WHO: Toronto FC II, 4-9-3, 15 points, 10th place Eastern Conference

WHAT: Louisville City’s first trip to Toronto and third consecutive USL road game.

WHEN: Saturday, August 1, 2015, 3:00 p.m. Be ready, those Ontarians are trying to trip us up with their fancy-schmancy maple syrup and mid-afternoon scheduling to accommodate the senior team’s game against New England at seven.

WHERE: Ontario Soccer Centre Center, Toronto, ON, Canada. No, Canadia, I will not bow to your British naming conventions. It’s Center, not Centre. Get it right. This is America, not a crappy strip mall trying to dress itself up as something else. Or maybe it is, I’ve never seen the place.

WATCH: At Against the Grain with us! It won’t be weird, we promise! But if you’re a diagnosed, full-on agoraphobe, here’s a link to the YouTube broadcast:



WHO, AGAIN? Last time Louisville played the red Canadians, Joe McCarthy did a spin in his grave and City came out on top at Slugger Field 4-0. You were probably there! It was awesome! I made a lot of movie sequel jokes! Man, those were good times. For us, I mean. Not for Toronto, The Second One.

Unfortunately for Team Denim Tuxedo, times have not improved much since May. The Lil’ Reds have only won twice since then, and only one of those wins was against a team not named Wilmington Hammerheads. Lucky for City, it was over Charleston! Anyway, as I’ve mentioned before, Tworonto had probably the worst schedule in the USL this year in that they played almost the entire first half of the season on the road, and now they finish their season with twelve of thirteen games played at home before finishing out their last four on the road again. When TFC2 does play at home, it’s mostly in front of birds and the occasional gray squirrel, as their home attendance is second worst in the whole league. I almost feel bad for them.

But almost doesn’t count in soccer unless the ref’s in your pocket, and Canadians not named Rob Ford are too nice for bribery. This is gonna be ugly for the Junior Maple Leafs.

Categories in which TFCII is bottom in the USL: Goals scored, shots taken, corners taken, yellow cards. Only one of those is not like the others. TFCII has only scored 10 goals the whole season. Their goals per game average is somehow less than Wilmington’s, and that’s awful. Lucky for them, though, is that they don’t allow a whole lot of goals, either, good for 10th. Their home record is nearly identical to their road record, which is a bad thing. The Lesser Reds’ leading goalscorers, Jordan Hamilton and Molham Babouli, both have just two tallies apiece, and neither have more than 23 shots total this whole season. At least they replaced GK Alex Bono, who gave up 17 goals in 8 games, with the slightly more competent Quillan Roberts, who’s just giving up a goal per contest.

What I’m trying to get at is this is a bad team that Louisville City should beat.

STATISTICAL COMPARISONS OF DUBIOUS VALIDITY:

Karma Canadians Prince’s Entourage Goals For 10 35 Goals Against 25 16 Shots Labatt’s Blue Bourbon Shot Pct. 7.5% 14.5% TSR 0.377 0.595 Mayors whom have been confused with Chris Farley 1 0

BOLD, IF NOT IRRESPONSIBLE PREDICTIONS: I’m thinking a clean sheet for Scotty Goodwin even if his face doesn’t match, a MAG RAM brace to make up for that flubbed PK last week, and another knot in Matt Fondy’s Hair for a 0-3 #LouCity victory. LET’S GO GET REVENGE FOR THE WAR OF 1812, CITY!