When ºüÀêÊÓƵ City SC takes the field at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, on Saturday afternoon for its next-to-last preseason game and its last one against an MLS opponent, it will also mark two weeks until it plays its first Major League Soccer game of the season on Feb. 24.
But thanks to the team having qualified for the CONCACAF Champions Cup, it will be only 10 days until the team takes the field for a game that counts. So as the team’s second phase of training camp winds down, its season is coming up fast.
It’s been just under a month since the team opened camp in Florida.
“I felt a lot of rust coming back,†City SC coach Bradley Carnell said Friday from California. “I felt a lot of rust coming back into the first few days and the rhythm was slightly different from what we had last year. Last year we had a good couple of days under our belt before we went into the first camp; now we had to get certain your baselines, foundations ready for the league processes and protocols. And obviously with the Champions Cup, everything is just concentrated a little bit. But I found we worked our way through Port St. Lucie fairly well and I thought that we working our way through Coachella pretty well as well.â€
People are also reading…
Carnell would like his players to have between 270 and 300 minutes of game time in the preseason to get ready for the game. Prior to the team’s first season, 11 players had 270 minutes or more in training camp; they were the 11 starters in the first game.
Getting there would have been easy when the team had its original six preseason games. But when Columbus won MLS Cup, it decided to push the start of its camp back a week to give the team a bit more rest after playing into December. That caused the scheduled preseason game between the two in Florida to be called off, as Columbus would have had only a few days of training at the time.
For City SC, the group that started the team’s game on Wednesday is at 150 minutes against MLS opponents, while the group that came off the bench is at 120. The players that started in the 1-0 win over the Los Angeles Galaxy on Wednesday will come off the bench in Saturday’s game with the New York Red Bulls (4 p.m., streamed on the team’s app) and the group that came off the bench will start.
That will get most players to around 180 minutes. The team then has one more preseason game, against Louisville City of the USL Championship, on Thursday. Carnell said the structure of that game might be changed, which would probably mean going to four 30-minute periods, which would allow some players to go 75 minutes while others would still get in 45. So no one may get to 275 minutes, but they may get to 250.
“We don’t mind where we are right now,†Carnell said. “The guys have put in a hell of a job, they’ve put in a ton of effort and yeah, so I think we’re on course to reach that (target). I think everyone you know, post Louisville game, will be ready and raring to go. So what probably messed us up a little bit more was Columbus going on all the way and winning the thing last year because of course we get with them delaying or going at a later start dates, because their season was longer. I would say that hampered it more than anything else now Champions Cup oriented.â€
Some players, though, will still come up well short. Nikolas Dyhr, the team’s newly acquired left back, missed the first two games while waiting for his paperwork to be finished and has played only about 30 minutes. Eduard Lowen and Joakim Nilsson, who both went back to Europe to finalize getting green card status as a permanent resident of the United States, have played only 45 minutes and as of Friday morning were not back in America. Rasmus Alm is training but still not ready to get in a game.
For Dyhr, it’s been quite a stretch, having just joined the team during its four days of training in ºüÀêÊÓƵ before going to California.
“It’s been a lot of information overload for Nikolas in a few days,†Carnell said. “He had a long time out, I would say like month and a half. So yeah, quite a couple of days without any activities (leading up). So obviously the legs are heavy and the sharpness isn’t where he would like it to be but he was just fine playing a couple minutes the other day and we’ll try and progress him through over the next two fixtures here, the one against the Red Bulls and then the one next week against the Louisville and we’ll see where we’re at. I can’t forecast any speculation right now as to game readiness or real game readiness.â€
Of course, City SC isn’t alone in a scramble to start the season. The Houston Dynamo, the team’s opponent in the Champions Cup game on Feb. 20, started camp one day after City SC and will also have five preseason games. It’s one of the things that happens when a team qualifies for the regional championship.
“Camp has been very productive,†Carnell said. “I think we’ve been getting everyone up to a certain level and pushing all the messages every single day. What we’re trying to do as a group, what we’re trying to do individually. I think things are trending in the right way, with just the focus on Champions Cup in mind and what comes after that. The prognosis is not to be ready tomorrow. The prognosis is to be ready in a couple of weeks time.â€
Make that 10 days.