NASHVILLE, Tenn. – I’d hoped to see something different than I expected. But in their home opener at Nissan Stadium, Nashville SC looked like what I suspected it would look like: A middling minor league soccer club.
Sure, it’s the ground floor for professional soccer in Music City. Still, on another wet day in front of a pretty good crowd, they gave us good goalkeeping and really nothing else to be remotely excited about en route to a scoreless draw with Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC.
Early on Nashville boomed hopeful, fruitless balls into the box. It wasn’t only uninventive, it didn’t hint at any desire to be creative.
It came out of that eventually, but had little to no success building any sustained possession and couldn’t move the ball around to test different areas of Riverhounds SC’s defense.
Rather Nashville rarely made any significant, threatening connecting pass that got it in position to threaten real danger. There was a lack of offensive skill beyond a pretty, sidewinding volley from Lebo Moloto off a corner that was the home team's best look at the goal. It bounced harmlessly off a defender.
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