In the end, it wasn’t pretty but as it turns out, it didn’t have to be. Detroit City FC is playoff-bound.
With the help of a 0-0 draw against the regular season’s best team in the Pittsburgh Riverhounds Saturday at Keyworth and Sacramento Republic’s 1-0 win the Miami FC later in the night, Le Rouge clinched that eighth and final playoff spot in the East. Now, they’ll take to the road to play those same Riverhounds next Saturday from Highmark Stadium in the USL Championship postseason opening round.
As far as yesterday, it was a typical City performance that earned them what was still a disappointing 8-18-15 record ultimately putting them in a position where they had to rely on help to make the playoffs. The defense did what they needed to do to neutralize the dangerous Albert Dikwa but had trouble generating any real pressure in the attacking third. Likewise, you wonder if opportunities continued to be left on the bench when you consider head coach Trevor Banks made just one sub the entire match when Aaron Bibout entered play in the 76′ minute for Conor Rutz. Meanwhile, players like Dario Suarez and Brett Levis who were acquired midseason via a transfer from FC Tulsa and have been two of City’s most effective players went unused for the entire 90′.
But despite all of that, City moves on to the playoffs where quite frankly anything can happen, even as an eighth seed, which is why I didn’t subscribe to any thought that it would’ve been best if Detroit didn’t make the playoffs. For anyone new to second-division soccer in the United States, there’s no draft so they’re not sacrificing ping-pong balls in some kind of draft lottery. Also, Trevor James who’ll become the Club’s new sporting director next season probably isn’t changing his offseason mentality when it comes to the coaching search or roster construction just because DCFC ended up making the playoffs via a tiebreaker as opposed to missing it altogether.
Get into the postseason and roll the dice with the one-and-one format because, at this point, ALL of the pressure is squarely on the Riverhounds from here on out.