Charlotte FC Scouting Report: Rest on the Seventh Day

Picard = Zaha

There is no fucking way that errors don’t start slipping into the little info-blurb below, but, consider this the official line till then…

Charlotte FC
1-1-1, 4 pts., 4 gf, 3 ga (+3); home 1-0-0, away 0-1-1
Last Results: DWL
Strength/Location of Schedule
@ SEA (2-2 D); v ATL (2-0 W); @ MIA (0-1)

FC Cincinnati has seen plenty of tough games in this early season – including, the live-or-die scenarios MLS teams only see in the playoffs (didn’t end so good, but ain’t that the CONCACAF Champions’ Cup?) – which gives Cincy fans a body of evidence for weighing how hard Charlotte on the road will be. Everything I’ve seen – e.g., a preseason game against my Portland Timbers (Wilfried Zaha was there!), plus the second half of Charlotte’s 2-0 win over Atlanta United FC and about 40 minutes of watching them come ever-so-close scoring (if only 3-4 times; see the highlights) playing a man up in last weekend's loss at Inter Miami CF – tells me to expect one of those grinding chess matches we usually don’t see until the post-season…or when two sturdy defensive teams come together at any date on the calendar…

…speaking solely in my capacity as a man who has aged to where he appreciates certain things more than others, would that this were not so.

The Big Picture
Dean Smith loves him a 4-3-3 and he has stocked that formation with (give or take) the same players across Charlotte’s first three games of 2025. The back four (from left to right) features super-veteran Tim Ream, Andrew Privett, the really solid Adilson Malanda and, as more wingback than fullback, Nathaniel Byrne. While former Timber Eryk Williamson slipped in there once (and struggled), Smith has stuck with (again, left to right), Brandt “Two-Team Journeyman” Bronico, “Gone with Wind” Ashley Westwood, and Pep “Rally” Biel in his three-man midfield and Zaha, Patrick Agyemang and Liel Abada across the front three. If I had to call any of those three lines Charlotte’s particular strength, I’m going to go against a (possibly imaginary) grain and go with the midfield – or at least that feels right given how goddamn hard they are to play through. With a foundation that sound, all Charlotte needs to do is score. Right?

Getting Reacquainted with Charlotte FC, "a Team That Plays in MLS"

I am No.1 player on [MLS Team].

Thumbnail History
I have a nasty habit of picturing Charlotte FC as a team wholly composed of Brandt Bronicos, but that’s a personal problem, not a history. Charlotte only joined MLS in 2022, but they’ve proved to be a reasonably successful, if conservative, start-up. One could make a case that they’ve improved season-on-season – e.g., no playoffs in 2022, then qualifying as a wild card in 2023, then qualifying for the playoffs clean in 2024 on the back of a lofty fifth-place finish in the East – but thar be pitfalls on the road to progress. For instance, Charlotte only scored one more goal in 2023 (45) than they did in 2022 (45), but they still allowed the same number of goals in both seasons. The sole reason Charlotte landed the wild card in 2023? MLS expanded the number of teams that qualified for the playoffs from a (half-)sensible 14 in 2022 to a comically expansive 18 in 2023 (as always, I assume they did this for Miami). Another fun fact: they scored 46 goals in 2024. If you can find a sports book that will spot you generous odds on Charlotte scoring 47 goals in 2025, one could make a dumber bet.

Most of the spicy stuff happens on the player side with this team – e.g., the failed experiment that was DP forward Enzo Copetti, the low-simmering drama around their relationship Polish forward/all-time leading scorer Karol Swiderski – but there is a lot of “Charlotte FC is a team that plays in MLS” level of buzz around the team – at least so far. They have done well with attendance – second-best in MLS in 2024, if Wikipedia’s to be trusted – but I’m guessing they’ll need get a sexier product on the field if they want to stay that high after the new-team novelty wears off.

Total Joy Points: -1

How They Earned Them (& How This Is Calculated, for Reference)
[Ed. – No need to click the above link: per the Joy Points Scale, a team only gets credit for “making the playoffs” if they progress to the quarterfinals of the MLS Cup Playoffs; still evening out on zero points beats eating the -1 for missing the playoffs entirely.]

Long-Term Tendencies
While they have been nearer (2023) and farther (2024) from doing so, Charlotte has never scored over the league average for goals scored.