Preseason has been in full swing now for about a month and El Paso Locomotive FC has been hard at work as the team prepares for its first game against Sacramento Republic SC on March 12. With less than a month until the 2022 USL Championship season, the team has been working on creating the culture and identity that they want, while building team chemistry with a new squad.
As the preseason continues to march forward towards the first game of the regular season, Locomotive Head Coach and Technical Director John Hutchinson has stated how impressed he is with the entire squad, mentioning that the players have turned a massive corner in their progress, but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done before the team starts its season.
Since the last update, the team has been hard at work, building off of two preseason games against the Locomotive U-19 USL Academy team and the Barcelona Arizona Residency Academy. The Boys in Blue can now add in three more preseason games under their belt as the squad played UDA at NMSU Academy, Louisville City FC, and the Lubbock Christian University.
El Paso Locomotive secured a 2-0 win against UDA and picked up a 3-1 win against Lubbock after a wayward game in Tucson against Louisville City FC that ended 5-2 in the Kentucky team’s favor.
The scheduled matches against Houston Dynamo, Sporting Kansas City, and FC Juarez were unfortunately canceled due to circumstances outside of either team’s control, but Locomotive has found a lot to build on through training and the preseason games it has played.
“The main objective was just fitness and putting them out there for 30-45 minutes,” said Hutchinson. “They trained in the morning of every preseason game and had a double session of training the day before. It was all a focus on fitness and resilience and making sure they become durable.
We’re still working on our football. That’s the most important part. I tell our team all the time it’s 95% us and 5% opposition. If we get what we want to do and try to create right, we are going to be really hard to beat. For me, that’s the key. We are still trying to build our cohesion, we’ve just got all our players together, but all the bases of the principles are in place. Now it’s about continuing the education of exactly what we want.”
Next, the team takes flight towards Boston to play Major League Soccer’s New England Revolution in a previously unscheduled preseason match-up on Tuesday, February 23. One key difference against Revolution, however, is nearly the entire team is being made available as now a majority of the club has reported to El Paso.
Eric Calvillo and Diego Luna returned from the El Salvador Men’s National Team and the U.S. U-20 Men’s National Team, respectively. Calvillo had played in two of three games for El Salvador in their quest for 2020 FIFA World Cup qualification, while Luna played in matches against a pair of Major League Soccer that were in Florida for preseason as the USMNT U-20’s prepares for the CONCACAF U-20 Championship and the Paris 2024 Summer Olympic Games.
New players such as Emmanuel Sonupe, Ander Egiluz, and Nick Hinds have been with the team since the start of preseason, but they have now been joined by Martin Payares, Christiano Francois, and Evan Newton. All returning players from the last season have made the training sessions as well making Harry Brockbank the only missing player to have yet reported to El Paso as his visa to the United States gets finalized. With most of the team now in El Paso, not only can Coach Hutchinson and his coaching staff he can truly start to help the team understand exactly what they want for them, but the players can start building the team they would like to be.
There are plenty of new players to have joined the Locomotive roster, joining players that have been with the club from the beginning or for multiple years, but there hasn’t been any problem in the new guys fitting into the club.
“The players that were here, that I inherited from Mark [Lowry] and the club, are really good people and on top of that they are good footballers, so you get the best of both worlds,” said Hutchinson. “They are the ones that are driving the culture, the environment, and what they want to be. You’ve got some incredible human beings here – Richie Ryan, Yuma, [Matt] Bahner, [Andrew] Fox, [Eder] Borelli, [Aaron] Gomez – you go through the list, and they are all incredible people. They have this environment of work they want to create.”
So far that environment is a competitive but fun one. Every player on the squad is competing for a stater’s position, which can only bring out the best in each other. For the players, this kind of environment introduces a variety of different challenges. It adds more intensity and more drive on the training fields and in games while pushing one another in supportive ways while having fun playing a game these players have grown up loving. No Starting XI spot is guaranteed, and each player knows it as Coach Hutchinson has told the team that the players in the best form will play on the weekend. Everyone understands what they need to do and how they need to do it.
Of course, since the last preseason update, there have been several other challenges, not which of least was the weather.
“The snow day was a big challenge,” Hutchinson said with a grin and a laugh. “It was a huge issue. If it wasn’t for my wife, I wouldn’t have bought a big jacket. I was just thinking ‘It’s Texas.’ All of a sudden people are telling me about snow, I turn up, and the fields are all snowed in, we had to cancel training, and the next day they are all iced, and it was a mess! Obviously, that was an issue. Now I’m hearing for the next two months it’s going to be blowing dust.”
Locomotive is set to hit the ground running on March 12 against Sacramento Republic SC, fowling up the season opener with two quick succession games at Southwest University Park against New Mexico United and Las Vegas Lights. However, with all the training sessions, preseason games, and the competitive environment the team is building for itself, the club will be ready to continue its winning ways in the 2022 season.
