No Joy in Banktown: Cup Runs End for Charlotte FC, Independence
Charlotte FC miss out on the second phase of Leagues Cup play as Independence falter in Matthews.
Fans of cup soccer in the Queen City experienced three rough nights this week.
First, on Tuesday, August 11, Charlotte FC had a chance to advance to the knockout rounds of the Leagues Cup for the first time since 2023, but lost 0-1 at home to Liga MX side C.F. Pachuca. The loss didn’t eliminate Charlotte from contention, but made their prospects bleak.
Then, on Wednesday, the Charlotte Independence hosted Hartford Athletic at the Matthews Sportsplex for the quarterfinals of the USL Cup. The Jacks couldn’t replicate their previous success this year against higher-division USL Championship clubs, and fell 2-4 after attempting a courageous comeback from a 0-4 deficit.
Finally, on Thursday, the results from the final “Phase One” matches in the Leagues Cup failed to go Charlotte’s way, and the Crown were officially eliminated from the tournament.
With those results, both Charlotte FC and the Independence are eliminated from cup competitions for the rest of the season (not counting league playoffs).
Looking Back on Charlotte FC’s Leagues Cup Run: The Highs, the Letdown, and What It Means Going Forward
Now that the dust has settled from the Pachuca loss, it’s worth taking a step back and looking at what this Leagues Cup run actually told us about this Charlotte FC team. Two wins to open the group stage had this club looking like a real threat to make a deep run. It didn’t happen. But there’s plenty to take from these three games either way — including a weather subplot that, at this point, deserves its own highlight reel. The rain followed this tournament with relentless persistence, leading to late starts and light crowds.
Bright Spots
A handful of players used this tournament to make real statements. Luca de la Torre got a rare start over Brandt Bronico in the finale and delivered, shifting Ashley Westwood into a more central role and controlling the right side of midfield with a tidy, high-volume passing performance. Dean Smith singled him out afterward as one of Charlotte’s better players on the field — high praise, and deserved.
Westwood himself, despite being one of the older bodies in this squad, showed no signs of slowing down. He covered a ton of ground pressing Pachuca’s back line and finished with more touches than anyone else in a Charlotte shirt — the kind of performance you want from your captain in the biggest match of the group stage.
No player left a bigger mark on this tournament than Tyger Smalls, though. He found the net in back-to-back matches — the penalty against Pumas and the empty-netter against Atlas — building a case as one of the genuine breakout stories of Charlotte’s summer. Two goals and an assist across three group games from a player working with limited minutes is the kind of production that’s hard to ignore, whatever his role looks like going forward.
And then there’s Tyler Miller, who quietly turned this tournament into a personal showcase. He faced a heavy volume of shots in the Pachuca match alone and came up with save after save to keep Charlotte in it, several of them the diving variety. Across all three group games, Miller made a real case that this club’s goalkeeping depth behind Kristijan Kahlina is no longer a question mark.
Beyond individual performances, this tournament did real work for Charlotte’s depth. Rodolfo Aloko kept flashing the kind of quality that suggests he’s got a bigger role in him. Nathan Richmond and Allan Saint-Maximin both got their first taste of Charlotte FC action — Maxi’s long-awaited debut against Pachuca, in particular, was one of the more encouraging sights of the whole tournament, drawing a penalty and looking dangerous in just 22 minutes despite visible match rust. Henry Kessler and Will Cleary banked valuable minutes on the back line, with Kessler in particular using the tournament to get up to speed after coming back from injury.
Tactically, Dean Smith used the three games to experiment — rotating between a double pivot and a flat-three midfield shape, with Pep Biel’s starts out wide freeing up different combinations of Bronico, Djibril Diani, de la Torre, and Westwood through the middle. Both setups had their moments, and Smith now heads back into MLS play with real options to lean on.
Where it Went Wrong
Until Tuesday, Charlotte controlled their own destiny. Two wins to open the group stage put this club in position to advance with a chance to control its own fate in the finale, and the moments that mattered simply didn’t go Charlotte’s way. Tim Ream’s return to the lineup after a rest didn’t help — a loose pass out of the back fell to Pachuca’s Alan Bautista, and a slow recovery let him turn and finish before the defense could close him down. It’s the kind of moment that raises a fair question about how much rotation this backline can absorb without it costing points.
The strikers had a quiet night too. Neither Idan Toklomati nor his second-half replacement Archie Goodwin created much in the final third, and Goodwin’s missed penalty — after Allan Saint-Maximin had done the hard work to draw the foul — ended up being the moment that got away.
Charlotte was also missing a key piece in the middle of the park for that finale. Pep Biel sat out serving his suspension from the red card he picked up after the final whistle against Atlas, and his absence was felt. Without him, a lot of Charlotte’s buildup leaned on center backs stepping into midfield to force possession out wide, and the ball movement through the center never quite found its usual rhythm. It’s hard to say the result hinges entirely on one missing player, but Biel’s presence had clearly become more valuable to this midfield than it might have looked from the outside.
We asked captain Ashley Westwood afterward how he plans to help Goodwin bounce back from a miss that came at such a pivotal moment. His response was refreshingly matter-of-fact: even Lionel Messi misses penalties. Westwood said Goodwin’s already talking about wanting to get back out there and take the next one — exactly the kind of response you want to hear from a young striker after a moment like that, and exactly the kind of perspective a captain like Westwood is there to provide.
The Bigger Picture
There’s also a real question about depth heading into the final stretch of the MLS season. Smith has been candid that the club still needs reinforcements to close that gap before the season’s final stretch.
For now, Charlotte sit seventh in the Eastern Conference, four points behind Chicago Fire with a game in hand still to play. The schedule ahead looks favorable, which makes the next several weeks a real opportunity to turn the good habits from this tournament into results that matter — and to make sure this Leagues Cup exit ends up as a footnote rather than a storyline that follows this club into the fall.
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