Winning in the USL is hard. Winning year after year after year? Nearly impossible.
Every club in the Championship dreams of competing at the top of the table every single season, but few have done it. Since the modern USL began in 2011, only one club has ever repeated as playoff champion. Lower the bar, and the same idea holds; since 2021, every club has finished below their conference’s top four at least once.
Still, organizations like Louisville City and the Sacramento Republic stand out. Louisville has reached the Eastern Conference Final in every season in club history, and they’ve earned a stellar 2.1 points per game since 2020. Sacramento, meanwhile, ranks second in the West with 1.6 points per game during that same timeframe – a stretch where they also reached an Open Cup and Jagermeister Cup final.
What can we learn from those clubs about competing in the USL? Danny Cruz, Louisville’s head coach, and Todd Dunivant, Sacramento’s president and general manager, spoke to Backheeled to explain.
Continuity is key: “Building something rather than tearing up the playbook”
For Cruz, a team-wide ethos is the heart of the matter.
“The buzzword that gets thrown around a lot is ‘culture.’ When you break that down into the minutia, it's really the people. For me, that’s the key to this club continuing to have the success that it does,” he said.
