Indy Eleven vs Forward Madison - 2025 Jagermeister Cup

Summary

- Opponent: Forward Madison FC 
- Location: Breese Stevens Field
- Attendance: 3,748
- Final Score: 4-0 W

- Starting XI: Sulte, Stanley, Musa, Ofeimu, White, Rendon, Quinn (C), Murphy, Blake, Foster, Kizza

- Substitution: Amoh 57' (Kizza); Collier 57' (Rendon); O'Brien, J. 80' (White); Lindley 90'+3' (Foster)

- Unused: Charles-Cook, Hogan, McRobb

Scoring Summary:
IND - Quinn 69' (unassisted)
IND - Blake 72' (assist Collier)
IND - Amoh 84' (unassisted)
IND - Amoh 90'+3' (unassisted)

- Bookings:

IND - Rendon 20' (Yellow)
IND - Murphy 50' (Yellow)
MAD - Murphy 59' (Yellow)
IND - Quinn 60' (Yellow)
MAD - Sousa 70' (Yellow)
IND - Musa 90'+3' (Yellow)

- Referee: Muhammad Hassan

- Adage goals: None.

Thoughts and Opinions

Longtime Indy Eleven fans are no strangers to tonight's opponent Forward Madison. The first President of the Indy organization was Peter Wilt, who helped bring the team to Indianapolis with Ersal Ozdemir. Under his leadership, Peter helped cultivate the fan-centric culture that has permeated Indy Eleven since the beginning. He was such a part of Indy, that like fans of probably all of his teams, Indy fans wanted to keep track of the activities of their first leader. When Peter Wilt stepped down from his role with the team to take a role with the burgeoning NISA league, Indy fans lost a key cog of what made Indy Indy in those early days. So when they heard that Peter was leaving NISA to help start yet another club, they knew that there would be a good chance that the team would have a similar culture. As Forward Madison hit every right note with their early marketing and kit reveals, Indy fans knew this was going to be an unofficial "sister" club that they would want to follow. Since their entry into USL League One, several former Indy Eleven players have found their way to Madison, including "Mr. Indy" Don Smart, and Forward Madison's current captain, Mitch Osmond (Drew Conner, Paulo Jr., Wojciech Wojcik, and Allen Torres are others). 

Club histories aside, Coach McAuley has repeatedly stated that winning trophies needs to be something that Indy prioritizes, and paraphrasing a repeated statement from him, "you can't win trophies unless you win the first game." While that's not exactly true in this group stage format of this year's Jagermeister Cup, getting off to a good start in the competition is vital. While last year's inaugural version of this Cup competition included only the USL League One teams, Forward Madison was last year's runners-up so they also wanted to duplicate last year's run. At the end of the game, it was the visitors that kicked off their Jagermeister run with a victory, with a 3-nil win thanks to three 2nd half goals from Quinn, Blake, and Amoh (x2). The first tiebreaker in the group stage is goals scored, so Indy's four goals, and +4 GD, could come into play later depending on the rest of the group results as the Cup progresses.

Forward Madison - 1st Half Heat Map

The first half looked much like fans of both teams have come to probably expect. Forward Madison controlled the ball, but Indy let them control the ball in non-dangerous locations on the field. Most of their touches, as can be seen from their first half touch map were in their own half of the field. That's exactly where Coach McAuley and Indy Eleven want their opponents to have the ball. While not impossible, scoring from your own half is difficult. Indy regularly sent balls into Forward Madison's half, yet another trend from a Coach McAuley led team. Balls away from your own goal help keep balls being scored in your goal. Indy turned their possession into 8 shots, 2 on target to Forward Madison's 3 (2 on target). Yet, the teams went into the halftime locker room in a nil-nil stalemate. 

I would never claim that Indy is a "tall" team. Depending on which players are on the field at any given time, the average height might be hovering just around 6'-0", assuming you take Sulte out of the equation. Perhaps that is why Indy continues to work the short-corner. Whatever the reason, Indy continue to utilize that option versus sending corner kicks directly into the box. It's interesting to me that Indy's latest goal in team history came from the traditional corner kick into the box from Lindley to White in Indy's last Cup competition game.

Second Half - Shots

Around the 70th minute, Indy's veteran presence unlocked the stalemate and never looked back. Quinn picked the pocket of the Forward Madison defender as they tried to build-out from Schipmann. Once the had the ball, Quinn toe-poked the ball under Schipmann and Indy had their opener. Just three minutes later, Blake demonstrated a moment of class as he drew three defenders to him, stopped on a dime, and put a short pass to Collier. The two players proceeded to run a give-and-go drill straight from the training pitch, and Blake pushed the ball out of the reach of Schipmann to double Indy's lead. A lead that was further extended in the 84th minute when Collier got his defender spinning, put a shot on goal that Schipmann spilled as far as Amoh who poked it past the sprawled goalkeeper. Indy put a nice tight bow on the game in the 90'+3' when Foster's speed was able to track down a ball up the right side and put in a cross along the 6-yard box for Amoh. The very 2nd half busy Schipmann stopped the first attempt, but couldn't hold onto it, and Amoh poked yet another ball into the goal to get Amoh's 3rd goal in two games and Indy's first multi-goal game from a player. Maybe just as important, Indy closed out the game without conceding giving Sulte his first clean sheet of the season.

Tonight's four-goal second half is the third time in team history that the team has scored that many goals in a half. The last time was last year when Blake and Augi Williams (x3) scored 4 in the second half of a September game against Miami FC in a 4-nil victory. The time before that was a June 2022 game against Charleston when Pinho and Arteaga (x3) scored 4 goals in the first half before holding on for a 4-3 win. It's interesting that each of Indy's four-half games have resulted in multiple goals for an Indy player, including 2 of Indy's 5 hat trick games. 

With the win and the 4 goals, Indy sits atop of the Group 3 standings, but Birmingham and Chattanooga don't play until tomorrow. It was as good of a start as Indy could have hoped to achieve as they look to work towards hardware in their second Cup tournament of the year. They were different kinds of wins, with the USOC requiring about as much time as feasibly possible, and the Jagermeister Cup getting four goals in a half, but both games had clean sheets and victories. 

The Game Beckons Game Ball

There was a lot of good play from multiple players. That's generally the case when you get a 4-nil win. White had a good game. Quinn had the game winner. Blake got on the score sheet. Musa defended well. While I don't like to give the a player the GBGB in back-to-back games, Amoh did everything that you want a second half sub to do in their limited minutes. He affected the game with very minimal touches. In just 14 touches, he had 4 shots, 3 on target, and 2 goals. That's a good way to spend 30-minutes of game time. You can argue that goal scorers get the glory, but Amoh still just edges the other good performances to get tonight's GBGB.