ST. PETERSBURG — If there was one word that summed up the Tampa Bay Rowdies 2021 Playoffs coming into Saturday night’s Eastern Conference Final against Louisville City FC it was patience. So when Louisville scored early, sitting back and absorbing pressure seemed to play exactly into the Rowdies’ hands allowing them to come from behind to win 3-2 in extra time.
While the number of goals in the match was a shock for two normally very solid defensive teams in several ways it was a typical Tampa Bay performance that saw the team over the line. Most notably Tampa Bay remained dominant in the air, winning 58.2 percent of aerial duels.
That was partly due to Louisville conceding possession, with a surprise 2-0 lead at half-time the men in purple didn’t feel they needed much of the ball. That allowed the hosts to be patient, waiting for an opening similar to what was needed against Birmingham in the semi-final.
As with the match against Birmingham, it was all about just daring to have a look. The Rowdies had 25 shots, 16 of them in the box, eventually, the huffing and puffing would tell. The opener was a stunning strike from Lucky Mkosana that somehow dissected a sea of bodies, his second was that pressure building, putting men in the right places, even if it was somewhat fortuitous. At this level, you make your own luck.
There were some anomalies. Corners rarely work out in the professional game, they’re from a tight angle and the box is always too crowded. Despite that, it was a corner that started the move for both goals, even if the goal didn’t come from the corner itself. Louisville slipped by letting its opponent get so many, 16, opportunities from the corner arc.
It was hardly a perfect game from the Rowdies, enough has been said of the calamitous own goal but some other areas will need work before the big one next Sunday. Normally the Rowdies have been strong defensively, but on Saturday they were not. 36.4 percent tackling accuracy is not good enough in a conference final, and if there were three minutes of stoppage time instead of four this article would have focused mostly on that. Most worryingly the missed tackles weren’t just in the Louisville half, they were all over the park. Neill Collins has some work to do on the training pitch this week, maybe in just getting his best 11 fit for Sunday, but for now, he would do well to remember that while his side may have got lucky on Saturday they made that luck and deserved their back-to-back titles.
Photo courtesy Tampa Bay Rowdies
Florida Soccer Report 