The Opposition Report: Richmond Kickers
An Undeniably Vulnerable Team, With a Head Coaching Exit, Advantaged by a Congested Schedule
The Opposition Report — MD13 vs Richmond Kickers
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
Great preview. Both exciting and worrying to see how this Richmond squad stacks up under Ownby. Fort Wayne is one of those sqauds that is designed to beat teams like Richmond every time under Sawatzky's setups, so hopefully for their sake, Ownby made some changes.