Pittsburgh sports fans are used to roster continuity. Stars like Ben Roethlisberger, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin have been fixtures here for a generation, obviously, but it goes beyond them. On a year-to-year basis, the turnover is generally limited to a handful of notable comings and goings — even for the Pirates.
That is not the world in which Riverhounds SC competes.
The nature of their USL Championship player economy is such that new years almost always mean lots of new faces, because rarely are players signed to contracts longer than a year with the option for another.
As they train for the 2020 season, just nine players who helped the club to its first place finish in the Eastern Conference in 2019 are set to return. Three of the top five goal scorers — who accounted for 18 tallies collectively — are gone. Only Steevan Dos Santos and Upper St. Clair product Robbie Mertz scored more than three times.
All the while, expectations are building. The Riverhounds’ finish atop the table last season was their first since 2004 and followed a third-place showing in 2018 that snapped a seven-year streak of finishing fifth or worse.
Local sports fans responded with greater support. Attendance spiked to an average of 3,377 from 2,404 a year earlier. Other than its first year in Highmark Stadium in 2013, the team has not enjoyed that level of support since the years after its founding in 1999.
So how does a coach juggle fans’ thirst for even more success with the sometimes fickle process of turning a cast of some veterans and more newcomers into a cohesive team?
“I think we’ve built it to a point now where we’ve had success because of hard work. Good training habits. Clear communication,” coach Bob Lilley said. “So people walking into this environment, they know it’s a serious environment when they get in here. And if they don’t completely know, someone’s reminding them.”
And there are still enough someones, despite the losses.
Kevin Kerr was a rare mainstay on the Riverhounds’ roster for seven seasons from 2013-19. He announced his retirement to join the team’s youth academy in the offseason, which means there’s a void where his steady presence once was.
Captain Kenardo Forbes, however, returns after finishing as a league MVP finalist a year ago. He won a championship with Lilley in Rochester before arriving here in 2018 and quickly asserted himself as a leader. In Lilley’s estimation, the Riverhounds have been Forbes’ team, even if Kerr was the face-of-the-franchise type because of his years of service.
Forbes agrees and is looking forward to stepping into perhaps a more visible role than he had before, even if his value has been recognized internally for a while.
“It feels good to be the leader of a club, and a club that’s going forward,” the Jamaican midfielder said. “It’s a huge accomplishment for me. I’ve been a leader since I got with Bob. Since 2015, 2016 I was a captain [in Rochester.] 2017, I was a captain. So I came in here as a leader, but obviously we had Kevin Kerr, so I’m looking forward to stepping up to that challenge this season.”
Lilley also cited Mertz as one who’s carving his own unique niche as a player teammates can feed off of as a Pittsburgh native who’s passionate about building on his hometown team’s success.
Replacing scoring is a different question.
Striker Ropapa Mensah was one of the most notable additions this offseason. He comes to the Riverhounds from Nashville, the conference’s runner up in the standings a year ago, where he finished second on the team with six goals in 31 games.
The departed Neco Brett scored more — 17 goals in 33 games. But he also got a lot more minutes than Mensah did in Nashville, and Lilley is hopeful his new striker can grow in a more prominent role than he had with his former club.
Second-year pro Mark Forrest is back as well and chasing a bigger role himself after limited 2019 minutes. And Lukas Fernandes leads the team in preseason goals after signing a one-year deal this winter. Between them, Lilley is optimistic he can actually have more options as true finishers than he did a year ago.
In goal, Kyle Morton has left for St. Louis, but Lilley is confident in newcomers Danny Vitiello and Anthony Mwembia.
If all goes well, the Riverhounds will get another crack at a long playoff run after falling short of the conference final with a crushing 2-1 home loss to Louisville in the semifinals.
Mertz said he and his teammates aren’t really focusing on the latter disappointment. Rather, he thinks this season is about building off a 2019 campaign in which the club finished the regular season strong and continued to protect its home field (the Riverhounds have not lost a regular season game at home since the middle of 2018).
“I think we really have to look at the body of work from last year and the things we accomplished in the last two thirds of the season, because we had to get in gear,” he said. “We had a rough start, and the last two thirds of the year, we were the hottest team in the league, so I think you kind of have to, obviously, learn the lessons from that playoff loss, but you’ve got to look at what we did the rest of the year to try to emulate that.”
After a final tune-up Monday at MLS foe Columbus, the regular season begins March 14 at Charlotte, a week before the home opener against Louisville on March 21. The Riverhounds will unveil new concession options that night that include partnerships with Moe’s Southwest Grill and Bruster’s Ice Cream.
Adam Bittner: abittner@post-gazette.com and Twitter @fugimaster24.
First Published: February 29, 2020, 12:00 p.m.
