Detroit City’s playoff run ended almost as soon as it began last weekend as the ten-man hosts lost 2-1 to Hartford Athletic. The visitors now have a surprising run of six straight matches without a loss against DCFC. This latest win came with a big assist to the referee team and a player who wasn’t even dressed for the game.
During the early stages of Friday’s Eastern Conference quarterfinal, DCFC carried the play. Kobe Hernandez-Foster covered plenty of ground and dictated the rhythm of play. Left back Aedan Stanley, who has emerged as an attacking threat, got forward to play crosses into the box for striker Darrin Smith. The imperious and frequently impervious back four neutralized any threat Hartford offered. For the first fifteen minutes, Danny Dichio’s gameplan looked solid.
Shortly thereafter everything fell apart. An errant pass from Hartford ran out of play for a throw-in deep in DCFC territory at the south end of Keyworth. It rolled into an area where Hartford’s delegation of non-participating players and staff had been seated to view the game up close. Kobe Hernandez-Foster went into the area to retrieve the ball and was grabbed by Adrian Diz Pe. The Hartford defender, who was not on the active roster, threw Hernandez-Foster down, enraging the DCFC midfielder. Hernandez-Foster picked up the ball and threw it at Diz Pe. Referee Elton Garcia immediately brandished a red card, reducing DCFC to ten men. Hartford received no sanction.
Danny Dichio and the entire DCFC bench protested vehemently but never did get an explanation from the referee as to how he viewed the incident or why Hartford was not penalized for their actions. “It was a playoff game tonight that wasn’t decided by the two teams. I thought it was decided by the officiating, which was very, very poor for a playoff game,” Dichio said to the media after the game. “I’ll praise them when they’re good, but tonight they were terrible. All of them.”
If the red card to Hernandez-Foster had been the only controversial incident, Dichio might not have been quite as irritated. But it wasn’t. Hartford eventually took the lead in the 33rd minute when Sadat Anaku intercepted a poorly hit back pass by Maxi Rodriguez and raced in to beat Carlos Herrera. It was only the 6th goal DCFC had conceded at home this year.
Like all good teams, DCFC fought hard to get back into the game. Hartford did what so many visiting teams do at Keyworth: they fouled and they wasted time. Referee Garcia did nothing to prevent either. Hartford was eventually whistled for a total of 14 fouls, without any yellow cards. They dallied over every stoppage without receiving any kind of warning until late in the second half. The frustration of the 7,027 fans who packed Keyworth echoed that of the players on the field.
Fortunately, DCFC has a strong leader on the field in Devon Amoo-Mensah. The captain equalized just before halftime when he pounced on a deflected cross and smashed the ball off a defender. That lifted the mood of the crowd and the team going into the break.
DCFC did better than hold their own in the second half. They created several chances that Darrin Smith failed to convert. He just couldn’t get a touch to a dangerous Stanley cross. Then he picked the ball off the foot of a defender, raced away, but blazed his shot over the crossbar. His third in quick succession was from another dangerous cross when his weak header hardly threatened Anthony Siaha in the Hartford goal.
Fifteen minutes from time, Hartford scored a disputed goal that turned out to be the winner. Emmanuel Samadia was well offside when Britton Fischer lobbed a pass over Michael Bryant in the DCFC back line. Samadia carried on and crossed for Anaku to bundle the ball over the line. That set off another round of protests from the DCFC players and angry remonstrations from the City faithful around the old stadium.
Still, DCFC had one last chance to take the game to extra time. Maxi Rodriguez forced a superb save from Siaha with an 86th minute free kick. Substitute Cheikhou Niang ran on to the rebound with the empty net gaping and managed to skew the ball off his left foot over the wall and out to the train tracks from less than six yards out. Le Rouge pressed, but time ran out.
If the red card incident and the offside goal didn’t cause enough outrage, a number of Hartford players tried to celebrate in front of the Northern Guard. That brought an angry response from fans and the DCFC players, who have a strong bond and were already aggrieved with the result. Once that threat had been corralled, the team saluted the fans and all made their way into the night to reflect on what could have been.
