Column: Riverhounds reborn, really good

Kevin Kerr celebrates the first of three goals Saturday at Highmark Stadium. — TERRY O’NEIL/RIVERHOUNDS

BY DEJAN KOVACEVIC

The temperature along the banks of the Mon was 23 degrees by sundown Saturday, with the wind chill a breath-stunting 14. The trains rolling along the edge of Highmark Stadium clattered like percussive ice-picks. The Downtown skyscrapers steamed like chimneys in the dead of December. Even the ducks and geese, so common a sight now on all our shores, had flocked for cover.

Not even Beckham could bend one on this night. It would have been another frozen rope.

So here’s betting that the very last thought on anyone’s mind anywhere in our region, possibly including the 2,000-plus paying customers who wound up bundling themselves in black and gold scarves and beat their drums and sang and stomped all through the Riverhounds’ season opener, was that this was some swell night for a soccer match.

“Oh, no,” Kevin Kerr would say afterward. “It was crazy cold.”

“Brutal,” Robbie Vincent chimed in at Kerr’s shoulder. “Absolutely brutal.”

Yeah, right.

And I write that not just because Vincent was wearing short sleeves.

Or even that he had just scored two goals and set up the entirety of Kerr’s first professional hat trick in a 5-2 flattening of Harrisburg in what new coach Mark Steffens correctly called “a result that this franchise really needed.”

No, actually, I’m skeptical of those two players’ meteorological assessments wholly because there is no way that this match, with all its crispness and creativity and, to borrow from the soccer parlance, quality, could possibly have left anyone feeling anything other than warm and fuzzy.

Seriously. This was that good. Both sides, too, despite the lopsided result.

“It was outstanding, a real credit to how far our league has come in a short time,” Steffens told me on his way off the pitch, referring to the 28-team United Soccer League that’s now the unquestioned second tier in the nation under Major League Soccer. “You look at some of the plays made out here, some of the touches, the possessions … my goodness.”

He wasn’t alone.

“There were times during the match I had to pinch myself and remember where I was,” Paul Child was saying. He was, of course, among the brightest stars for the old indoor Pittsburgh Spirit and now does color commentary for the Riverhounds. “The quality tonight was just … outstanding. It’s a shame this didn’t happen a long time ago in the U.S., but we’re getting there now.”

I’d share with you a comparison point made by a visiting British talent evaluator, too, but it was so over the top I’m afraid it would bring little more than a roll of the eyes.

Suffice it to say they weren’t kidding.

Here are the goal highlights, and I’ll stress before your click to pay special attention to Harrisburg’s first strike, an absolutely beauty from the midfield onward:

The City Islanders, a USL finalist last season before losing to Sacramento, are anything but a patsy. That’s a big part of what made this, for the sparse few who witnessed it, special. The visitors long have lived by an aggressive approach, one through which feeder systems in central Pennsylvania are raised. but Steffens’ vision for the Riverhounds takes that and multiplies it by 10. Inspired by years of training under the Dutch model — never touch the ball more than twice, move it quickly and move it toward the box, preferably by air — he makes no apology of wanting to keep the opponent on its heels and score, score, score.

Well, he did offer one apology.

“We had the 2-0 lead and, after about 20 minutes, I took the press off,” Steffens said. “That was dumb. I put it back in the second half, and we got back to what we were doing.”

The Riverhounds were sound systematically, too, beginning with a back line that looked so confident it was barely recognizable compared to all the panicky punts into the river we saw last summer. The midfield was solid, tight and occasionally ambitious. And up front … wow, hard to know where to start with the superlatives for Vincent and Kerr.

I’ll start with this: I had them wrong.

Robbie Vincent left-foots a cross through the Harrisburg box in the first half. — TERRY O’NEIL/RIVERHOUNDS

This is the third year for both in Pittsburgh, and I’d always pegged Vincent as a one-trick pony, a powerful leg who could hurt you from distance but otherwise offered little. It’s hard to say if Vincent’s team-high six preseason goals and now this gem are the product of his own improvement or Steffens’ system — all players up front are given broad latitude to roam where needed for ball control — but this version of Vincent is something previously unseen.

“I’m feeling more confident, sure, but I’ve got great teammates like Kevin and a great cast all around,” Vincent said. “I think that’s it more than anything.”

I didn’t have Kerr in much different of a category. He was always stubborn for the ball, rough and rugged. But again, I’m delighted to misfire. All three goals on this night — and I’m not even mentioning a delicate lob over the keeper that was nullified by offside — were at least a four-star, with his first one being the evening’s lone five-star.

Vincent was coping with a bouncing ball at the left edge of midfield — “It was cold,” he explained anew — when he suddenly swung around and booted a diagonal cross that covered no fewer than 50 yards and, most elegant of all, caught Kerr in full stride bursting toward the right edge of the box. Kerr was chased hard, but he hammered it home.

I asked both about the chemistry involved …

This won’t happen every night at Highmark. There won’t be five goals and hat tricks or even the general quality. It’s asking far too much of the USL, even now that its talent pool has never been as rich with both internationals and Americans.

But at the risk of digressing, I also couldn’t help but wonder after this one about a question a buddy recently asked me in casual conversation.

Him: “So, which soccer team do you follow?”

Me: “Follow?”

Him: “You know, everyone’s got a soccer team now that they follow. Most go for English Premier League, but you’ve got all kind. Germany. Spain. Italy. Which one do you follow?”

Me: “The one from Pittsburgh.”

Him: “Huh?”

Me: “I cover the Riverhounds. I guess you could say they’re the ones I follow.”

Him: “Come on, man. I’m talking about real soccer.”

Me: “Been to a match?”

Him: “Didn’t they go bankrupt?”

Me: “Yeah, and that had nothing to do with soccer. Plus, they’re out of it. Been to a match?”

Him: “Not yet. I don’t know if I would. Maybe. I might.”

I don’t make a habit of telling people how to think or certainly how to spend their money. And I’d never come within a solar system of suggesting anyone watch the Riverhounds if they weren’t interested in the beautiful game itself.

But if you like soccer and think that you might like this … there’s a better chance than ever that you’ll be right. Our city has never seen the sport played at this level.