributions this season have come from midfielder Jorge Hernandez and forward Juan Agudelo. Hernandez, who is in his second year with San Antonio, has 8 assists on the season. Agudelo leads the team in goals with 7. Defender Mitchell Taintor is the team’s captain and is in his fourth year with the team. He has been an integral part of San Antonio’s recent defensive turnaround.

Before we move on, I have to talk more about Juan Agudelo. Agudelo is a player many of you might recognize. He made his debut with the New York Red Bulls of MLS back in 2010 when he was just 17. He was a big prospect at the time and had several different trials over in Europe. Agudelo eventually signed with then Premier League side Stoke City in 2014 but they were unable to get a work permit for him. He ended up being loaned out to Utrecht in the Dutch league for the rest of that season before returning to MLS after Stoke again failed in a second attempt to get a work permit. Agudelo would bounce around MLS before signing with Birmingham Legion in 2022. He would then sign with San Antonio ahead of this season. His numbers this year are pretty consistent with what he’s done over the past couple years. It’s good to see that he found a home in this league, although of course I wish him no success on Saturday night.

I’m predicting a 1-0 RIFC win in this one. While I think there are things we could take advantage of based on San Antonio’s last game, I think they’ll improve defensively in this one. It is also a return home for San Antonio after a 3 game road trip, which will be a massive help for them. Despite that, I think they’ll still struggle to score. Some of that is on us of course, as we need to be sure to start strong defensively and cut out individual errors.

I’m excited to be headed back to Providence Brewing on Saturday night. Matt and Ryan are doing another live show before the match and the word out there is that there will be some special cans available for purchase. So stop by if you can for a great time and hopefully 3 points. UP THE TIDE!