There are a few different things to consider about Loudoun United’s 2025 season, in part because tthere are some parallels to the 2024 campaign. Loudoun finished with the same number of points this year as last (42), but with seasonal ebbs and flows, last year saw them finish 11th in the 12 team Eastern Conference, while this season saw them in contention for a home playoff game, eventually finishing in 6th place in 2025 and in the postseason for the first time.

The other, perhaps less spoken parallel is the second halves of both seasons. 2024 saw the team win 2 of their last 11 games as part of their fall under the red line, and 2025 saw the team win 1 of their last 7. 2025 was different to an extent in that some of this disappointment was experienced at Segra Field, including several goals allowed in the 98th minute or later in that run.

Loudoun did experience another opponent score an even later goal on them, and it’s a familiar foe; North Carolina FC had a Louis Perez golazo in the 103rd minute of their July Jagermeister Cup game en route to winning in penalty kicks. Loudoun go to Cary to play NCFC in this Saturday’s Eastern Conference quarterfinal game, looking to not only avenge that loss, but also their home finale loss last Saturday 1-0 at Segra Field.

This will be the second time this season that Loudoun United has played an opponent four times across three competitions; they played Louisville City in the Regular Season, Jagermeister Cup and US Open Cup, and lost three of those four, winning the Jager game in the summer. However, while the quartet of Louisville games spanned three months and ended by Independence Day, Loudoun’s games with NCFC have been spread more evenly, and each of the games has magnified the forms of each at that moment, as the results did:

• Back in March, Loudoun beat NCFC on the road 2-1 thanks to goals by Abdellatif Aboukoura and Riley Bidois, and generally managed the game pretty well, as you’d expect in retrospect. The team was at pretty full health, Aboukoura was impressing around the League for his performances, and who knew where the team was headed. NC were incorporating their new additions into their team and Loudoun’s cohesion played a large part in the win.
  
• Flash forward to July and Jagermeister Cup play, where Loudoun again were doing fairly well at Wakemed Soccer Park where Riley Bidois scored again, then early in the second half, Hugo Fauroux got a red card and Ryan Jack came in to play for Loudoun. With the way group play was going at the time there was no reason for them to go all out, but John Bradford did just that, bringing on Evan Conway, Mikey Maldonado (team leaders in goals and assists, respectively) and Rafa Mentzingen to put pressure on 10-man Loudoun. Jack did well in goal, but could do nothing about the Perez goal in the Cackalacky heat. Loudoun lost in PKs but had clinched the group, but NC found that they were perhaps more talented than they gave themselves credit for, and despite losing to Louisville in their next game, rattled off points in their next three.
  
• Then there’s last weekend’s game, where Loudoun would have made a strong case for themselves by winning ahead of games by Hartford and Pittsburgh that went on later Saturday night. Things have been eventful for Loudoun as far as the injury report goes, while Jack is getting consistent starts, it’s because Fauroux is out for the season to an elbow injury. Jack didn’t have to make a save in the playoff clinching win at Detroit, and a couple of decisions in the following week’s loss to Indy could also be chalked up to bad bounces. But more than that, Jack’s been dealing with a Spinal Tap-esque rotation of defenders; Tubbs and Bolu Akinyode were the centerbacks in front of him at Detroit, then Cole Turner, who was just coming back from an injury, replaced Tubbs, who went out to injury, and played next to Akinyode. The two goals Jack allowed versus Indy, and the NC difference maker Saturday, could be seen as defensive issues to an extent, and with increased reps, hopefully such behavior is reduced further this week. Even with last week’s game, they certainly poured it on when they needed to:

but the difference being Oliver Semmle (on loan from the Philadelphia Union) tightening things a good deal in the last two months, as he and the injured Jake McGuire logged 8 clean sheets for NCFC, compared to Loudoun’s 5, but Loudoun’s 48 goals conceded in 2025 is sixth highest in the League and uncharacteristic, for this bunch at least.

An intriguing aspect of the match is Aboukoura’s potential impact on it. Like a lot of other players on Loudoun, Aboukoura has dealt with injury this season which caused him to miss games, and maybe impacted him more than most. His goal in Loudoun’s first game against NCFC was his second of the year, and he scored 11 in his first 17 USL Championship games of 2025, including one against Louisville City in June. He was injured the next week and since then has appeared in 10 games, going 90 minutes twice, and his only goal was a penalty kick in September’s draw with Tampa Bay. Loudoun has added Quimi Ordonez and Omari Glasgow to help with attack, and they’ve shown flashes of promise, but nothing like Bouch gave in the season’s first three months.

The Loudoun-NCFC games so far has seen one team continue to improve while another struggle to find themselves after a white-hot start. This Loudoun side has done a lot of things that past ones haven’t done before past the whole “making the playoffs” thing, earning the first road wins for the team at five different venues, including Wakemed back in March. NC has players with postseason experience together in Maldonado, Mentzingen and Oalex Anderson, and Loudoun has players with individual experience with other teams in Tommy McCabe and Flo Valot. If Loudoun can harness the dynamic of themselves against the world they had earlier this year while having all hands and feet on deck that can kick a ball, they may be able to do this.