PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – It’s one of the better comeback stories in sports and it’s happened in Pittsburgh.
A team winning more games in one year than it had in the previous two years combined. Then the following year finishing in first place and the year after a point out of first.
That has been the climb of the Pittsburgh Riverhounds.
Since 2-time USL Championship coach Bob Lilley took over in 2018, the Riverhounds have gone from doormat to playoff team and now to trying to take that next step.
“Developing the culture here, want to be a winning franchise in this league consistently the last three years,” Lilley said of what they did. “We have to go back to doing the things we’ve done to put ourselves in this position and we have to keep doing them and try to do them better.”
“Hopefully we can start to win championships here.”
To do that required a bit of an overhaul of the roster. Gone are the co-leading scorers from last year, Pittsburgh native Robbie Mertz and Ropapa Mensah. Also gone are the fourth and fifth leading scorers with only Anthony Velarde back from the top five on a second place team.
A second place team with an early exit in the post season. Losing again in the conference quarterfinals to rival Louisville.
Lilley looks back at that game saying they had a lot of the ball. Were confident, but not good enough in the final third. Frustrated that they couldn’t break Louisville down at the end. So they decided to find players who would be more creative.
“We wanted to be a little more mobile,” Lilley said. “Towards the end of the year goals dried up a little bit. Even though our play was good, we didn’t feel we were dynamic enough or had enough movement. We had bigger bodies which certainly gives you advantages through the air, but we wanted to be able to break teams down on the ground as well and be able to play through the lines. Just a little bit of shift in what we wanted to do moving forward.”
“We are making progress. We have a pretty clear intention in terms of how we play with energy. We want to have the ball and we want to be able to press. How we are able to defend. A lot of that side of the game is effort and concentration.”
Lilley said there are cornerstones he wants for every one of his teams
· We are not going to give anything away
· We are going to be hard to play against
· We want to dictate the game
· We want to be dynamic
· We want to be able to generate chances on a consistent basis
Lilley says it takes a lot of reps and training to jell a roster. They’re still just at the beginning even though it’s May. The season is starting later than normal.
“We are still working on getting everyone familiar with each other,” Lilley said. “We are trying not to overcomplicate everything right out of the gate. I think there is a lot of room for growth in this group and I think there is a lot of ability in this group.”
They open with a Tampa Bay team they haven’t beaten in their last five matchups. The Rowdies were in the USL championship game last year, but the game and championship cancelled due to COVID cases with their squad.
Tampa started May 1st and opened with a 3-0 win against Charlotte, Sebastian Guenzatti had a pair of goals and assisted on the other.
“It’s going to be a tough challenge right out of the gate,” Lilley said. “I think there are a lot of good teams in the league, Tampa being one of them. They have experience. They have quality. They’ll be a little bit further along in terms of their preparation time. We played there well before.”
“I’m anxious to get our players up against that. The sooner we know where we are, the sooner we can go to work. It’s a process. We are going to do everything we can to win the game. We are not going to back off.”