It’s Rally Madison vs Minnesota Aurora at Breese Stevens Tonight!
6:00 pm | BREESE STEVENS FIELD | MADISON, WISCONSIN | SportsEngine
Rally Madison played well but fell 2-1 to River Light FC to get their inaugural season underway on Wednesday, and face an even bigger test tonight: four-time Heartland Division champions Minnesota Aurora, who dispatched Rochester FC 6-0 midweek.
Despite giving up two goals, Rally defended pretty well. They had a tough time slogging through the midfield, but did look threatening in transition. The defending will have to step up massively to keep the Aurora attack in check, and we’ll need to see better spells of possession to keep the visitors on their heels a bit.
My wife and youngest kid are coming with me tonight. The child was asking last night about the songs — will the supporters have new songs just for Rally? We’ll be listening!
If you’re not at Breese tonight, you can watch on SportsEngine at this link. It’s Match of the Week, so the league is providing the broadcast crew. The team we introduced on the podcast this week will have the call June 9.
Check out some highlights from Wednesday’s match:
It’s also Forward Madison vs Charlotte Independence!
6:00 pm | Mecklenburg County Sportsplex | Matthews, North Carolina | ESPN Select
I said on the podcast that this game overlaps with the Rally match, and that you’d be able to watch the second half in the Forward Club after; that was incorrect. The two kickoffs are at the same time. Sorry!
Charlotte and Madison are, as is often the case, very close on the table. We’re currently in eighth place, with 10 points from six matches (and three games in hand on the leaders). Charlotte sit just one point ahead of us from seven matches. We’ve both got three wins and two losses; we’ve also got one draw and they have two.
Charlotte scores twice on average per game, an average aided by a flukey 4-0 dismantling of Spokane. They’ve also given up 1.3 goals per match. Meanwhile we’re scoring about 1.3 and giving up 1.2.
Like Madison, Charlotte doesn’t have just one scoring threat; eight players have scored at least once, and the leader, Luiz Alvarez, has three.
To get a win on the road and jump up the table a bit (the highest we could move is sixth), the Mingos will need to take some confidence from the loss to Detroit — some deserved confidence following a really brave performance. The boys were pressing high, came out on the front foot early, and showed some directness and creativity. While the higher-division defenders were able to snuff out some early chances, that same amount of pace, tempo and urgency could very well find some joy against defenders at our own level.
Enrique Machesen will be available, since the red card came in a Cup match. We haven’t heard about Turner Humphrey, who went out with a hamstring last week, or AJ Edwards, who’s missed the last few games. Both seem to be nearing a return, but we’ll have to wait for the lineups tonight.
Kickoff is at 6 and it’ll be on ESPN Select at this link.
Listen to this week’s podcast
While you wait for kickoff, have a listen to this week’s podcast, if you haven’t already.
The Mingos still haven’t beaten a higher-division club since 2019, after falling 1-0 to Detroit City on an 88th minute goal at the end of an otherwise pretty good match. This week, Ethan and Rob break down that match including the opportunities, the ridiculous red card and the very bothersome injury. Plus, we welcome our new Rally Madison analyst Sara Stern, and get to know the voices of the Rally Madison telecast, Ella Meninno and Kam Kaiser.
Listen above or on your favorite podcast app!
We will have three pods this week.
First, tonight we’ll have the postgame press conference with Rally Madison head coach Giuliano Oliviero and two players.
Then this week we’ll have two full-size episodes. The release schedule is TBD, depending on availability of players and scheduling of interviews, but we will have a regular Forward Madison episode, recapping the Charlotte match and doing the normal FMFC/USL1 stuff, with Ethan and Rob; and we’ll have a very similar-type episode focused on Rally Madison with Rob and Sara. (Listen to this week’s pod to get to know her!) We’ll recap the first two Rally matches, get a player interview, and do a quick “around the league” focused just on the Heartland Division. W League doesn’t provide highlights, so that probably won’t be much more than a rundown of the scores.
Bringing a friend to their first match? Make them watch this
You could be the Smart Fan and explain the league, how the divisions work, who the players are, yada yada. But if you do that, your friends might find you slightly insufferable. So let us be the know-it-all “well ackshually” guys!
Send them this YouTube link:
Or this podcast link:
Or just point them to 608 Soccer Show on their favorite podcast app — this intro is right at the top of the feed.
Support 608 Soccer
The 608 Soccer Show and newsletter are and always will be free for Wisconsin's soccer fans. But it's not free for us to make! We pay for monthly subscriptions for our production software and streaming services to watch matches (and rewatch, and watch frame-by-frame to forensically analyze referees' mistakes). We also pay for marketing materials to get the word out to more Forward Madison and Rally Madison weirdos like us. It's not a lot, but it's not nothing. This is a labor of love, not a profit-making venture, and any support we can get from the Madison soccer community will just help us make the experience of reading and listening to 608 Soccer better for all of us!
Shout-out to Robert L, Chris M, Matthew K, Joseph R and Matthew B for chipping in this season so far!
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Catch up on past episodes at madison365.org/608soccer.