The Real Monarchs, last season’s USL regular-season champions, have yet to play a regular-season match, and they’re already talking about the trophy that eluded them last year.
“From Day 1 everyone knows the expectation is we want to win the championship,” forward Chandler Hoffman said, “and not just the regular season, but the USL Cup.”
The Monarchs, in a second division league with high turnover, retained just nine players from last year’s wildly successful roster. However, when building this year’s team, the club continued to use the youth-plus-experience equation that worked so well last year. That squad set a league winning-streak record (nine games) and lost just one match at home.