At the conclusion of Saturday evening's game against Atlanta United 2, Huntsville City FC marked the end of the first quarter of the 2025 MLS Next Pro season.
The Rocket Men's 14 points through their first seven games is comfortably the best start to a season in club history, with previous incarnations of this club picking up six points through seven games in their maiden campaign of 2023, and just three points in 2024.
With one milestone down, it's as good a time as any to take stock of what we've seen out of the MLS Next Pro side thus far. I have a selection of questions from our subscriber-only Discord server regarding Huntsville that I'll answer here today. Let's get right into it, shall we?
As someone who doesn’t really ever get to watch Huntsville, I know I am curious as to similarities and any differences that you see in style of play between Huntsville and the parent club. For example, are they more pure possession to build those skills or more pragmatic because of lesser talent? And what you may theorize as to those reasons?
This era of Nashville SC as an organization has been about building one single, club-wide ethos, and that shows in the tactical setups of the first team in Nashville and their counterparts in Huntsville.
Many of the same patterns of play, particularly a reliance on third-man runs both in possession and in transition. Ethan O'Brien makes similar box-crashing runs to what we've grown used to seeing from Hany Mukhtar over the years. Pep Casas might as well be a full-blown Gastón Brugman regen. The list goes on.
