MLS Next: Virginia and Utah

Looking back at the qualifiers in Virginia, it is wild how you can look completely unstoppable on paper and still defeat yourself before the whistle even blows. We tore through the group stage. Undefeated, winning every single game, playing the kind of confident soccer that made us feel like the MLS Next Cup was right there for the taking. The stakes were huge. If you make it to the finals, you qualify for Utah, meaning you are officially one of the top 32 teams in the country. We had the talent to be there, and our undefeated group stage run proved it as we tore through our first 3 games.

Then came the quarterfinals, and we choked.

Honestly, we lost solely because of mentality. We have this terrible habit of overthinking and overanalyzing our opponents. Preparation is good, but we take it to a massive extreme. During warmups, instead of focusing on ourselves and getting our minds right, we spent the whole time watching the other team’s drills and practices. It just clutters your mind unnecessarily and builds up this massive load of pressure that we put entirely on ourselves. By kickoff, that negative mindset was already cemented. We played tight, and when they scored, we just gave up after the first goal. We were all stressing so much before the game, but for some reason, everyone tried to hide it instead of just releasing it and talking it out.

It was a brutal 1-0 loss, mostly because we didn’t lose to the team across from us—we lost to our own heads.

Utah: The Redemption

Even though we messed up our chance to qualify through the tournament in Virginia, we still got our shot at the MLS Next Cup in Utah because we won our league, which gave us an automatic qualification spot. Getting that safety net felt amazing, but the difference between how we played in Virginia and how we handled our semifinal match in Utah was night and day.

The tournament is single elimination, meaning one loss and we have to book our tickets back home. We won our first games, playing very well and not showing any signs of weakness. Then came the semifinals.

We ended up facing Sporting Wichita, the number one ranked team in the nation for our 2011 age group. Their stats were insane. They hadn’t lost a game all season, going 30 games unbeaten, and they hadn’t even tied a single team. They won every match outright. As soon as the bracket came out, we knew we’d have to play them eventually. We were all scared, and it definitely lingered in our mind as soon as we landed in Salt Lake City Airport on day 1 of the tournament.

But I believe we used Virginia as a massive learning moment. Instead of letting the fear paralyze us, it actually forced us to lock in. You could see it clearly during warmups. Nobody was looking across the field this time. Everyone was intensely focused on their own job, ready to step on the pitch.

We actually handled the pressure so much better. They had extreme quality, but we stood our ground. We tied them in regular time and only lost on penalties, which at the end of the day is just a total coin flip. Wichita went on to win the whole tournament, crushing the team in the finals 4-1, which is crazy to think about.

Losing on pens hurts, but knowing we were the only team in the entire country to not lose to the national champions in regular time shows exactly what we can do when we get our mindset right.