Fort Wayne FC hosts Spokane Velocity FC on the Fourth of July, a possession-first side that controls matches but can’t finish them and hasn’t won on the road all season. Both clubs are fighting for USL League One playoff places.

Saturday, July 4 | 7:30 PM ET | Ruoff Mortgage Stadium, Fort Wayne, IN | ESPN+

The Profile

Head coach Leigh Veidman’s team knows exactly what it wants to be. Spokane builds patiently from the back, rotates its attackers through the middle of the pitch, pushes its fullbacks forward to deliver, and piles up corners when the first wave breaks down. The pattern holds even in defeat. In Wednesday’s home loss to Forward Madison, Spokane controlled the ball, camped in the attacking third, and lost anyway, undone by an own goal and a finishing drought that has spread through the entire forward line. One league win from the last five has the results looking grim. The performances underneath say otherwise, and that team is the more dangerous side.

Shavon John-Brown is where their attack starts. The winger’s whole game is movement; he drifts off the flank into the pockets between the lines, and once he finds that space, Spokane has its foothold. Luis Gil, the veteran captain with MLS experience, sets the tempo and takes the set pieces, and his corners keep finding bodies in the box even while nobody converts them. Fullback Derek Waldeck has quietly become the busiest supply line on the roster, overlapping and delivering from wide.

The soft spot is the moment of turnover. When Spokane loses the ball high and its back line has to turn and run, opponents create the best chances this team gives up. That has been true all season, and it has only sharpened lately.

The Matchup

Both of these teams want the ball. On Saturday, we’ll find out who imposes their identity better across 90 minutes. It reminds me a bit of facing Charlotte Independence in our home opener. Both clubs with a strong identity, looking to enforce their style of play on the other. This is a dangerous match against a good team, but the setting and variables lean our way. Fort Wayne is rested, both physically and mentally, having last played a competitive match on June 20th. Spokane, on the other hand, have played two matches within that span, most recently just this last Wednesday, a home loss to Forward Madison. Now they have to travel across the country on travel legs and 2 days’ rest. A holiday crowd, hours after the ribbon-cutting ceremony to formally open Ruoff Mortgage Stadium, is exactly the type of road environment Spokane does not want to be facing with their existing road woes. They haven’t won away from home in league play all year.

Shifting to on-field tactics, when we win the ball back, the first few seconds decide everything. Spokane defend well when they’re set and struggle most when they’re backpedaling, and the best chances anyone generates against this team come on the break, before the shape resets. The moment Taig Healy, our chief creator, turns upfield with runners ahead of him is the moment this match opens up.

Out of possession, the job is compactness. John-Brown hurts teams by finding space, and I’d rather force him deep or wide to touch the ball than let him receive it between our lines. Deny him that receiving space and he starts to look ordinary. But a gameplan built purely to stop John-Brown ignores the plot. Spokane can hurt you from multiple positions if you let them, and keying on one man is how the others get free.

Their control is real, and control doesn’t slump the way finishing does. Let them settle into rhythm and they’ll pin us back the way they pin everyone back. Cold streaks in front of goal tend to end at the worst possible moment. If we play our game, the Fort Wayne Way, I like the balance of power shifted toward the home side. It’s the kind of match that will have real playoff consequences. Not a bad match for fireworks.

Always FWD

Match Recap & Analysis

Fort Wayne FC beat the Richmond Kickers 2-0 in USL League One to extend its unbeaten run to 10 matches, a road win that vindicated the coaching staff’s lineup decisions and opened a real competition up front.

Richmond Kickers 0 – 2 Fort Wayne FC · USL League One 🏟 City Stadium, Richmond, Va. 📅 June 20, 2026 ⚽ Jack Thomas (17’), Taig Healy (39’) 📋 FWFC Record: 5-2-6 · 21 pts · Matchday 13

The Match

This had the makings of a tired road night. Fort Wayne came to Virginia three days after a draw in Madison, Wisconsin, legs heavy from travel, and gave up the ball for long stretches. Taig Healy and Jack Thomas were the difference makers on the night, while Fort Wayne’s defense continues to pose problems for this league.

In the 17th min., a long ranged shot from Taig Healy found the boot of Jack Thomas, who deflected the shot into the back of the net, his first USL League One goal of the season. The pair traded places before the break. In the 39th min., Thomas turned provider for Healy who put the ball past Richmond’s goalkeeper, his 7th goal in League One and 8th in all competitions. The 2-0 scoreline held the rest of the night.

Richmond, in its first match under interim coach Brian Ownby, controlled the ball and long stretches of the match, but failed to create chances. Fort Wayne’s goalkeeper, Bernd Schipmann, was rarely tested across the ninety. He finished with five saves and a clean sheet, the 32nd of his League One career, which now stands alone in third place in league history.

The Defender’s Verdict

This was the lineup I was hoping to see. Collecting points across a season is how you win trophies. In most leagues around the world, points are the only thing that decides the title, with the trophy going to whoever collects the most. Turning draws into wins, and of course not getting beat, is the fastest path to glory. That’s why coaching staffs study opponents, train their players weekly, and prepare the team to execute on matchday; to win. Yes, of course, it’s about the sport, but it’s a results business, and winning matters.

I was excited when I saw the lineup card on Saturday against the Richmond Kickers. We took a decision to keep Ryan Becher on the bench, and start Lilian Ricol as our lone forward, not because Ryan Becher doesn’t deserve to start, but because that decision improved how this team functions. This was similar to the decision made earlier this season to play JP Jordan at right back instead of Anthony Hernandez. JP Jordan is not a traditional wingback, whereas Anthony Hernandez is. While we gave up an attacking dimension from the right back position, we locked down that side of the defense. JP Jordan settled into his Fort Wayne role, and now his name is written in pen on the lineup card every week.

The answer to “where does Ryan Becher play?” was addressed last Saturday. He’s built to hold up the ball, to play with his back to goal, to connect with Taig Healy, Jack Thomas and the attacking midfielders with a quick 1-2 touch. He won’t beat you off the dribble, or be able to run the channels like Lilian Ricol, but can give you a different look. And like we saw recently with the US Men’s National Team against Australia in the World Cup, Fort Wayne FC could now legitimately play with two forwards for when the matchup demands it. That’s a strike partnership that will take some time to develop, but I absolutely love the options this gives the coaching staff.

Lilian Ricol has had a recent dip in form, which comes with the ebbs and flow of a long professional season. He missed our biggest chance on the night in the 12th min.; earlier in the season, he would have buried it. His position has been uncontested all season. Having healthy competition at all positions is important. And it’s the emergence of a healthy Ryan Becher who can finally create the type of competition at this position that will make this team better for the second half of this season. And as mentioned, it allows us to deploy two forwards, which can be a handful for centerbacks. For this to work, training sessions are important, so each knows their role in a two-forward system. How to open up space for each other, how to drag a CB out of position or occupy one. I would not want to play against a Ricol and Becher card, especially with Taig Healy free to roam. But, Ricol and Becher must learn how to form that partnership and that takes time. In the meantime, Mike Avery and staff can ride the hot hand whenever they go with one forward. And for as many times as I’ve seen Lilian Ricol pulling up with a hamstring cramp in the late stages of the match, it finally gives him a late match sub that keeps the tempo through the final whistle.

There’s definitely more we could break down from this match and with a win under our belt heading into a two-week break, we finally have some time to get healthy, rested and focused for the remainder of the season. The winning energy that Saturday night provided should give us confidence and clarity on what the best version of ourselves looks like from here. With a shutdown defense and an attack on the rise, Fort Wayne will be tough to beat. July is ready for fireworks.

Always FWD

Fort Wayne FC travels to City Stadium to face a Richmond side winless in six across all competitions, and reeling from the sudden exit of the winningest coach in League One history, handed an advantage of rest and home soil against a traveling team.

Saturday, June 20 | 7:00 PM ET | City Stadium, Richmond, VA | ESPN+

The Profile

The Richmond Kickers carry more history than almost anyone at this level. Founded in 1993, now in their 34th consecutive season, they are the rare lower-division club with a U.S. Open Cup to their name, an amateur side that lifted the oldest trophy in American soccer in 1995, beating professional teams along the way. The giant-killing did not stop there. They beat the LA Galaxy in the 2007 Open Cup, and in 2011 they knocked off Columbus Crew and Sporting Kansas City on a Cinderella run all the way to the semifinals. City Stadium has been home since 1995, and Richmond remains one of the best-attended clubs in League One. Respect Richmond.

The club has seen better days. Richmond is in a tough stretch, with a dip in form, and a major change on the coaching staff. Head coach Darren Sawatzky left for Sporting Cascades FC, a USL League One expansion club joining in 2027, after six-plus years in charge, departing as the winningest coach in league history. Assistant Brian Ownby steps up as interim, and Saturday is his first match in charge. Ownby grew up in these stands, a Glen Allen native who played two spells for the club and has been on staff since January. He knows the building and the group, and he knows USL, having played more than 200 matches in it. What he does not have is a head-coaching resume, and he is inheriting a group in a genuine slump.

Richmond has not won since early May. The run now reaches six matches across League One and the USL Cup, and the scorelines have been ugly, including a 5-0 loss at Chattanooga and a 4-0 home defeat to Charleston on national television. The comforting read on a streak like this is that the goals are about to come and the results will follow. Usually, teams in poor form expect a bounce back as their underlying numbers are still solid. That is not the case for Richmond. By expected points, the metric that turns the chances a team creates and concedes into a result, Richmond is getting roughly what it deserves on the pitch, one point from their last four in the league. That is a problem Ownby will have a harder time fixing in a single week in charge.

The trouble is at the back, and it has been for over a month. Goalkeeper Yann Fillion leads all of League One in saves, which is the surest sign of a keeper under near-constant fire. In front of him, captain Dakota Barnathan organizes the defense in his fifth season at the club, an experienced head trying to hold together a group that keeps getting overrun. Going forward, the threat is thin and scattered. Darwin Espinal and Tarik Pannholzer, Richmond’s attacking wingers, have been their most dangerous players. During this slump, three different players have scored, which makes Richmond difficult to plan around. Expect the danger to vary on the night rather than come from any single forward.

The Matchup

Richmond has been giving up good chances in volume for over a month. Move the ball quickly, get at the back line before it sets, and the looks will be there, because every team Richmond has faced lately has found them. A defense that keeps getting overrun against an attack that can punish it is how you beat Richmond. The work lives in the first phase: getting through midfield fast enough to reach a backpedaling back four. Fillion has been racking up saves all season for a reason, and enough of those chances go in.

The calendar is the catch, and it cuts against us. Richmond has been home all week, rested, preparing for a single opponent. Fort Wayne played Wednesday night in Madison, bused home Thursday, and flies to the East Coast to face that rested side on Saturday. The team in better shape to exploit Richmond’s defending might be the one with a full week to plan, not the one stepping off a flight. Legs matter, and a tired side does not always finish the chances it creates.

With Ownby in charge, I’m not sure how Richmond lines up on Saturday, and I’m not sure anyone outside that locker room does either. He has less than a week, no preseason, and for the first time a free hand to pick the team as he sees it. He could run exactly what Sawatzky ran, a 4-2-3-1 or 4-1-4-1, since that is what he and the players know best, or he could change the shape to stamp the job as his own. His own playing days came as an attacking winger, which could be a breadcrumb. We are preparing for a team whose Saturday identity is still half a question mark.

A result at City Stadium would say something about this Fort Wayne side, with tired legs on short rest, away, at the end of a long stretch of matches in their first USL League One season. 90 more minutes, to enter a two-week break on a high note, ready to reset mentally and physically for the back half of Season One. Dig in, boys. Fort Wayne is watching.

Always FWD

Match Recap & Analysis

Fort Wayne FC falls behind early in Madison, rides a returning Javier Armas to settle a disjointed midfield, and Ryan Becher heads home the equalizer to push the unbeaten league run to nine on the club’s first national broadcast.

Forward Madison FC 1 – 1 Fort Wayne FC · USL League One 🏟 Breese Stevens Field, Madison, WI 📅 Wednesday, June 17, 2026 ⚽ Joshua Bolma (28’), Ryan Becher (60’) 📋 FWFC Record: 4-2-6 · 18 pts · Matchday 12

The Match

After a 30-minute weather delay, Fort Wayne Football Club kicked off at Breese Stevens Field on the first nationally televised night in club history, and for a long stretch it was the home side that looked the part. Forward Madison lost head coach Matt Glaeser to a red card in the 15th min, after he had a few choice words for the referee following an apparent red card infraction from Tiago Dias that went uncalled. Assistant coach Patrick Nyarko ran the touchline the rest of the way. In the 28th min, Madison’s Joshua Bolma, who was the 4th overall pick in the 2023 MLS SuperDraft, found Ryan Carmichael’s low cross to finish into the roof of the net. 1-0 Forward Madison.

For the first 60 minutes, Fort Wayne was getting shots off but struggled to turn them into clean chances. That changed when Javier Armas entered the match for Jeremy Garay, his first appearance since an injury at Athletic Club Boise on May 23. On his first touch, from a Michael Rempel throw-in, Armas struck a right-footed curler into the box from 25 yards, and Becher rose at the back post to head home the equalizer. Avery emptied the bench across the closing half hour, Emerson Nieto on for Becher among the changes, but the chances to find a winner came and went.

Bernd Schipmann, back at the ground he called home from 2023 to 2025, made five saves and passed 200 for his League One career, the tenth goalkeeper in league history to reach the mark. The 1-1 result held until the final whistle.

The Defender’s Verdict

The streak reaches nine, tied for the third-longest by a first-year club in League One history, and the honest reading is that we keep escaping with points. By the underlying numbers Madison created the better chances, and Avery said as much afterward, that we were too open at the back.

Our central midfield was disjointed most of the night, and it wasn’t until Javier Armas entered the pitch that we fell into our usual possession-based rhythm. As a player, you look to these types of players to bring a calm to the match, to settle the flow and start playing your best football. He’s a vital player to how Fort Wayne FC wants to play, and we’ve missed his presence in the midfield since his injury.

On the night, Ryan Becher had the most compelling individual performance, yet his best position within this squad is still undetermined. It’s clear he has the individual talent to play multiple positions on the field, but it’s up to the coaching staff to find his best individual position while collectively improving the team around him, and I’m not sure we’ve done this just yet. He can score, he has great hold-up and quick link-up play, and it’s about getting him into the right areas of the pitch to be the most dangerous version of himself. In probably the first dramatic storyline of the season, Avery and his coaching staff still need to address this. Becher has carved out a role on this team without yet claiming a position. That matters for both the player and the team to regularly play with the kind of structured consistency that makes this Fort Wayne squad so difficult to break down. It was too chaotic on the field on the night, and it sounded like Avery knew that as well.

Picking up points on individual quality is a gift. The question is how to keep our most talented players on the field while sharpening the team around them. I think we’ve identified our most talented individuals and, at the same time, have not identified our best formation to play. Or we have. Saturday in Richmond will be another opportunity to find the right starting XI, although it might not be our best starting XI.

Always FWD

Fort Wayne FC heads to Madison to face a rebuilt Forward Madison side that has been ruthless on its own field, with our league-long unbeaten run on the line, on the first nationally televised night in our club’s history.

Wednesday, June 17 | 9:00 PM ET | Breese Stevens Field, Madison, WI | ESPN2

The Profile

Forward Madison is one of the most distinctive clubs in American soccer, and that is not an accident. The Flamingos were built by Peter Wilt, who launched the club in 2019 as the sixth franchise he had helped bring to life, after the Chicago Fire and Indy Eleven among others. Wilt left after the inaugural season, but the blueprint stayed: the plastic-flamingo identity, the “world’s second favorite team” branding, the supporter culture that turned a third-division club into a national name. In their first season the Flamingos out-earned the rest of the league combined on shirt sales alone. The brand has always been one of the best in lower division soccer.

On the field, this is a remade team from the 2025 season. Head coach Matt Glaeser tore the roster down over the winter, a season that produced the fewest goals in the league. Only Derek Gebhard survived the overhaul. Gebhard is worth the price of the ticket on his own: the club’s all-time leader in appearances, goals, and assists, still scoring, still dropping into pockets to pull the strings. Around him, a younger and more athletic group has taken shape. This has allowed the team to press higher, build more direct, and break hard off turnovers.

The newcomer to watch is Roman Torres. The 24-year-old from Dallas arrived in February on a free transfer after Minnesota United declined his option, a first-round MLS SuperDraft pick who had passed through the FC Dallas academy, a spell in Germany, Creighton, and a USL Championship loan at Birmingham before landing in Madison. You do not go 25th overall in the first round without real ability, and it shows in how he plays. He sits centrally in the midfield and commands it, breaking up play and starting the attack in the same motion. The numbers that grade players by their all-around contribution have him as Madison’s best this season, and watching him it is easy to see why. He defends without fouling and creates without forcing, the kind of quiet two-way engine that good teams are built around.

One interesting note: Bernd Schipmann, now Fort Wayne FC’s goalkeeper, spent three seasons at Breese Stevens Field and kept 33 clean sheets in a Madison shirt before joining us this year. He returns to the place he used to call home, two saves shy of 200 for his League One career. Few players will know this building better than Schipmann. He will be ready for this one.

The Matchup

Madison’s home form is the real danger on Wednesday. The Flamingos spent almost the entire spring on the road while new turf went in at Breese Stevens Field, so the body of work is overwhelmingly an away sample. The two times they have played at home, they have been ruthless, controlling the run of play and scoring at will. That is the version of Madison we have to plan for, not the one that has dropped points on its travels lately. We arrive with our own form to lean on, unbeaten in eight league matches, the longest active run in the league. The question is whether that steadiness holds up in a building where Madison has looked like a different team.

The other question is the press. Glaeser’s Madison wants to win the ball high, force a rushed pass, and break vertically before we can get set. This is where the game is won or lost. If we play through the first wave cleanly, the space behind those advanced wing-backs is there to attack, and Madison’s own aggression becomes the opening. If we get caught in possession in our own half, they turn us over in dangerous areas and run. Composure on our first two passes out of the back is the whole game.

A result at Breese Stevens would say a great deal about where this Fort Wayne team is in June, and the whole country can watch it happen. This one lands on ESPN2, the first nationally televised match in club history and a bigger stage than the usual stream. Their building, their crowd, our streak, under the same lights.

With the World Cup underway, soccer in the US has a spotlight it rarely gets, and the move to a 9:00 PM ET start drops this match right into the tournament’s Wednesday rhythm. Ghana vs Panama kick off at 7 PM ET and should be wrapping up around 9 PM, just as Fort Wayne and Forward Madison get going on ESPN2, with Uzbekistan vs Colombia to follow at 10 PM. For anyone with the tournament on all evening, there is a national window here between the games. You never know who might be watching.

Always FWD

Match Recap & Analysis

Fort Wayne FC falls behind to a first-half bicycle kick in Mount Vernon, reshapes its attack at the hour mark, and Taig Healy answers off a corner to push the unbeaten league run to eight matches.

Westchester SC 1 – 1 Fort Wayne FC · USL League One 🏟 The Stadium at Memorial Field, Mount Vernon, NY 📅 Wednesday, June 10, 2026 ⚽ Conor McGlynn (28’), Taig Healy (74’) 📋 FWFC Record: 4-5-2 · 17 pts · Matchday 11

The Match

Fort Wayne Football Club opened the first rematch of its professional era on the front foot, controlling the ball through the opening quarter hour without turning territory into chances. Westchester SC absorbed the pressure and grew into the half, and in the 28th min the hosts struck in spectacular fashion. Maximus Jennings centered a ball into the box and Westchester captain Conor McGlynn met it with a bicycle kick from 15 yards, the finish caroming off the right post and beyond Bernd Schipmann. Westchester carried the lead and the better chances to the interval.

Mike Avery moved first after the break, sending on Kabiru Gafar for Ryan Becher just past the hour and reorganizing the attack around the change: Lilian Ricol settled at the point of the attack full-time, Gafar took the right flank, and Clarence Awoudor shifted left. The reshaped side needed roughly ten minutes to find its moment. Emerson Nieto launched a long diagonal to Gafar, who settled it, beat his man, and won a corner. Michael Rempel delivered, the ball broke loose in a crowded box, and Taig Healy drove a low, left-footed finish through traffic in the 74th min for his sixth league goal of the season.

Jayden Smith, Jack Thomas, and Daniel Oyetunde all entered in the closing minutes as Fort Wayne FC saw out a 1-1 draw that extends its unbeaten run in USL League One play to eight matches.

The Defender’s Verdict

A draw on the road holds its value over a full season, and we will take this one without complaint. The streak lives, and Westchester needed a genuine wonder strike to take a lead. McGlynn’s bicycle kick deserves Goal of the Week. Sometimes the other side does something special, and you give it a clap, and get back to it.

Eleven matches in, and we’re starting to have a good set of data, including the eye test. Ryan Becher is a proven scorer at this level, but we’re still looking for his best position in this lineup. Our press demands legs at every line and Ricol is simply a better fit at the point of the attack. When both of them shared the pitch on Wednesday they kept wanting the same patch of grass. In over an hour of work, Becher managed zero shots and zero created chances. For me, he’s our 12th man, a super sub, where he can be deployed as another attacker against tired center backs. That is a role with real value, and right now it fits him better than any spot in the starting eleven. The squad produced in a 4-2-3-1 while he was injured, and we run the risk of regressing if we experiment with the formation.

The rest of the attack has a semblance of clarity. Healy is locked in at the #10, a creator who scores, and the more he finds the ball, the better we look. Gafar created more in his half hour than the rest of the attack managed all night, and for me, he has earned the right wing. Ricol continues to lead the line, and while his form has taken a slight dip recently, I would suspect he gets back to usual success with the right players around him. We’ve missed Javier Armas, who opens up the game and makes everyone else around him better. Wednesday was one of our thinnest creative nights of the season, and we’ll surely improve on this the moment he’s back in our starting XI. Our attack runs through the trinity of Ricol, Healy, and Armas, and when one of the three is missing we stop looking dangerous. If the club were to make one mid-season move, I’m leaning towards a proven USL wide attacker on the left side. I’ve seen enough from Gafar that I think we’ve found our man on the right. The left side is still up for grabs, and Awoudor isn’t it. He’s more of a like-for-like to sub for Healy, and that position should be competitive with Jack Thomas. We happen to have three number 10s on this team.

The defense has carried this streak, and it mostly carried Wednesday. By expected goals, or xG, the stat that weighs the quality of chances rather than just counting shots, Westchester generated roughly three times our danger, and they have now out-created us in both meetings while taking a single point from the pair. Some of that is Schipmann, who is playing like the keeper Forward Madison supporters remember. Some of it is Tiago Dias and Rempel growing into genuine League One defenders in front of him. And some of it is the kind of luck every streak quietly needs. May the soccer gods continue to look down on us in favor.

Always FWD

A youth development pathway is the connected progression a soccer player follows from their first recreational game to the college or professional level, moving through rec leagues, competitive travel soccer, elite academies, and pre-professional play. In the United States, this path to pro is often fragmented, expensive, and hard for families to navigate, which is why U.S. Soccer launched a national Pathways Strategy in late 2025 to connect every level of the American game. Here’s how the pathway works, why it matters for the future of the sport, and what it could mean for Fort Wayne FC.

What Is a Youth Development Pathway?

A youth development pathway is the route a young player travels from their first recreational touch to college or professional soccer. Think of it as a ladder. At the bottom is recreational play, low cost, open to anyone, where the only goals are fun and fundamentals. Above that sits competitive travel soccer, where players are grouped by ability and start traveling for stronger competition. Higher still are elite academies, where the best young players train in environments built to mirror the professional game. Near the top is the pre-professional level, the last rung before a player signs a contract. The professional first team is the destination.

A pathway is not the same as having all those rungs exist somewhere in a city. The pieces can be present and still disconnected, a strong rec program here, a good travel club there, a pro team across town, with nothing linking them. A real pathway means a player can climb without falling through a gap, and a club at the top can look down the ladder and find talent it helped develop. The difference between scattered programs and a true pathway is the connection between them.

Why It Matters

A nine-year-old kicking a ball in a rec league Saturday morning and a professional starring in a stadium on Saturday night are on the same road. Almost no one asks what the steps in between are, or who is supposed to build them, until they need the answer. That missing map, between the first practice and the first paycheck, is the thing every serious soccer nation has solved and the United States is still working on.

For years the American system has been strong in pieces and weak in the seams. Millions of kids play, money flows into the sport, and yet families routinely describe the experience as confusing, expensive, and hard to navigate. The cost alone tells the story: an American family can pay many thousands of dollars a year for competitive club soccer, and in this country those family fees cover the overwhelming majority of a youth club’s budget, where in much of Europe they cover only a small fraction. The money problem and the navigation problem are the same problem, a system where the path to the top runs through whoever can afford the toll and decipher the map.

U.S. Soccer’s Pathways Strategy is the federation’s attempt to fix that, and it names three goals plainly: lower the cost of running soccer programs, grow access and opportunity, and improve the experience for everyone in the game. A clearer, more connected pathway is how the country develops the talent to win more World Cups across every national team. That is the stated theory of change, the why-do-anything. The why-now is the moment, with a run of major tournaments arriving on American soil that puts the sport’s domestic future in the spotlight.

What This Means for Fort Wayne FC

Most player development in this country happens outside the federation’s direct control, in local markets, run by local clubs. That is the whole point of the Pathways Strategy, and it is why a city like Fort Wayne matters to a national effort. The federation can set the framework, but the actual building happens here, with the clubs we already have.

And Fort Wayne is, in some ways, ahead of where you might expect. The clubs that make a pathway possible already exist here, and they are good ones.

For many Fort Wayne kids, the journey starts with St. Joe Soccer League, the oldest recreational soccer league in the city. It is co-ed, open to all, and built for ages three to fourteen, with no pressure and no season records kept, the kind of low-stakes entry point where a four-year-old has a first touch and a family figures out whether the sport sticks. This is the bottom of the pyramid, and it matters, because every player above it started somewhere like it.

From there, two clubs anchor the competitive foundation. Fort Wayne Sport Club, founded in 1927, is one of the oldest and most established clubs in the Midwest. It runs recreational and competitive youth soccer starting at age four and carries deep community roots. What sets Sport Club apart is how far it extends on the adult side: it fields adult amateur teams, including over-30, 40+, and 50+ sides, and its top amateur team, 1927SC, plays in the Midwest Premier League (MWPL), a regional league that features top amateur teams. Fort Wayne United FC is the region’s premier youth development club, a travel club that was accepted into the MLS Next Academy for the 2026–27 season. MLS Next is the highest level of youth competition in the country, and that is United’s main differentiator, giving the best young players in northeast Indiana a place to develop against elite national competition without leaving home.

Sport Club and United are not rungs on the same ladder. They are parallel clubs, competing for many of the same local youth players, each running its own program. At the professional level sits Fort Wayne Football Club, the club competing in USL League One, a true ‘City’s Team’ and a unifying club. Each of these clubs is different, and each offers something the others cannot. But today they all operate independently, with no formal ties between them. This fragmentation is what the Pathways Strategy is designed to address. The framework is national, but the solution is local, which raises the obvious question for a place like Fort Wayne: what would connected actually look like here?

The Whiteboard Version

What follows is a thought experiment, not reporting. Fort Wayne FC has announced no youth plans, and nothing here should be read as a description of the club’s intentions or a critique of where any local club stands today. This is one viewpoint, built only from public information and the U.S. Soccer framework, sketching what a connected pyramid could look like if someone got to draw it from scratch. We are playing architect for a moment.

The short version: Fort Wayne FC is probably best served by not building out its own youth academy infrastructure, but rather connecting the clubs that already exist and providing a local professional pathway.

The temptation for a new pro club is to build its own youth academy from the ground up, stack age groups, chase the elite-youth space, plant a flag. In Fort Wayne, that could present its own unique set of challenges. It would put the pro club into the same elite-youth space United already occupies, competing for the same local kids instead of linking them, which is the fragmentation this whole strategy is meant to end, not deepen. The clubs that develop youth here are good at it. The pro club does not need to fix something that’s broken.

To connect the clubs in Fort Wayne, something like a USL Academy side could sit underneath the professional club and above the youth clubs, the missing rung between the best youth soccer in the area and the first team at Ruoff Mortgage Stadium. USL Academy is the league’s own youth-to-pro platform, built so clubs in the Championship, League One, and League Two can create a defined path for local prospects to reach the professional level and sign directly with the senior team. It is a platform a growing number of USL clubs have adopted since 2021, which means the path here is well worn rather than experimental. It even lets young players train and compete with the pros without giving up their college eligibility, which answers the question every family asks before committing to this kind of path. The region’s best graduating players, from United, from Sport Club, from anywhere in the area, would have a local professional-adjacent step to climb to instead of leaving town to be seen, and a credible route toward a pro contract.

An academy team would need alignment across Fort Wayne’s soccer circles on how a player gets there, and a philosophy from Fort Wayne FC on a style of play, one that runs down from the first team so a player is being prepared for the professional game above them, not just the next age group. That, among other things, is the hard part. The clubs keep developing the talent. The pro club gives that talent a destination.

The players, the clubs, and the infrastructure already exist in Fort Wayne. The connection is what is missing, and joining what already exists is a smaller job than building it from scratch.

This is a conversation already underway in Fort Wayne, among people who know the clubs, the families, and the constraints far better than we do, and it will take time and space to work itself out. The viewpoint here is one read among many, and it could turn out to be wrong. But the pieces of a pathway are sitting in this city right now, and that makes the question worth keeping on the table: what would it take to connect them? The Fort Wayne Way, aligned with the U.S. Way, to develop the next stars of the game.

Advanced soccer metrics are statistical measurements that evaluate the quality of chances, shots, passes, and results in a match, beyond what the final score shows. The most widely used are expected goals (xG), post-shot expected goals (PSxG), expected points (xPoints), and expected assists (xA), the foundation of modern soccer analytics. Any fan who has walked out of a goalless draw convinced their team deserved to win has already run this math by eye. Data helps support the evidence.

What Are Advanced Soccer Metrics?

Every advanced metric starts from the same idea: a chance has a value even when it does not become a goal. Analysts have logged hundreds of thousands of shots and tracked how often each type goes in, factoring in the distance from goal, the angle, whether the ball came to a player’s stronger foot or his head, and how the chance arrived, whether an open-play move, a corner, or a breakaway. From that history, every new chance can be assigned a probability.

That probability is the foundation. Build on it in different directions and you get the family of metrics covered below. One measures the quality of the chance and another the quality of the strike. A third translates a full match of chances into the result it probably deserved, and the last credits the pass that made the chance possible. Each answers a question the scoreboard ignores, and together they describe what actually happened on the field with a precision the final score cannot offer. All of them deal in likelihood rather than certainty, which is exactly how the sport behaves.

Why It Matters

The scoreboard is the worst liar in soccer. Goals are rare, margins are thin, and a single bounce can send three points the wrong way. Over a season, the table and the actual quality of play can drift surprisingly far apart. These four numbers are how analysts, recruiters, and increasingly broadcasters tell the difference. Learn them once and every match you watch afterward gets richer with insight.

xG (Expected Goals)

Expected goals measures the quality of a scoring chance as a number between 0 and 1: the probability that an average shot from that exact spot, in that exact situation, ends up in the net. A tap-in from two yards might carry 0.85 xG, a goal roughly eight or nine times out of ten. A hopeful strike from 30 yards might carry 0.03. Add up every shot a team takes in a match and you get its xG for the day, a measure of how many goals its chances were worth. xG is the most widely used number in modern soccer because it answers the question that matters most: were these the kinds of chances that usually become goals? When you see a team win the xG battle and lose the match, you are looking at either a finishing problem or plain bad luck, and one match rarely tells you which.

PSxG (Post-Shot Expected Goals)

Post-shot expected goals measures the quality of the shot itself, after it leaves the boot. Where xG grades the chance, PSxG grades the strike, because it factors in where the ball is actually heading. It only exists for shots on target. A ball drilled toward the top corner carries a high PSxG. The same chance scuffed straight at the keeper carries a low one, even though both began as the identical xG. That makes PSxG the goalkeeper’s stat. A keeper who faces shots worth two goals by PSxG and concedes none has had a brilliant night, and this is the number that proves it. When you see a modest chance produce an unstoppable shot, PSxG is how the credit lands on the right player: the striker for the hit, or the keeper for somehow getting there anyway.

xPoints (Expected Points)

Expected points takes the chances both teams created and translates them into the result the match probably deserved. A win is worth three points, a draw one, a loss none. xPoints runs through every plausible scoreline the two teams’ chances could have produced and settles on the points a team would earn on average from a performance like that. This is the number that puts language to the robbed feeling. A team can dominate a goalless draw so thoroughly that its xPoints lands near two and a half, the math saying a performance like that wins far more often than it draws. Over a full season, xPoints often reads truer than the standings, because results swing on luck while the quality underneath stays steadier. When the table and the xPoints column disagree about a team, trust the xPoints column to predict what happens next.

xA (Expected Assists)

Expected assists measures the quality of a pass that sets up a shot: the probability that a given ball played to a teammate leads to a goal. A perfectly weighted through ball that springs a striker in alone carries high xA. A square pass 40 yards from goal carries almost none. xA matters because it credits the players who make goals happen without finishing them. A playmaker can go weeks without an official assist purely because teammates keep missing the chances he manufactures, and the scoresheet would call that a quiet month. xA tells the truer story. When you want to find the most dangerous creator on the field, check the xA column before the assist column. The assists catch up to the work eventually.

One more you will hear: PPDA, passes allowed per defensive action, a team-level number that measures pressing. A low PPDA means a team hounds the ball high up the field and rarely lets the opponent string passes together. A high one means the team sits back and absorbs. When a commentator says a side presses aggressively or sits deep, PPDA is the math underneath the description.

What This Means for Fort Wayne FC

Data and numbers give us a shared language. Advanced metrics allow fans, staff, and players alike to understand the game around the same set of measurements. They align everyone on what could be working and what might not be, and they let us analyze a match through the same lens. The supporter in the stands, the analyst in the office, and the midfielder in the film room can look at the same numbers and have a real conversation about the same match. Individually, each one layers their own unique experience onto the data, and that is where the conversation starts. Data is data. It tells a story, but not quite the full story.

The eye test fills in the rest. The numbers do not know a striker was carrying a knock, that the wind was swirling, or that a chance the model rated highly actually came through a forest of legs and never had a real path to goal. There will be nights when a chance grades out modest on paper and watching it live, you know it was the cleanest look of the match. Both can be right; you and the data. They measure different things, and the fan who holds both reads the game better than the fan clinging to either one alone.

Our club is built on the same principle. Advanced metrics allow the coaching staff to win the next match before it’s ever played. The club staffs for it: a dedicated Sports Data Analyst sits under Football Operations, a full-time role devoted to translating our game model into measurable metrics and mapping players worldwide to find the ones who fit what our coaches want to do on the pitch. And the club has been clear about how that work gets used. The data narrows the search and the eyes confirm it, because some things can only be learned by watching a player. Data is an advantage, and having an experienced coaching staff who can decipher the numbers and match patterns gives us a competitive advantage. And no matter if you’re in the press box or the stands, advanced soccer metrics can bring a new level of insight to your viewing experience. How you use and interpret the data is up to you.

A tip of the cap to American Soccer Analysis, where all four metrics this Brief teaches are published free for USL League One. The numbers behind our coverage start there.

The World Cup is the biggest event in sports, and this summer it comes to North American soil for the first time in a generation. Fort Wayne already has a head start, because the greatest World Cup career the United States has ever produced belongs to a kid who grew up here.

What Is the World Cup?

The FIFA World Cup is the championship of international men’s soccer, held every four years, where national teams, not clubs, compete for the sport’s most coveted trophy. The 2026 edition is the 23rd, and it runs from June 11 to July 19 across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the first World Cup ever shared by three host nations.

The tournament has been around since 1930, when Uruguay hosted and won the first one with just 13 teams. It has been played every four years since, pausing only in the 1940s for World War II. In the decades that followed it grew from a regional curiosity into the most-watched event on Earth, and the trophy itself has stayed remarkably hard to win. Only eight nations have ever lifted it. Brazil leads the way with five titles, the kind of record that turns a country’s relationship with the sport into something close to a national identity.

The 2026 tournament is also the largest in history, and the first to spread across an entire continent. This is a North American World Cup, not just an American one, with matches staged in Canada and Mexico alongside the United States. The field expands from 32 teams to 48, split into 12 groups of four. Every team plays three group-stage matches; the top two from each group, plus the eight best third-place finishers, advance to a new Round of 32 knockout bracket. From there it is single elimination down to the final at MetLife Stadium outside New York City, with 104 matches across 16 host cities over 39 days.

The key thing to hold onto: a player represents his country here, not his paycheck. Club soccer is your weekly loyalty. The World Cup is the one summer every four years when that loyalty gives way to a flag.

Why It Matters

Nothing else in sports gathers the planet the way the World Cup does. The 2022 final between Argentina and France, settled on penalties after Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappé traded blows for 120 minutes, drew an audience measured in the billions. Not millions. Billions. A single match stopped a meaningful share of the human race in its tracks. That scale is the whole point, and there is no American sporting equivalent to it.

For a casual fan, the appeal is simpler and more human. The World Cup compresses an entire nation’s hopes into a few weeks and a few players, and it does so on a stage where any country can become the best story in the world overnight. The drama is not manufactured. A missed penalty can define a career. A single goal can rewrite how a country sees itself. And there is always a young player who advances his career tenfold once the tournament ends.

For American soccer, the stakes are bigger than any single summer. The United States hosted its first World Cup in 1994, and the tournament still holds the all-time attendance record, more than 3.5 million fans filling football stadiums for a sport most of the country was only starting to take seriously. That summer changed everything. FIFA had made the bid conditional on the United States building a professional league, and out of that promise came Major League Soccer, which launched in 1996 and gave the country its first lasting top division. The modern American soccer pyramid, the one Fort Wayne FC sits inside today, traces back to the doors that 1994 opened.

That makes 2026 our next great opening, and it arrives with the sport in a far stronger position than it was in ‘94. The matches play out in our own time zones, in prime time, in front of millions who have never sat down to watch a full 90 minutes. For a country still deciding how much it loves this game, there may be no better chance. And specifically for this version of the tournament, the farther the United States Men’s National Team advances, the farther and deeper these soccer roots grow. No pressure.

What This Means for Fort Wayne FC

Here’s where it gets personal, because the clearest line between Fort Wayne and the World Cup runs through one man: DaMarcus Beasley.

Beasley grew up in Fort Wayne. He is the only player in United States men’s history to appear in four World Cups, taking the field in 2002, 2006, 2010, and 2014. Legends like Kasey Keller and Claudio Reyna made four World Cup rosters, but neither played in all four. Beasley did, across twelve years, reinventing himself from a flying winger in his early twenties to a steady left back in his thirties. Along the way he became the first American to reach a UEFA Champions League semifinal, with PSV Eindhoven, and he closed his career in the National Soccer Hall of Fame.

In soccer, there is no higher honor than representing your country, and the World Cup is the summit of it. To stand on that stage once is the achievement of a lifetime. A kid from Fort Wayne, Indiana, did it four times, and became one of the most decorated American players the sport has produced.

That matters here for a reason that goes beyond pride. It is proof of concept. The talent that reaches the world’s biggest stage does not only come from the coasts or the academies of Europe. It can come from here, and Fort Wayne has already produced a four-time World Cup player to prove it. Fort Wayne Football Club sits inside the same pipeline, part of the ecosystem that develops, sharpens, and showcases the next generation, with the city’s soccer infrastructure deeper now than it was when Beasley was coming up. The path is not theoretical. Someone from here has walked it.

So when you watch the 2026 World Cup, watch it knowing the connection is not abstract. The biggest stage in the sport once belonged, four separate times, to a kid who grew up in our backyard. Fort Wayne can develop legends of the game. It already has.

Fort Wayne Football Club visits Westchester SC for the second meeting of the season, on the road, against a side that has been a different animal at home than the one Fort Wayne handled in May.

Wednesday, June 10 | 7:00 PM ET | The Stadium at Memorial Field, Mount Vernon, NY | ESPN+

Prior Proceedings

All-Time vs Westchester (W-D-L): 1-0-0
The Opposition Report
MD7 Recap & Analysis

The last time these two met, the Opposition Report mostly held. We said the way to handle Westchester was to press them high, pin them deep, and trust that a side winless and blunt on the road could not punish us if our press got beaten. The result followed the thesis even if the performance did not. Westchester were the better side for long stretches at Ruoff Mortgage Stadium, piled up shots, and put Bernd Schipmann to work. We won anyway, on a Taig Healy goal and a clean sheet, the kind of gritty 1-0 that the Defender’s Verdict argued was proof of an identity forming. We got the result without our best performance, and that gap is worth remembering if we are going to walk away with points in Mount Vernon.

Westchester keep losing. They have dropped all three matches since we last played them, conceding three at Rhode Island in their latest. The 1-0 scoreline we beat them by has come to define their league season, with three straight defeats by that exact result. The drought now runs fourteen games away from home, the last five of them scoreless, with a road goal difference this season that barely registers. Yet on their own field they are a different team, unbeaten in their last three League games with a positive home goal differential. The danger we flagged in May has evolved rather than vanished. Dean Guezen and Kyle Evans are the attacking engine now. Guezen does the finishing, four league goals to his name; Evans is the creator most likely to start the attack. Behind them, the 6’4” Conor McGlynn anchors the midfield and can still arrive late to hurt you. None of that is new. What is new is the venue, and at Memorial Field, Westchester are a team worth taking seriously.

The Matchup II

Westchester at home scores. They are unbeaten in their last three League matches at Memorial Field, and their biggest attacking nights of the season all came on their own grass, even as the road version of this team struggles to score. The side Fort Wayne shut out in May is not the side waiting in Mount Vernon. This is not a clean-sheet-by-default night. We should prepare to be scored on.

Scoring at home has not made Westchester winners, though. They concede about as freely as they create on their own field, and that is the opening. A team that has not learned to defend a lead at home is a team that can be beaten at home, provided we do not hand them the rhythm they feed on.

So the ball is the defense, and the reason it works here is specific. Westchester are not a counter-attacking team. They have no pace to break us and no fastbreak threat to punish a turnover; the danger is the opposite of speed. Their damage comes slow, from settled possession, patient build-up, and dead balls, from getting the ball into areas where they have time to pick a pass. Westchester are dangerous when the game slows down and they are allowed to build. That changes how brave we can afford to be. If giving the ball away does not get us countered, then winning it back aggressively costs us almost nothing. So we keep it, and the moment we lose it we swarm to recover before they can settle into the slow, territorial possession that is their actual weapon. Deny Guezen, Evans, and McGlynn the time to build, stay switched on at set pieces, and the home threat has nowhere to live. When they commit forward in front of their own crowd, and they will, the gaps appear for us to punish on the break.

The variables are familiar by now. We arrive on short rest after a weekend-to-midweek grind, coming off a Union Omaha cup loss that still keeps our league unbeaten run intact at seven. Westchester arrive desperate for a home result to steady a sliding season, opening a three-match homestand. The version we will face will be different than the one we beat in Fort Wayne, but the tactics are clear. Win the ball battle. Control the flow of the game. The ball is our defense.

Always FWD

Match Recap & Analysis

Fort Wayne Football Club rallied from two goals down to level a much-changed side at Union Omaha, then watched the league leaders pull away after halftime in a 4-2 USL Cup defeat.

Union Omaha 4 – 2 Fort Wayne FC · Prinx Tires USL Cup 🏟 Morrison Stadium 📅 June 6, 2026 ⚽ Botello Faz (15’), Gavilanes (17’), Tekiela (66’, 85’) / Oyetunde (41’), Becher (45+1’) 📋 USL Cup Group 4: 0-2-1 · 1 pt

The Match

Fort Wayne Football Club rallied from a two-goal hole to draw level by halftime before Union Omaha pulled away after the break for a 4-2 win in Prinx Tires USL Cup Group 4 play at Morrison Stadium. Mike Avery made eight changes from his previous lineup, with several regulars absent from the matchday squad altogether.

Omaha struck in the 15th min. Allen Gavilanes intercepted a pass at midfield and sprang forward, releasing Pato Botello Faz through the middle to finish past the onrushing Aurie Echevarría. Two minutes later the lead doubled. On the counter, Aarón Gómez slipped a through ball in behind the Fort Wayne defense, and Gavilanes finished low for 2-0.

Fort Wayne answered before the break. In the 41st min, Anthony Hernandez found Daniel Oyetunde down the left. Oyetunde held off his marker into the box, opened his body, and curled a finish around Cole Jensen for the first professional goal of his career.

The leveler arrived in first-half stoppage time. Kabiru Gafar drove into a dangerous area and squared the ball for Ryan Becher, who finished against his former club. Becher scored nine goals in 22 matches for Omaha in 2025 and was making his first start since an injury suffered at Chattanooga Red Wolves SC on April 11. The sides went in level at 2-2.

The second half belonged to a substitute. Kempes Tekiela entered just past the hour and struck twice. In the 66th min he met a Gavilanes cutback from the right, set himself, and sidefooted a finish through Echevarría for 3-2. He sealed it in the 85th, played in down the left by Ryen Jiba and finishing into an open net for the 4-2 final.

The defeat leaves Fort Wayne at 0-2-1 in USL Cup Group 4, with one point and a single group match remaining, at home against USL Championship side Detroit City FC on July 11.

The Defender’s Verdict

Javier Armas, Taig Healy, Tiago Dias, and Michael Rempel, four players central to how Fort Wayne FC functions, did not suit up for this match. Bernd Schipmann watched from the bench, and Lilian Ricol did not appear until the hour mark. Eight changes in all. This is what you’d describe as the spine of the team and the names you’d put in ink on gameday.

The first two goals were self-inflicted: a telegraphed giveaway, a center back pulled out of position and a midfield caught too high, an offside trap sprung late. Good teams punish mistakes at this level, and Omaha did.

We did end the first half on an encouraging note, down 2-0, this young squad fought back to tie the game to keep things competitive going into the second half. Daniel Oyetunde scored his first professional goal with Fort Wayne FC, and minutes later Ryan Becher found the back of the net before coming off at halftime. For me, Gafar was a standout on the night: pacy, physical, and increasingly sharp in the final third, he looks to be settling into the professional game rather than auditioning for it. There was a debut in here too, with Nico Burns earning his first professional minutes off the bench.

The second half belonged to Omaha’s bench. Kempes Tekiela entered and produced a finisher’s finish twice; calm and collected, the way you would like your forwards to produce.

Fort Wayne will play Omaha again, at least twice, and like a hand of poker, we got to keep our cards face-down. The next time these sides meet, Fort Wayne will have a different look, new faces and new tactics. Call it a slight edge for the next meeting, a bit of patient play that will hopefully end in some delayed gratification. Pocket aces yet to be shown. Omaha is a good team, well coached and well drilled, technically gifted and full of seasoned professionals. They have earned the position they are in. I’m looking forward to the next few matches against this club.

One last note, and a fond one. Reid Sproat captained the side in his record 60th appearance, and across the pitch stood Omaha’s Dylan Borczak (pictured above), once his teammate at Oakland University. Back in 2021, they shared a field against Northern Illinois’ Markanich brothers, who have gone on to have successful professional careers. Anthony Markanich was just named to the 2026 MLS All-Star Game First XI this season with Minnesota United FC. It has been a pleasure to watch these players develop into professionals over the years, and this game was a reminder that hard work and dedication can turn soccer dreams into reality. Reid Sproat has always had that “captain material,” and tonight he got to wear that armband.

Always FWD

Fort Wayne Football Club closes its road slate in the USL Cup against a side sitting top of USL League One, in a group-stage match where the math suggests minimal stakes for either club.

Saturday, June 6 | 8:00 PM ET | Morrison Stadium, Omaha, NE | ESPN+

The Profile

Union Omaha is the best team in USL League One right now. They sit top of the table on a four-game winning streak and haven’t lost a league match in front of their own fans in over a year, sixteen straight unbeaten at home in League One play, a run that began at Werner Park last season and has carried into their new downtown location at Creighton’s Morrison Stadium this year. Head coach Vincenzo Candela’s side demands the ball, presses the moment they lose it, and trusts a back four to clean up behind a high line. They set the standard the rest of this league is chasing.

The Prinx Tires USL Cup is a different competition than the regular season. Omaha opened with a road cupset win at Indy Eleven, then came home and got bullied by Louisville City FC in a 5-1 defeat, the worst home loss in club history. That leaves them 1-1 and third of seven in Group 4, but the record needs context. Both of those matches came against USL Championship sides, a division up, and an even split playing up a tier is respectable. The trouble is the format. The Cup rewards regulation wins, and Group 4 is brutal: four of the seven clubs are higher-division, Louisville among the strongest in the entire USL. Omaha is doing well in this competition and most likely still can’t advance into the next round.

What makes them hard to scout is that they don’t sit still. Candela shape-shifts in-game across recent league matches: fullbacks pushed high or held deep by opponent, inverted wingers swapped for natural ones, his best attacker pulled back into central midfield mid-game. That attacker is Diego Gutiérrez, an Omaha native and the closest thing this side has to an all-USL-level creator. He starts wide, drifts into the half-space, and both scores and creates from there. He’s one to watch.

Union Omaha is the darling of USL League One, the third division’s answer to what Louisville City has built one tier up. They win on the field and they are built to last off it: the city just approved public funding for a $330 million downtown development anchored by a soccer stadium of their own, the permanent home they move into after their stint at Creighton’s Morrison Stadium. This is the kind of ambitious club that could push for promotion once the USL completes its three-tier pyramid in 2028. If you want to know what the USL hopes a lower-division market can become, look at Omaha.

The Matchup

From a spectator’s point of view, Saturday means very little for Fort Wayne. We can’t advance: Louisville has the group all but sewn up, and our highest possible points total falls short of both the group win and the lone wild-card place. Omaha’s path is faint and depends on results elsewhere. So watch this game for what it offers, which is information.

Both clubs turn around fast for midweek road games on Wednesday, June 10, with us at Westchester and Omaha at Charlotte Independence, so neither coach has much reason to burn his regulars on Saturday. Candela rotates heavily even in matches that count, and my guess is he hedges: he selects a side capable of beating us, lets the first half run, then reacts. If they can’t break us down, the starters come off to save their legs. That’s our Louisville match in reverse, where Louisville opened with the bench against us, couldn’t break through, and had to throw on their first-choice players to pull away.

For Fort Wayne, the league run is worth protecting. We arrive a bit banged up with Javier Armas in street clothes, Ryan Becher only just back, others nursing knocks. The fixtures that decide our season are the league games on either side of this one, not the trip to Nebraska for a USL Cup match. The result doesn’t matter, but an injury to a key player would. With nothing on the line but a Cup record, I’d empty the bench and give real minutes to the players trying to break through this season, a debut or two, and another look at Aurie Echevarría in goal.

We’re facing Union Omaha at least three times this year. Think of this match as a glorified friendly, a scouting opportunity, to better understand our opponent. I’d love to see some new Fort Wayne FC faces getting minutes, and if there was ever a time for the coaching staff to experiment on our lineup or formation, it’s this weekend. An injury-free match is the real win, with a focus on our regularly scheduled broadcast at Westchester next week.

Always FWD

Match Recap & Analysis

Fort Wayne FC and AV Alta FC played to a scoreless draw at Ruoff Mortgage Stadium, extending the club’s USL League One unbeaten run to seven matches but dropping two points at home.

Fort Wayne FC 0 – 0 AV Alta FC · USL League One 🏟 Ruoff Mortgage Stadium 📅 May 30, 2026 ⚽ — / — 📋 FWFC Record: 4-2-4 · 16 pts · Matchday 10

The Match

Fort Wayne Football Club and AV Alta FC played to a scoreless draw at Ruoff Mortgage Stadium, extending the club’s unbeaten USL League One run to seven matches.

Fort Wayne controlled the match from the opening whistle. The best chance of the night came in the 20th min, when Kabiru Gafar’s low cross from the right found Lilian Ricol in the box, who laid it off for Emerson Nieto, who pushed his shot wide right. Another great opportunity came in the 35th min when Clarence Awoudor settled a flicked-on header from Tiago Dias in the penalty box, to find the feet of Ricol on the back post. Ricol didn’t get the best shot off, but still forced a save from AV Alta goalkeeper Denzil Smith.

The match turned in the 47th min. AV Alta’s Maboumou Alassane was shown a second yellow for an aggressive play on Emerson Nieto, and AV Alta played the rest of the match with 10 men. Just two minutes later, a Michael Rempel set piece curled into the box from the left half space and worked through traffic to find captain Tiago Dias on the wrong foot at the top of the six-yard area. Dias couldn’t convert what should have been a one-touch tap-in.

Head coach Mike Avery turned to his bench in the 68th min, bringing on Juan Solís, Jack Thomas, and Jayden Smith for Reid Sproat, Kabiru Gafar, and JP Jordan. Ryan Becher checked in at the 82nd min for his first appearance after seven matches lost to injury.

The final chance came in stoppage time. Solís rattled the crossbar in the 94th minute with a shot from outside the 18 yard box. The ball bounced down and found the head of Tiago Dias, who put it in the back of the net, only to be denied by the assistant referee’s flag for offside.

Bernd Schipmann collected his fourth clean sheet of the season, his 31st in USL League One play, tying him with Akira Fitzgerald for third on the league’s all-time list. AV Alta did not register a shot on target across the full match. Fort Wayne FC moves to 4-2-4 in USL League One play, 2-0-3 at Ruoff Mortgage Stadium and 4-0-3 across the seven-match unbeaten run.

The Defender’s Verdict

This is the first scoreless draw in Fort Wayne Football Club’s professional history. Twelve matches into 2026, eleven of them had goals. And we dominated this match. Not on the scoreline, where it ultimately matters, but in both the statistical numbers and the eye test. After Maboumou Alassane’s second yellow for AV Alta in the 47th, we played the rest of the match up a man. You’d take those odds of winning every day. In the end, AV Alta left Fort Wayne with a very happy point.

To their credit, they’re a capable side and while some of the underlying statistics suggest they have lady luck on their side, points on the table don’t care. May the soccer gods provide all the luck to those teams who’ve been blessed with her good graces.

If you watched the game, and feel the same way, take a look at what the underlying statistics highlighted. Expected goals, or xG, measures the quality of every chance taken: where the shot came from, what part of the body struck it, and the kind of buildup that produced it. Combine those probabilities across the match and you get expected points, the average point return a match like this would produce. By expected points, we earned 2.59 to AV Alta’s 0.25. By the underlying numbers, this was a deserved Fort Wayne win that didn’t happen. Statistically, we win this match roughly four times out of five.

But what you can absolutely say is that Ruoff Mortgage Stadium is becoming a fortress for Fort Wayne. We’re unbeaten at home, and the opposition is finding it difficult to take points here. We earned one against a tough team at our place.

What’s still gnawing at me is the man advantage we couldn’t convert. A full second half up a man, against a side committed to a low block, and we couldn’t find a way through. That’s the lesson: how to break down a low block when you dominate possession. It’s a skill that separates teams that can grind out a home win vs a draw. It was a match that left mixed feelings, but no matter the storyline we tell ourselves, it’s in the past and it’s time to focus on the games ahead.

Always FWD

A soccer formation is the way a team arranges its eleven players on the field, described by a string of numbers like 4-3-3 or 4-2-3-1. Each number represents a line of players, counting from the defenders at the back to the attackers at the front. Within that formation, each player has a position, often referenced by a traditional number like the No. 9 (the striker) or the No. 10 (the creative attacking midfielder). Every team plays a formation, even if the coach never names it. Understanding what those numbers mean changes the way you watch a match, and how you talk about one after the whistle.

What Are Soccer Formations and Positions?

Formations

The numbers describe a shape. Read them back-to-front: the first number is the back line of defenders, the next is the midfield, the last is the attacking line of forwards, or strikers. A 4-3-3 puts four defenders behind three midfielders behind three forwards. A 4-2-3-1 splits the midfield in half, with two players sitting deep and three players pushed up behind a lone striker. The 11th player, the goalkeeper, is always there, never counted in the numbers because every team has one.

These shapes are fluid. A team that lines up in a 4-2-3-1 at kickoff won’t hold that shape for 90 minutes. When the team has the ball, the fullbacks (the wide defenders on either side of the back line) push forward, the wingers (the wide attackers) move toward the middle, and the shape becomes more attacking. When the team loses the ball, those same players hustle back, the defensive midfielders (the players who sit closest to the back line) drop deep, and the shape becomes more compact. Coaches talk about a team’s “in-possession shape” and “out-of-possession shape.” Both can come out of the same starting formation.

That fluidity is exactly why formations matter for the work that happens before kickoff. Coaches recruit players who fit the shape they want to play. Training sessions drill the rotations and triggers that make the shape work. The formation is a strategic decision that shapes recruitment, training, and long-term squad-building.

Positions

Each player within a formation fills a position. Every position on the field has a traditional number, from 1 (the goalkeeper) to 11 (the left wing). Five numbers do most of the work in commentary and analysis: 9, 10, 6, 7, and 11. The No. 9 is the central striker, the player whose job is to score. Behind him is the No. 10, the creative attacking midfielder who connects midfield to attack. Further back, the No. 6 is the deep-lying or defensive midfielder, shielding the back line and starting the team’s build-up. Out wide, the No. 7 is the right winger, and the No. 11 is the left winger.

These numbers show up on jersey kits, too. Some of the most iconic No. 10s in soccer history include Messi, Neymar, Pelé, Maradona, and Zidane. Each has worn the number at the peak of his career. Glance at a starting XI (the 11 players a coach picks to start a match) and the player wearing No. 10 is often the team’s creative engine, though kit numbers are personal preference and don’t always match the position on the field. For a casual viewer looking for an orientation point, the numbered positions are a fast way to start figuring out who’s likely doing what.

Why It Matters

Recognizing the shape on the field changes what you see. Once you notice that a team is playing with three forwards instead of two, you start to see why their attacks look the way they do. The same is true for the midfield. A team with two deeper midfielders builds attacks slowly through the middle. A team with three across the field moves the ball faster, side-to-side. Different shapes solve different problems. Here are four formations that show up most often in modern soccer, and what each one is trying to do.

The 4-3-3

The 4-3-3 is one of the most common formations in modern soccer. It uses four defenders, three central midfielders, and three forwards, with a classic striker in the middle and wide forwards (often called wingers) on either side. In attack, the 4-3-3 spreads its three forwards across the width of the field. The wingers stay high and wide, pulling opposing fullbacks out of position and opening the middle for the striker. On defense, the formation depends on its three midfielders to do a lot of running. If they get pulled wide, the middle of the field can open up for the other team.

In the modern game, many of the most successful clubs play some version of the 4-3-3, including Manchester City, Liverpool, and Barcelona. When you watch one in action, look for the wide forwards drifting toward the middle to combine with the striker, while the fullbacks behind them push up to provide the width.

The 4-4-2

The 4-4-2 is the classic English shape, and for decades it was the most widely used formation in world football. It uses four defenders, four midfielders in a flat line across the middle, and two strikers up top. The strength of the 4-4-2 is balance. There’s defensive cover on both flanks, two strikers to keep opposing center-backs (the central defenders) busy, and clear partnerships across the field. Fullbacks combine with the midfielders ahead of them, while the two strikers operate in tandem up top. The cost is that four flat midfielders can struggle to control the middle of the field against teams that play with three central midfielders.

Leicester City famously won the Premier League title in 2016 playing a 4-4-2. Today you see it more often in lower divisions and in teams that prioritize defensive structure over possession. When you watch one, look at how the two strikers split their work, with one dropping deep to link play while the other stays high to chase long balls (passes hit forward from deep).

The 4-2-3-1

The 4-2-3-1 is built for teams that want to keep the ball. It uses four defenders, two defensive midfielders (often called the “double pivot”), three attacking midfielders, and a single striker. The two defensive midfielders create a stable base in front of the back four. One can step forward to win the ball or join the attack while the other stays home. The three attacking midfielders give the team flexibility in the final third (the attacking third of the field). The wide ones can play like wingers, and the central attacking midfielder acts as the team’s primary playmaker, often the No. 10. The trade-off is the lone striker. With only one player at the top of the formation, the 4-2-3-1 asks a lot from that striker physically, and the attacking three behind him have to chip in for goals.

Germany won the 2014 World Cup playing a 4-2-3-1. When you watch one, watch the two defensive midfielders. The team’s tempo, build-up patterns, and protection of the back line all run through that pair.

The 3-4-3

The 3-4-3 is the back-three option. Three central defenders form the back line, four midfielders sit in front of them, and three forwards play across the front. The biggest visual difference from the other formations is on the flanks. Where a 4-3-3 or 4-4-2 has fullbacks who stay back as defenders, the 3-4-3 has wingbacks (wide defenders pushed higher up the field) who function more like midfielders, racing up and down the touchline. That gives the team a numerical advantage in central areas and an extra man pushing forward. The teaching moment of the 3-4-3 is that the shape changes dramatically with possession. When the team has the ball, the wingbacks push high and the formation looks like a 3-4-3. When the team loses the ball, the wingbacks drop into the back line, and the formation becomes a 5-4-1. That same shape-shifting happens in every formation, but the 3-4-3 makes it obvious.

Antonio Conte’s Chelsea won the 2017 Premier League title with a 3-4-3 that became a 5-4-1 in defense. When you watch one, the question to ask is: where are the wingbacks right now?

What This Means for Fort Wayne FC

If you’ve watched a Fort Wayne FC match, you’ve already seen most of what’s in this Brief. Mike Avery, our head coach, builds our team around two of the four formations covered above. Our standard look is a 4-2-3-1, with two defensive midfielders shielding the back line, three attacking midfielders behind a lone striker, and a back four organizing the rest of the field. When the matchup calls for more width and a second forward, we’ll shift to a 4-3-3, with three midfielders across the middle and three forwards stretching the field. Both shapes are possession-oriented. They demand midfielders who can defend and defenders who can keep the ball.

Roster construction follows the formation. The striker we recruit for a 4-2-3-1 needs to hold the ball with his back to goal and run channels for the attacking three behind him. The wingers in our 4-3-3 need to threaten in behind and combine with the fullbacks underlapping them. Versatile defenders are a priority. The ones who can move between fullback and center-back, left side and right, are especially valuable because the shape can shift mid-match. When we recruit, we look for players who can hold one position in our preferred shape and slide into a different position when the game state changes.

The game state is the part you’ll start to notice once you know what to look for. We might start a match in a 4-2-3-1, but holding a 1-0 lead away from home with 15 minutes to play is a different problem than starting a fresh match. In that scenario, Avery often makes substitutions that turn the shape into something more defensive, like a back five with the wingbacks dropping deep and a single striker held high to chase clearances. By the final whistle, the team sheet’s formation might be unrecognizable.

The takeaway: when you settle into your seat at Ruoff Mortgage Stadium, the first thing to do is count the back line, the midfield, and the forwards. Watch how those numbers shift over 90 minutes. That’s where the match is actually being decided.

Fort Wayne Football Club hosts an AV Alta side that has won three straight in USL League One, including a first road victory and a 4-0 result over the New York Cosmos.

Saturday, May 30 | 7:30 PM ET | Ruoff Mortgage Stadium, Fort Wayne, IN | ESPN+

The Profile

Brian Kleiban, AV Alta’s head coach, is a Bielsa student. Marcelo Bielsa has been one of the most influential figures in modern soccer for more than three decades, and this summer he’ll lead Uruguay at the 2026 World Cup. His philosophy: take the ball, press the opponent, attack vertically. Pep Guardiola has called him the best coach in the world. Kleiban studied Bielsa’s Argentina up close at the 2004 Copa America, then interned under Guardiola at FC Barcelona and Luis Enrique at Barcelona B between 2008 and 2013. He runs a possession-heavy 4-2-3-1 built from that lineage. Three straight wins in May, including last Saturday’s 4-0 result over New York Cosmos at Lancaster Municipal Stadium, have AV Alta playing its best soccer of the season.

Jerry Desdunes (No. 7), a Haitian international who has worked through the American lower leagues since 2021, is the league’s most dangerous attacker right now. He plays on the left. Adam Aoumaich (No. 18) is the team’s leading scorer; he plays on the right and scored a brace against the Cosmos last weekend. Godwin Antwi has scored in two of the last three matches, including a strike from outside the area against Forward Madison FC. Cesar Bahena Jr. (No. 99) leads the team in assists from a winger position and was deployed as the lone forward in the 4-2-3-1 against the Cosmos.

It was a slow start to the season for AV Alta, who had not won a road match until reaching Sarasota Paradise two weeks ago. Saturday will be the third match in eight days for a California team racking up air miles: from Lancaster, CA to El Paso, TX on Wednesday for a USL Cup match, then on to Fort Wayne. Travel legs and bench depth will be tested. Their Wednesday night Cup match will give us insight into how they might line up against Fort Wayne.

The Matchup

AV Alta wants to play quickly, and they have the attacking pieces to do it. Desdunes and Aoumaich are both in mid-season form on the wings. The danger reminds me of our match against Portland Hearts of Pine, with Ollie Wright on the left and JayTee Kamara on the right running similar lines. These wingers want to isolate our defenders into 1-on-1 defending as their first point of attack. JP Jordan and Michael Rempel will need to win those battles, and with support from our midfielders, our center backs stay in more comfortable positions. Our defensive shape will matter in this match.

When we win the ball back, AV Alta’s press leaves space in the wide channels behind it. Javier Armas is the central midfielder who can find that space, and if our wingers are brave going forward, there will be space to attack and their back line will get stretched. That stretch is what gives Lilian Ricol and Taig Healy room to operate on top of the box. I’m also looking for Emerson Nieto or Jeremy Garay to jumpstart this type of attack once they receive the ball. Part of their development is receiving the ball with their back to goal and having the spatial awareness for the half-turn that can open an attack down one of our wide channels. Play the pass back when you feel pressure, but read the game quickly enough, and chance creation starts with you.

With AV Alta playing a USL Cup match on Wednesday in El Paso, Fort Wayne will get one more look at how they operate in real time. Kleiban might choose to rotate players, but USL League One rosters are not deep. There’s a high likelihood those midweek match legs turn into travel legs, and AV Alta walks into The Ru a half step slower than ideal. I’m looking for a heavy dose of pressure from Fort Wayne in the early going, which AV Alta will need to absorb. From our match at Athletic Club Boise last Saturday, if Fort Wayne can earn an early goal, we become difficult to break down defensively. Where I’ve seen us break down is on the counter, when we’re pulled out of position chasing the ball back toward our own goal. That’s what we want to avoid with AV Alta all game long. Methodically break down a team like AV Alta with possession, maintain our defensive shape, and be ready to defend 1-on-1 if we play an errant pass. The team that turns the ball over less on Saturday probably wins this one. And I wouldn’t be shocked if this match looks like the 2-2 firework show we saw at our first home match this season. Both sides can punish you for mistakes. Mistake-free football is the name of the game Saturday. Do that, and one of us will keep our unbeaten streak alive.

Always FWD

Match Recap & Analysis

Fort Wayne Football Club defeated Athletic Club Boise 3-1 at Athletic Club Boise Stadium, with Lilian Ricol’s brace lifting the club to fifth in USL League One and extending its league unbeaten run to six matches.

Athletic Club Boise 1 – 3 Fort Wayne FC · USL League One 🏟 Athletic Club Boise Stadium 📅 May 23, 2026 ⚽ Gasso (69’) / Ricol (9’, 83’), Healy (58’) 📋 FWFC Record: 4-2-3 · 15 pts · Matchday 9

The Match

Fort Wayne Football Club defeated Athletic Club Boise 3-1 at Athletic Club Boise Stadium in the clubs’ first professional meeting, handing Boise its first home defeat of the season.

Fort Wayne broke through in the 9th min. It was a fantastic team goal that started with a recycled ball through Javier Armas and our defense, who found Armas once more. With his trademark Pirlo impression, he placed a perfectly weighted long pass down the right channel to find Kabiru Gafar in stride, beating his man. With a deft touch and a well placed pass, Gafar cut the ball back across the six yard box to find Lilian Ricol, who finished with a one-touch shot.

Both clubs lost key players to injury in the first half. Boise’s Charlie Adams pulled up early in the 5th minute and was replaced by Dominic Gasso. Fort Wayne’s Javier Armas needed to sub out in the 30th minute, with Emerson Nieto on in his place. Both subs would provide impact later in the second half.

Taking a 1-0 lead into halftime, Fort Wayne doubled it in the 58th minute when Taig Healy pounced on a ball that fell between defenders. After an initial shot was blocked, Healy continued to hunt for the ball, and his persistence was rewarded with his sixth goal in his last eight matches.

AC Boise pulled one back in the 69th min. Substitute Dominic Gasso struck from 30 yards out to beat Bernd Schipmann, and the Fort Wayne defenders in front of him. It was a shot taken from a low probability area on the field, but good things happen when you keep shots on target.

Fort Wayne restored the two-goal cushion in the 83rd min. Boise, caught a little too high up the pitch, turned the ball over to our hometown kid, Emerson Nieto, who played the ball forward to Ricol. Ricol timed his run to stay onside and carried the ball the full distance from the halfway mark, putting his second goal of the night past Boise’s goalkeeper. It was Ricol’s fifth goal of the season, sixth in all competitions.

Schipmann finished with five saves on six shots on target; Boise’s Jonathan Kliewer stopped one of four. Fort Wayne improved to 4-2-3 in League One play, climbing to fifth in the 17-team table with 15 points, and is unbeaten in its last six league matches.

The Defender’s Verdict

Now that’s a statement win. Picking up away points isn’t easy, and to pick up all 3 points in Boise was a tall task. Today, the players, the coaching staff and Fort Wayne stand a little taller. Give us a stage and we’ll sing. And maybe, just maybe this team will be singing late night, champagne-soaked karaoke as USL League One Champions in November. Before we get ahead of ourselves, the stars do need to align, and that takes endless and tireless hard work across a season. It will take stars, individual and collective talent, to produce a special season, and last night’s statement win fuels these flames.

Lilian Ricol makes easy goals look easy, and that’s not always easy. It’s the sign of a true center forward. You make your living keeping everything in the box, on target. Ricol continues to be invaluable for this Fort Wayne side, and I do believe he’s playing his way onto a bigger stage.

We’re at the point in the season where the opposition has enough data points on us. Without Lilian Ricol on the pitch, Fort Wayne is not as dangerous. Take Javier Armas, the matador, out of the midfield, and we lose the effortless flow that connects our defense to attack. He can regularly pick out a pass that would land him Pass of the Week, if there was such a thing. Healy’s pestering of opposing defenders is the engine of our chance creation; without that engine, our attack quiets.

These are the stars of Fort Wayne Football Club.

The defense possesses that Fort Wayne grit Mike Avery and his coaching staff have built. A well-coached back line, a veteran between the sticks in Bernd Schipmann, and an impressive captain in Tiago Dias. To see Dias’s continued growth from USL League Two to USL League One: he leads by example, and he now knows he can compete at this level. The ceiling is still higher, and his confidence is matching the climb. As a centerback, he has the full field ahead of him. Week after week, he scans, reads the flow of the match, and finds how his own rhythm matches the pace of play. The same can be said about many of our first-year professionals: growing in confidence, and growing into their full potential.

And once more, the stars of the match include our coaching staff. Boise outshot us 28 to 7 on the night. Boise outpossessed us 63 to 37. Boise drew 9 corners to our 1. Boise lost 3-1. The reason was a 64th-minute reshape: Juan Solís on as the aerial tower to lock the box, Daniel Oyetunde on to keep a counter-attack outlet on the pitch. Boise eventually overcommitted in chase mode, the trap sprang, and Ricol broke from halfway to bury the dagger. This staff continues to draft the right gameplan, manage the full 90 minutes, and has shown adaptability all season. They have shaped this roster into a group of young men willing to play a team game. The right combination of soccer IQ, in-match tactics, and the mentality needed to go from good to great. This is the next evolution for a young Fort Wayne FC side. A team Fort Wayne can be proud of, and a team creating the next stars in the sport.

The way Mike Avery and his staff are going about their business, they have created enough stars to make a constellation. Up Fort Wayne!

Always FWD

Fort Wayne Football Club crosses two time zones for the first meeting of USL League One expansion clubs as fourth-place Athletic Club Boise hosts at the Stadium at Expo Idaho.

Saturday, May 23 | 9:00 PM ET | Stadium at Expo Idaho, Boise, ID | ESPN+

The Profile

Athletic Club Boise sits fourth in USL League One eight games in. Head coach Nate Miller has run a version of a 3-4-3 from the first whistle of the inaugural season. Three center backs build out, two wingbacks push high to provide width, and a midfield that compresses the central channel. They are comfortable in possession and ruthless when their attackers find space behind the back line. Jonathan Ricketts and Nick Moon have shared time at right wingback, with Ricketts already at three assists from that side.

Denys Kostyshyn, the 28-year-old Ukrainian No. 10, is the headline. A Dynamo Kyiv academy product with a season at El Paso Locomotive on his resume, Kostyshyn was voted USL League One Player of the Month for April and sits tied for third in League One scoring. He plays as an attacking midfielder behind Thomas Amang, a Cameroonian striker signed from New Mexico United. The pattern: Kostyshyn finds pockets between the lines, slips a runner in behind, or shoots from distance. His goal against Westchester from outside the box drew Goal of the Week consideration.

Boise’s left side combines a hometown story with USL Championship pedigree. Blake Bodily is the 27-year-old Boise native and first signing in club history, returning home after seasons with the Portland Timbers in MLS and the Tampa Bay Rowdies. The Pac-12 Men’s Player of the Year at the University of Washington in 2019, he plays as the left wingback with two assists in League One play. Ahead of him in the attacking phase, Tumi Moshobane drifts wide left. The 31-year-old South African brings multiple USL Championship seasons at San Diego Loyal SC and El Paso Locomotive FC, plus All-League First Team honors from League One’s 2019 season at Lansing Ignite. He scored Boise’s opener against Westchester in April. The pairing is the kind of experienced wide combination most League One teams would envy.

The back three has been their strength, anchored by Jake Crull on the left and Jake Dengler’s 6-foot-5 aerial presence alongside him. Rookie goalkeeper Jonathan Kliewer is in his first professional season and has been steady, including a penalty stop at Charlotte. The vulnerability is structural: when both wingbacks commit, the space behind them is exposed, and a team that moves the ball quickly to the wide channels can find chances.

The Matchup

Saturday is the first meeting of two expansion clubs that built their rosters from opposite ends of the lower-league talent pool.

Boise built top to bottom from in-prime lower-league professionals. Every starter, from Bodily and Moshobane on the left to Kostyshyn at No. 10 to Crull and Dengler at the back, has multiple seasons of USL Championship or League One minutes. The head coach reflects the philosophy. Nate Miller comes to Boise from the USL Championship, where he led San Diego Loyal SC as head coach in 2023.

Fort Wayne Football Club built from a different direction. A club anchored by USL League Two pre-professionals including Reid Sproat, the only player to appear in every season of FWFC’s existence. Captain Tiago Dias was the 2025 Valley Division Player of the Year. Goalkeeper Aurie Echevarría brings three Valley Division titles and the 2023 Golden Glove. Anthony Hernandez came up through the same program. The attacking unit was built from top college talent. Leading scorer Taig Healy was First Team All-ACC at NC State and reached the 2025 College Cup Final. Lilian Ricol was Sun Belt Newcomer of the Year at UCF. Clarence Awoudor was an All-American at UCF after All-Pac-12 honors at Oregon State. Jack Thomas was the 2025 NAIA Player of the Year at LSU-Shreveport. A handful of players with MLS Next Pro and USL Championship pedigree round out the rest. The head coach mirrors the build. Mike Avery comes to League One after 13 seasons at Valparaiso and five years leading Fort Wayne in USL League Two with three Valley Division titles. He is a college and League Two coach in his first year leading a professional club.

The sharpest illustration of the two philosophies sits at the local-pro signing. Boise’s first signing was Blake Bodily, a Boise native with MLS pedigree returning home. The Fort Wayne equivalent would be Canterbury alum Akil Watts, the 26-year-old who has been without a club since January after seasons with St. Louis CITY in MLS. The type of signing that signals a level of on-field ambition right out of the gates.

This is the kind of comparison that gets sharper with results. A win and we sit ahead of Boise on points. A draw keeps us within arm’s length down the table. A loss starts to separate the two philosophies on the standings page. Boise closes Season One in Fort Wayne on Saturday, October 24. Two meetings, one away and one home, bookending the inaugural professional season. The October return match finalizes the philosophical comparison between two roster builds. Another measuring stick for these expansion clubs.

The Defender’s Verdict from Wednesday match framed this one already: ugly, any means necessary, road points. Saturday at the Expo is a road points match, in front of a likely sold-out crowd that has not seen Boise lose at home in any competition. For me, this match is the most exciting USL League One game we will have played this season. A real test with real playoff consequences nine games into the season. Game on.

Always FWD

Match Recap & Analysis

Fort Wayne Football Club drew Corpus Christi FC 1-1 at Ruoff Mortgage Stadium, with captain Tiago Dias scoring his first goal in professional soccer, and the club’s first corner-kick goal in its professional history, from a Javier Armas inswinger.

Fort Wayne FC 1 – 1 Corpus Christi FC · USL League One 🏟 Ruoff Mortgage Stadium 📅 May 20, 2026 ⚽ Dias (50’) / Cerritos (63’) 📋 FWFC Record: 3-2-3 · 12 pts · Matchday 8

The Match

Fort Wayne Football Club drew Corpus Christi FC 1-1 at Ruoff Mortgage Stadium in the clubs’ first professional meeting.

Fort Wayne broke through in the 50th. Javier Armas swung a right-footed inswinging corner towards the near post, finding captain Tiago Dias, as he rose to glance it home for the first corner-kick goal in Fort Wayne’s professional history. It was Dias’s first goal in professional soccer. His seventh in a Fort Wayne uniform across USL League One and USL League Two, tied for second on the club’s all-time goalscoring list.

Corpus Christi equalized in the 63rd. Alex Cerritos, on for Corpus Christi two minutes earlier, finished a Nacho Abeal pass for his first League One goal of the season.

Bubu Medina was shown a second yellow in the 72nd, reducing Corpus Christi to ten men.

Fort Wayne came closest to a winner in stoppage time. Armas lifted a chip from thirty yards finding Lilian Ricol, who headed it down to the six-yard box where substitute Jack Thomas met it and rattled the crossbar from dead center.

Logan Erb finished with four saves; Bernd Schipmann stopped one of two on target. Fort Wayne is now 2-0-2 at Ruoff Mortgage Stadium in League One play, unbeaten in regulation across all home competitions, and extended its league unbeaten run to five matches. The club travels to Athletic Club Boise on Saturday before returning home to face AV Alta FC on May 30th.

The Defender’s Verdict

Fort Wayne played good Wednesday. Great would have been another shutout, and clean sheet. Corpus Christi head coach Éamon Zayed brought a 4-1-4-1 designed to make us beat them, and we couldn’t find the full 3 points. Fort Wayne FC owned 65% of the ball, took 19 shots to their 5, drew 8 corners to their 3, hit the crossbar in stoppage time, and played the closing twenty minutes a man up after Bubu Medina’s second yellow card. None of it produced a second goal. The result stood at 1-1 and it’s a point that feels better for Corpus Christi than for us.

Javier Armas was the orchestrator of every meaningful Fort Wayne moment, once again: the through ball to Rempel in the 6th, the service to Smith in the 23rd, the inswinging corner that found Dias for the captain’s first pro goal, the thirty-yard chip in stoppage time that nearly produced a Thomas winner. He reads the game a step ahead and delivers the weighted long ball nobody else on this roster can. He’s the most exciting player on this team to watch every week, and whatever formation Fort Wayne plays from here, the system runs through him.

There’s a world where the best formation for this roster is a 4-3-2-1. Four defenders, three central midfielders, two attacking midfielders in the half-spaces, one forward. (A proper Brief on what these formations actually mean is on the docket; there’s a need for it.) Healy and Awoudor each take one of the attacking-midfielder spots, with strict instructions to stay in their own half-spaces and out of each other’s. Ricol stays at the 9. Armas anchors the midfield three, with Nieto and Garay just ahead of him. The back four reads Jordan, Dias, Solís, and Rempel, with Rempel providing the left width. Jordan committing forward is the open question. I’m not sure he’s that player. He’s been excellent staying home, and he ranks above the fullback median on defensive metrics for a reason. You can’t take him out of the lineup here; he’s too important defensively. So the left side, through Rempel, would carry more of the attacking burden than the right. Smith comes off the bench as a fullback option when the match demands more attack, and Anthony Hernandez gives us another who can press higher. Jack Thomas slots into either attacking-midfielder role when Healy or Awoudor need rest.

What makes the shape work is Armas. Always Armas. His weighted long ball, his vision, his read of the game. Without him at the base of the midfield, the system doesn’t function. With him, the two #10s have a server who can find them in space. The roster carries three #10 profiles in Healy, Awoudor, and Thomas, which gives us depth across a long season.

Two bright spots. The captain finally got his first pro goal. An Iberian connection on an Armas corner, four seasons in the making. Jack Thomas, on for Awoudor in the 67th, almost won the match in stoppage time with a shot off the crossbar from six yards. There’s more from Jack Thomas on the horizon, who should be pushing for a starting XI role soon.

Saturday at Boise is all about collecting road points. Ugly, any means necessary, road points creates a playoff team. While we still search for our ideal formation with the players we have available, we’ll have another home game on May 30th to focus on our preferred formation vs planning for away points. If those two strategies come together for Boise, great. If not, I’d rather walk away from Boise in the same fashion Corpus Christi walked away from Fort Wayne on Wednesday; 1 point in hand, leaving Boise frustrated.

Always FWD

Fort Wayne Football Club hosts USL League One’s last-place side on a four-day turnaround at Ruoff Mortgage Stadium, the final home fixture before Saturday’s long trip to Idaho, to face a hot Athletic Club Boise.

Wednesday, May 20 | 7:30 PM ET | Ruoff Mortgage Stadium, Fort Wayne, IN | ESPN+

The Profile

This is Éamon Zayed’s fourth season as a USL League One head coach, but his first season coaching Corpus Christi FC. His history with the league goes back to its 2019 launch, when he played the inaugural and 2020 seasons at Chattanooga Red Wolves. He became Northern Colorado Hailstorm’s first head coach in 2022 and won the inaugural USL Cup with them in 2024. Whether his Corpus Christi squad has caught up to League One is the open question of their inaugural season. Similar to Fort Wayne, they played in USL League Two last season.

The marquee piece is Christian Chaney, the veteran striker Corpus Christi pulled from Charlotte Independence over the offseason. He arrived as the second-leading scorer in USL League One history with 38 career goals, including 13 last season. He hasn’t scored yet this season, though the chances have been there.

Blake Bowen is the more dangerous threat in the moment. The 25-year-old left back gets his number called as the corner-taker, and his service produced their only home goal in club history, a back-post finish from captain Patrick Langlois in their last home League One match against Charlotte.

The seasoned voice on the back line is Jack Keaney. The 27-year-old Donegal, Ireland native arrived in January after winning the Northern Ireland Football League Cup with Cliftonville and qualifying them for the UEFA Conference League. Zayed had been tracking him for a number of years. Both Irish natives.

Seven League One matches in: three points from three draws, no wins, last place. They’re conceding two goals a match and looking for any sign that the foundation is laid.

The Matchup

Corpus Christi FC and Fort Wayne FC played Saturday, entering Wednesday’s matchup on four days’ rest. We’ll have the benefit of an extra day of practice, whereas Corpus Christi has to use that day on travel from south Texas. In a fixture where the table difference is already considerable, the extra day is a meaningful edge that gives us a home field advantage before kickoff.

And speaking of home field advantage, Ruoff Mortgage Stadium is becoming a difficult venue for visitors. Across all competitions, we haven’t lost in regulation, with seven League One points from three matches and clean sheets in both wins. If Corpus Christi has travel legs, it’ll make it that much harder to pick up points in Fort Wayne, who haven’t been giving visiting teams many points to take home.

Both clubs entered USL League One together in March. Three months later, we sit seventh with a strong core of players, unbeaten in league play since the end of March, and a clear vision of what we’re building. Corpus Christi sits last, with a goalkeeping situation still settling and a marquee striker looking for his first goal this season. At this point, Year One as a professional club looks very different for these two former USL League Two teams.

Fort Wayne FC needs to focus on winning Wednesday. In this league, any team can beat you on any given day, and we don’t want to be the team that gives Corpus Christi their first 3 points of the season. Saturday’s trip to Idaho to face Athletic Club Boise will be the harder fixture: a packed Stadium at Expo Idaho, an unbeaten home record, a side fresh off a 4-3 comeback win over a USL Championship opponent. Three points Wednesday is worth more than two ties. Play for the win on Wednesday, and accept a tougher road battle away on Saturday.

Always FWD

Match Recap & Analysis

Fort Wayne Football Club drew Championship side Indy Eleven 2-2 in the inaugural Victory & Liberty Derby, aka Hoosier Hostility, at Ruoff Mortgage Stadium, then fell in penalties as Fort Wayne picked up its first point in USL Cup.

Fort Wayne FC 2 – 2 Indy Eleven (Indy wins 3-1 on penalties) · Prinx Tires USL Cup 🏟 Ruoff Mortgage Stadium 📅 May 16, 2026 ⚽ Healy (33’), Thomas (90+1’) / Quinn (26’), Rendón (64’) 📋 USL Cup Group 4: 0-1-1 · 1 pt

The Match

Fort Wayne Football Club and Indy Eleven played to a 2-2 draw before Indy won the shootout 3-1 in the first meeting between Indiana’s two professional clubs.

Aodhan Quinn put Indy ahead in the 26th min. He intercepted a Fort Wayne pass thirty yards from goal, drove through the defense, and finished a rebound after Aurie Echevarría had saved his initial chip. Echevarría was making his first start since the season opener on March 7 after a long injury layoff.

Fort Wayne answered in the 33rd min. Lilian Ricol dummied a ball at the top of the box to release Javier Armas, who kept his shot on target. Eric Dick parried, and Taig Healy followed up to score his fifth goal in the last six matches.

Indy regained the lead in the 64th min. Loïc Mesanvi laid the ball back to Jack Blake outside the area. Blake’s one-touch service across the box found Bruno Rendón arriving at the back post for 2-1.

In dramatic fashion like any good derby, Jack Thomas’s equalizer came in stoppage time. Kabiru Gafar, an Indianapolis native playing for Fort Wayne FC, set up the substitute Thomas, who was returning from a three-match injury layoff. He curled a shot from outside the top of the area past Dick. It was Thomas’s first professional goal.

In the penalty shootout, Ricol converted Fort Wayne’s first attempt and Blake answered for Indy. Healy struck the crossbar on the next, but Quinn buried Indy’s second to make it 2-1. Dick made a diving save to deny Emerson Nieto, and Josh O’Brien stretched the lead to 3-1. Thomas’s final attempt sailed over the bar.

Saturday’s draw gave Fort Wayne its first Prinx Tires USL Cup point. Echevarría finished with four saves on six shots faced, and Dick stopped three of five for Indy. Fort Wayne remains unbeaten in regulation at Ruoff Mortgage Stadium, where it returns to action in USL League One play on Wednesday against Corpus Christi FC.

The Defender’s Verdict

If this were USL League One we’d take our point and move on. Indy Eleven came to Fort Wayne mid-table in the Championship’s Eastern Conference, winless on the road since opening day, and left needing penalties to get out of Fort Wayne. We hung with them for 95 minutes before the shootout settled it. It was the usual narrative for both sides. Indy Eleven struggling to dominate in 2026, and Fort Wayne proving a tough out no matter the league or tournament.

What settled the shootout was Eric Dick. The 2025 Championship Finals MVP is an experienced professional goalkeeper who made the box look smaller than it was. Championship players know how to read the game a half-second sooner, find a half-yard or half-space that opens up an attacking sequence. It’s the small details at the next level, where youthfulness over-indexes at times to rely too much on raw talent versus the mental side of the game. Slow down to speed up. That isn’t an indictment of our group; it’s what experience at the level above does to a less-experienced team, and it can’t be shortcut.

If Fort Wayne were to take the next step on the field, it would require a few roster decisions that are becoming clearer as this season progresses. The strength of this team is through the spine, the middle of the pitch, and our defensive shape. Michael Rempel, Tiago Dias, Juan Solís and JP Jordan are a back four that’s held up against professional attackers since March. Javier Armas, Jeremy Garay and Emerson Nieto are the foundation for our midfield. Taig Healy at the #10 with Jack Thomas as his depth, and Lilian Ricol leading the line. This is a professional core in good shape for League One.

The trouble lives in the wide channels, where we aren’t dangerous enough and where tonight added to an early season observation. We’re relying heavily on first-year professionals and the USL game rewards pace, end product and decision-making in the final third. While this roster has bench depth, we’re probably short two professional wide players, which would be worth the investment for this squad. There’s also a depth need at the #9, because Ricol is shouldering a workload that needs support. Once Ryan Becher is back from injury, he’s the type of player, both professionally, and technically, that can provide support at this position.

One of the bright spots tonight was Thomas’s equalizer. A substitute midfielder driving home a goal in stoppage time of a derby against a Championship side isn’t a routine arrival, and it makes the case that he can be trusted in late minutes at this level. Another observation was Javier Armas keeping a long shot on frame. Leading up to this match, he struggled to keep his limited shots on target, and by forcing Indy’s keeper to parry his shot, it created a goal-scoring opportunity for our finisher, Taig Healy. These are the little things of development, which has been a joy to watch.

So besides a strong core of players, a strong spine and defensive shape, we now know where we need to see improvement. If new additions do not arrive in the wide channels, we’ll have to develop our young professionals in order to meet the demands of USL League One and the Championship. It’s a credit to Oliver Gage for building a solid foundation in Year One, and to the coaching staff for the development of the players on our roster. Nobody is asking us to put a Championship roster on the pitch in 2026. The question is what this side has to become to compete at the next level, and tonight gave us another measuring stick on how we think about our roster today and for tomorrow.

Always FWD