Following a thrilling 1-1 draw with Charleston last week, I’d mentioned that this week’s opponent (Detroit City FC) was nothing to sneeze at; Loudoun had yet to defeat the team since the latter came into the USL in 2022, and following the games with Charleston and Louisville, Loudoun could maybe feel a tiny bit relieved that Detroit was a little wounded coming into the affair, having gone winless over the last month. But another entertaining affair, highlighted by two Abdellatif Aboukoura goals, helped buoy Loudoun to a 3-2 win, extending their undefeated streak at home to seven. Let’s try to dive into the nitty and/or gritty from Saturday:

Abdellatif Aboukoura: Still good!

These goals are nice for very different reasons:

There is a thread between both, in that Aboukoura’s off the ball movement (a topic he recently mentioned he’s been working on) to get away from Devon Amoo-Mensah (age 29) on the second goal, or when he collects the ball before the first goal and threads his way in front of Michael Bryant (age 30) to fire the first goal in, are both exquisite. Aboukoura found enough space earlier in the game to where he fired a shot from about 15 yards out that bounced off the crossbar and went out, so he could have potentially had a hat trick on the night.

One more thing…

The anonymous dirty work. After leading the team in shots the last two seasons with 96 combined, Zach Ryan’s only got six in the Regular Season so far. His role has evolved from 2023-2024, as he works the press and force turnovers to lead to counters with his teammates. The game-winner has his fingerprints from start to finish:

That’s the aforementioned Aboukoura with the very sick opposite foot curler to Kwame Awuah, who then has Ryan finish what he started. There have been a lot of surprises in and around Loudoun this year, but Zach Ryan’s serving as the rug to tie the tactical room together is near the top of those.

The tiniest note of caution? Ultimately there’s a lot of good, and the bad isn’t really a bad per se; the Detroit goals came as a result of deflections, one off a set piece. Louisville’s goal from two weeks ago was also from a set piece, last week’s Charleston goal came from a broken clearance attempt. The goals themselves aren’t breakdowns, however Loudoun has quietly given up the first goal in five of their last six games across all competitions. To their credit, Loudoun has fought back in each of those games, to the point where only two of those games remained losses. But if there was a nit to pick, that may be the only new thing at the moment.

On the last three weeks or so. For any regular readers to this space or viewers of the DC News Now pregame show, you’ll know I’ve been talking about this particular stretch of games for awhile now. In fact, feel free to click on that pregame show link to save yourself from reading the next ‘graph (my house has been battling the flu, I feed everyone with this web traffic!). But to dwell on this period of games, Loudoun came away with a 2-0-1 record in these three games, with Aboukoura logging three goals, nine shots and five created chances. Stepping back into a boxcar type scenario, Loudoun this year alone has:

• Beat Louisville for the first time at Segra Field
• Beat Detroit for the first time ever
• Beat Birmingham on the road for the first time
• Beat North Carolina FC on the road for the first time

There are a couple of other secondary demons which were in there too, such as wins at Tampa Bay (their second I believe) and home against Pittsburgh (their second), but I think more and more that if you want to watch playoff men’s soccer, you’re going to have to come out to Leesburg, whether you want to or not.

Random Stat of the Day: $1.2 million (record of the current most expensive outbound transfer from the USL, Joshua Wynder from Louisville City to Benfica).

Your Moments(!) of Zen:

So, where does this leave us? Loudoun has a moment to catch their collective breath before going on the road next Friday to play a Hartford side who have won three games since they last played Loudoun on April 5, and two of Hartford’s wins were against League One sides in Jagermeister Cup play. The first of a four game, 13 day stretch, Loudoun find themselves in third with a five point lead over NCFC, and after Hartford, they’ll host Louisville in Regular Season play on June 25, Charlotte in Jagermeister Cup play on June 28, followed by a July 3 hosting battle with Orange County SC.

As one who’s seen a lot of Loudoun-Hartford in the past and seen a lot of different ways that Loudoun sides have lost games, the work they’ve done this year shows this Loudoun side is going to do what they can to avoid that type of precedent.