Opportunity Knox: AV bounces back for a monumental road win
In the far-back annals of history – 2025, to be exact – AV Alta started slow, then found their form over May and June to surge up the standings. In 2026, AV Alta started slow, then found their form over May and June to surge up the standings. In 2025, some July hiccups became a full-on disaster. In 2026 – well, that’s what this article is for, keep reading.
I’m going to gloss over the first two games a little more quickly. In part, I just don’t think either gave us significant new information about Alta. In part, I want to talk about the cool win. (Hey, it’s still a fan blog.) But I’ll try to be fair along the way.
AV ALTA 2, PHOENIX RISING 1
The USL Cup has been a weird tournament for AV so far in its brief history. Due to the scarcity of western opponents in League One, AV will almost certainly receive the annual gift of a USL Championship-heavy group (in this year’s edition, the other 5 teams all came from the higher league). Thus, one road loss to a USLC side puts qualification in doubt, & two seals the deal. In both 2025 & 2026, AV’s two road matches were first, they put up a good fight in stretches but lost both, and came back home with very little to play for. Obviously, you always want to see the team play for pride (and they have), and you always want to see the team push themselves against the higher-league competition (and they have). But other than bragging rights against Oakland, Monterey Bay, and Orange County (we love a good in-state matchup), those home matches haven’t provided as much to play for.
This game was no exception. AV & Phoenix were both already eliminated coming in, and it felt like a scrappier, less free-flowing game than others we’ve played. Keeper Marco Gonzalez played nicely in his pro debut! Renden Thomas came back into the lineup and timed up a sweet connection with Bahena just before he rocketed past the halfway line to give AV a great counterattacking goal! Steven Ramos & Joaquin Acuna played competitive minutes as they work back from injuries! There are fun nuggets – they’re just nuggets though. You’ve gotten all the main things from this game, let’s keep moving.
CHATTANOOGA RED WOLVES 1, AV ALTA 0'
Never go down against Chattanooga if you want to have an easy day. Now, this isn’t to say that comebacks are impossible – Alta have gotten a win & a draw out of losing positions against the Red Wolves in their two trips to Lancaster. But this team can be a grind to play against at their best, and Wolves were much closer to their best than Alta on this particular day. AV gave up very few dangerous opportunities, but Chattanooga can play quality over quantity games, and a set piece goal in the early going meant that AV was forced to try to work through a defense that was on their stuff.
Here’s an example that highlights how the hosts executed throughout the night.
Villalobos squares the ball to Lay, who I thought showed a decent progression-and-creation toolbox throughout – here, he weighs a nice pass up and over to Adam Aoumaich on the left. From Chattanooga’s side, notice the defined defensive lines – the only member of the back 8 out of line is the one coming up against the ball.
Aoumaich gets it, but it takes him a second and a turn to lock in possession, giving Chattanooga a chance to set up on defense. Notice how quickly the midfield line drops back – with them in place, the defensive line can drop with Bahena in the center of the box, while another mid stays pinned to Jerry. Aoumaich makes the smart play and sends it back to Lay – but the midfield line immediately pistons back up to cut down his opportunity to make decisions in space.
A Lay / Villalobos / Lay passing combination actually sees Osvaldo thread a nice pass to Aoumaich right between two defenders – the kind of precision that you’d hope might unlock an interesting moment of attack.
But the midfielder collapse instantly, and a moment of hesitation by Alta means that the attack now has to come with defenders ahead instead of behind.
As he loads up for the shot, there are multiple bodies in the way either of a shot or of any more incisive pass than dropping it off to Bahena.
If you want to see numerous more examples of this, just watch between around the 50th to 58th minutes. Sometimes passes to the wingers are just a touch too far in front or behind. Sometimes their collection or first decision is a little slow. And whenever AV wasn’t quite ruthless enough with the ball, you knew what the defense would look like – orderly lines, players firing out on cue, numerous guys swarming to the ball while any holes behind them got plugged immediately. Alta had some meaningful chances – both Lay and Desdunes hit the crossbar, so a couple inches here or there and the outcome could have been different. But this match was not really about Jason Smith pulling off a Vozinha impression, but rather the overall organization.
AV struggled at times in 2025 to leverage high possession into quality chances – papercutting their way through settled defenses didn’t always work. In 2026, they’ve been quite a bit better at finding transitional moments to try to bypass those settled defenses altogether. When verticality hasn’t worked, the winger unit has been a little more consistent in beating the first defender off the dribble. But every once in a while, there can be a bit of a sticky game, and in this instance it happened to bite us.
ONE KNOX 2, AV ALTA 3
AV’s 3rd of 4 multi-game road trips involved the shortest distance between opponents, as our Tennessee two-step took us to the home of the defending champs One Knox. AV didn’t take a point off of One Knox last year (Tormenta were the only other team to win both matchups; Spokane won two as well but drew the third), and it’d be tough to get too mad if a similar story played out on Saturday. How would AV bounce back – and would it matter against the table-topping hosts?
AV bounced back big-time, earning their most impressive road win in club history. After about 5 seconds of switched-off defending let Knoxville work back-to-front in a flash, Alta dug in hard, with the middle being some of their most high-level play in recent weeks. This game had a little bit of everything – AV’s first freekick goal in a while, a brother-to-brother connection, a late Knoxville lifeline that made me as nervous as I’ve been in months, and much more.
Credit to the hosts too. AV have caught teams on sloppy days – what’s up, Cosmos – but this was a well-executed game from both ends. I thought One Knox were a pain to play against for stretches – their press has some real teeth to it. Fort Wayne might be the (autumn) gold standard that we’ve seen so far, but Knoxville certainly made their case. But if & when it broke down – in part due to their own miscommunication, in part due to some individual talent showing off – AV didn’t play with their food. Both open play goals came from finding openings, maximizing them, and letting skill do the rest.
Check out AV’s opener. Relerford comes all the way over to intercept a long throw, & ultimately AV recycles to Alfredo Ortiz at LB. Nice clean build-up so far, but with a man running at him, this probably either goes back to Smith at GK or is hastily shuffled down the line to Adam Aoumaich at LW, right?
The ball does find Aoumaich, but only after Ortiz has driven infield & beaten the initial presser, drawing Knoxville players towards him. He freezes the midfielder to prevent him from flying out to the sideline, and Jerry pins the RB at the halfway line. The difference is only two seconds, but it buys Aoumaich time to receive the ball with better positioning – and for Bahena to slide across while reading the play.
I don’t think it’s a major problem in his game or anything, but (as is the case with every winger) sometimes Adam Aoumaich will take a moment, consider his options, try to set up the defender, etc. We saw it at times against Chattanooga. It’s more thoughtfulness than sluggishness, but more than half a second of contemplation might have cost AV this sequence. And here, despite being back in his own half, he instantly and correctly realizes the downfield opportunity and the urgency it will take to maximize it. One touch sets up the pass, and bam – it’s out for Bahena to accelerate onto.
In the moment, it was a little concerning that maybe Bahena had gone too early – he received the ball in enough space behind the defensive line that you always fear the offside flag. But on second look, he timed it up just fine – if anything, he’s got another step or two before putting himself in danger. Masterful timing to start the run properly, some serious wheels to roar into space, and then a fantastic control and finish. I can break down a little of the tactics to get to the shot, but without Bahena setting up a keeper chip on one touch at a dead sprint, this wouldn’t have been a goal.
Now look at the third goal (Jerry’s free kick being the second).
Villalobos – with his fingerprints quietly on this game, as has been the case all season – fires wide for Ilias Aoumaich in swaths of space. Why so much space?
In part, check out this run by Christian Ortiz, pushing up from RB. The Knoxville midfielder drops for a moment behind him, and the LB gets frozen as he prepares to pick up his run inside. Ilias was going to have all kinds of space anyway, but it’s maximized because of Ortiz.
Notice Knoxville’s flat backline, with Jerry Desdunes & Adam Aoumaich starting to slip over from AV’s left. Christian Ortiz circles back from his run, retreating to give Ilias an outlet if he prefers a safe pass to trying to dribble through the defending duo.
But if you can dribble through a couple guys, why not try? And if you’re Ilias Aoumaich, you can dribble through a couple guys. It wasn’t a banner night for him, relative to his impact in other matches, but this is a magnificent moment.
As he gets ready to take his markers for a ride, notice that the backline isn’t up on AV’s incoming attackers yet. Their positioning is probably OK – even if Ilias retains the ball, he’ll be forced to the endline, and staying a couple steps ahead of AV runners will be to their advantage. It’d take Ilias cutting back and eliminating 4 players with a dribble to really cost them. Which he then does.
With the hard work now done, he finds his brother Adam in a still-significant amount of space, and Adam gets nice pace and positioning on his shot before the CB has a real chance to reach him.
In both of these instances, Knoxville’s defense wasn’t as cohesive as they were for meaningful stretches of the night. But miscommunications on their part had to be pried open to become dangerous chances – and AV’s players showed the positional awareness and technical ability to chisel away at one of the best defenses in the league.
When the final whistle sounded and the AV victory went into the history books, I think you could pretty easily make the case that this was Alta’s best road win ever. The previous best would probably be a short week trip into Portland that ended in a 2-0 win, although flipping a 1-2 halftime deficit into a 5-2 win at Westchester was fun as well. But given the opponent – the 2025 regular season & playoff champs, not to mention 2026 table-toppers at gametime – and the quality of the performance, this overtakes our Maine debut for me. What a shot in the arm to break a mini-slide in this fashion.
ASSORTED NOTES
Knoxville’s late goal was only the third time in AV’s last 15 games across all competitions where they conceded more than 1 goal. (The only other instances were the 2-0 loss at El Paso & the 3-1 loss at Omaha.) After conceding 14 goals in their first 8 games in all competitions, they’ve since conceded 14 across those 15 games.
Credit to the USL Show for this one – AV’s 3-1 lead against Knoxville was the first time since June 22, 2024 that Knoxville had trailed by multiple goals at home, a span of 38 games.
At the moment, there are 9 teams who probably consider themselves insiders for the 8 playoff spots – Portland is 10th, and while there’s definitely time left for the Hearts, their PPG is just far enough behind that, no shade, I’m going to make the tier break above them. Alta are 9th out of those 9 in PPG, even after the Knoxville win, so while a busier early schedule for AV means that we’ve been bouncing around the top half of the playoff picture, it’s plausible that we’ll end up fighting on the edge of the picture once those games even out.
I’ve done a couple charts on Instagram recently, feel free to go check those out there for more expansive thoughts. I’ll include them here as well though – the first shows teams’ goals for/against so far, as well as their expected goals for/against.
The second shows teams’ back half of the season schedule. AV have frontloaded a number of their hardest games – we’ve played Omaha, Spokane, Chattanooga, and Sarasota twice and haven’t played Westchester or Naples at all. Because of this, we’ve got the easiest remaining schedule in the league by opponents’ PPG. Now, travel does pick up, and a couple of our upcoming trips are among the longest in the league. But I’ll take the schedule we have left.
Confession time – I mentioned previously that I’d like AV Alta to keep some of its jerseys for multiple seasons, somewhat like Brentford in the Premier League & MLS’s 2-year cycle for their jerseys. And I stand by that, it’s helpful for fans’ finances and all that. But now I’m jealous of other teams dropping 2nd or 3rd jerseys of 2026. What can I say, Old Me wanted to be financially responsible but Now Me wants more of the sweet designs that we consistently land.
Looking back at the World Cup, I think my favorite World Cup moment was Balogun’s 2nd goal, purely for the rush of my phone blowing up from all my non-soccer-fan-friends who were diving into the World Cup losing their mind with the best USMNT performance I’ve seen. Honorable mention to Raul Jimenez’s goal in the opener, the England-Mexico classic, all things Cabo Verde but especially the Argentina match of course, the crazy emotions of Morocco-Netherlands from Gakpo’s goal onwards, Haaland breaking through Brazil, and a thousand other moments from a really enjoyable tournament.
My top looks from the World Cup were (1) France’s blue shirt / white shorts / red socks, (2) Mexico’s green shirt / white shorts / red socks, (3) USA’s striped shirt / blue shorts / blue socks, followed by Norway’s home, Spain’s away, and Japan’s away.
Your guy has a mortgage & is a stingy spender, but cheap plane tickets to Boise for our away day there in October are calling to me like the Green Goblin mask.
The Chick-fil-A ticket deal is actually pretty sweet. 2 tickets (in a good section), 2 sandwiches, 2 drinks, and a parking pass, for $49?
