Know Your Enemy: The Richmond Kickers

The Hearts of Pine Return to USL1 play at 5:00 PM EDT on Saturday August 9th with a match against the Richmond Kickers. This will be the Hearts 9th consecutive sellout at Fitzpatrick Stadium. As with all USL games, a live broadcast of the match will be available on ESPN+.

Team History:

The Richmond Kickers are the only USL1 team to have won the US Open Cup which they did in 1995. United Soccer League

The Richmond Kickers of Richmond, VA argue for being the oldest continuously operating professional soccer club in the United States. Founded in 1993, the Kickeroos as they are called, have been a mainstay of lower-division soccer for 30 years. Over the years, they have floated across many of the USL's predecessor leagues and have been a member of USL1 since its founding in 2019. Among the honors the team holds is the 1995 US Open Cup, the American equivalent of the FA Cup and the oldest soccer competition in the country. Since then the team has won their league 5 times, most recently the USL1 in 2022.

Richmond has recently formed a strong rivalry with Forward Madison in the Henny Derby. Established originally as a bet between two fans, the Derby has become one of the hallmark match-ups of the USL1 season (and yes, the winner does get a bottle of Hennesy). The club has gone through some recent struggles last season, which saw them finish 8th in the table, but this club is a perennial and should not be underestimated.

Richmond has one of the strongest supporters in USL1 featuring a supporters groups and a dedicated media network: the River City Red Army, and the River City 93. The team plays their matches at City Stadium which has a total capacity of 22,000 but is often reduced for soccer down to about 6,000. That said, it is very common to see Richmond at the top of the league for attendance boasting an average attendance of 4,786 in 2024. Richmond does have a women’s team that plays in the USL W league (the women’s equivalent of USL2) who play under the name Richmond Ivy.

Last Campaign & Key Players:

Team Captain Dakota Barnathan was among those who were resigned for the 2025 Season. Richmond Kickers

Richmond finished their 32nd season as a professional club 8th in the table, just barely edging out Lexington Sporting Club for a spot in playoff competition. Nonetheless, Richmond resigned Head Coach Darren Sawatzky to a multi-year contract. Sawatzky is known to frequent a 4-3-3 attacking style of play. The average age of the squad last season was 26.6 years old.

On December 11th Richmond announced that they would be bringing back 12 players from their 2024 roster. The most notable of this squad is Argentinian Emiliano Terzaghi, the USL1 Golden Boot winner from 2020-2022 although his form seemed to have dropped this past season. He was replaced as captain midway through the season by center-back Dakota Barnathan. Also re-signed are, the 2024 leading goal scorer, and Griffin Garnett, a nominee for the 2024 Young Player of the Year. Garnett, along with Landon Johnson and Beckett Howell are the first 3 players in Kickers history to go from academy to professional.

One of the Kicker's best offseason aquistions has come in the form of Nils Seufert, a German midfielder. A heatmap of Seufert's matches for the Roos shows the player moves actively all around the pitch and has been a big part of Richmond's strategy this season.

Final Thoughts

Consisently boasting the best attendance in the USL1, City Stadium is often considered a fortress. Richmond Kickers

So why hate on the Roos? Well, for one, they’re the old man of this league – they’re older than any other team we are going to face with hardware to back it up. If we want to prove the Hearts of Pine are a serious contender we have to beat Richmond to show we can go up against an established side. From a supporters section point of view, Richmond's enthusiastic supporters are worthy of direct competition - it's not every SG in the country that can claim that they are responsible for starting the largest rivalry in their league. Some would say City Stadium has fortress qualities rivaled only by the atmosphere at Fitzpatrick Stadium.

On a historical front, Mainers and Richmondites have had 1 notable interaction. During the Civil War, Richmond was the capital of the seditious Confederacy. At the end of the war, Richmond was abandoned by its defenders and occupied by the US Army. Among the units to occupy the city was the storied 11th Maine Volunteer Regiment which had served the Union since the war began. Largely recruited around the Augusta area, the Regiment occupied the city for much of the last summer of the war. Coincidently for us, the symbol worn on the uniforms of that Maine regiment to distinguish them from the soldiers of other Union divisions was a bright red heart.

This article was originally published in December of 2024 in the lead-up to the 2025 USL1 Season. It has been updated to include some info on their 2025 season so far.