Scott Arfield's Life Lessons
After a painful Away Day leaves Charlotte FC at an early-season inflection point, the veteran midfielder's experience points the way forward
Fresh off his first start of the young 2024 season, a focused Scott Arfield jogged to the microphone Wednesday to take a few questions from the usual suspects. He wasn’t in the mood for jokes, and once everybody got the piercing rays of the morning sun out of our eyes, you could tell we had some illuminating answers in store.
Arfield went the full 90 minutes in Nashville and shook the top netting so hard with a late free kick just outside the box, you could forgive a fan being dragged out by GEODIS security on the opposite side of the yard for thinking that Scotty had bagged an equalizer.
“Everybody wants to play as much football as possible,” the 35-year-old attacking midfielder commented in regards to that first start of the season, “I’m no different even at this age…The more minutes you can play, the happier you are.”
Scotty going all the way on Saturday may-or-may-not have been the plan from the start in Music City, presumably he’d have been a candidate to be replaced by Brecht Dejaegere at some point in the 2nd half, until Kerwin Vargas’s injury forced the Belgian into an emergency 1st half entrance instead.
I won’t claim to know and it doesn’t really matter. Staying ready to rock with whatever, whenever is part of the character of any team player, and especially the guy who’s been doing it longer than anyone else. Arfield answered the call as expected, and tried to orchestrate the Charlotte attack as best he could in a chaotic environment that never really saw any lovely free-flowing football. His impact outside of the free kick could be called minimal, but he also covered a lot of different areas:
Dean Smith didn’t hide his disdain on Saturday for some of the officiating failures we all witnessed that night, potentially costing the Crown a point on the table and more momentum coming home than we’ve currently got going. But when I asked Arfield on Wednesday for his mindset in dealing with that type of on-field adversity, and how he shares his experience with the squad, Scott surprised me by taking his answer to an even bigger off-field perspective.
“Listen, that’s life, it’s not just in soccer, football…that’s life. It’s not gonna go for you all the time, it’s a situation that you’re in and you just need to understand that some people see it differently.“
Sure you can read it as generic, but when a guy with Scotty’s international experience talks about life, it has a lot more impact than if you heard those same words in the form of a media-coached soundbite from a random 20-something. “That’s Life” just carries more weight from someone who’s been out there living it harder and longer…ask Frank Sinatra.
Arfield’s ability to take himself outside of the game and consider adversity in the larger context will come in handy for the Crown, whether he remains in the starting lineup or not. Kerwin Vargas didn’t train Wednesday, Enzo Copetti’s status is a mystery, and with another week to wait for Liel Abada, Charlotte FC’s attack is looking a little thin, and unfortunately…a little toothless.
Charlotte are middle of the pack so far in MLS when it comes to Shots on Goal per 90, clocking in with 4.0 through four matches. If they could get that up to 6.0 they’d rank 2nd in the league.
Of course one very easy way to get a Shot on Target is to take a penalty kick, and Charlotte can rightly feel denied that opportunity on the play below.
As much as we all hate focusing on ref decisions…Arfield couldn’t shy away from commenting either:
“In my opinion it’s definite penalty…but it never happened. It’s about how you bounce back from the decision. It’s not going to be the last decision that goes against us this season.”
Arfield’s seen it all enough times to know that the best way to overcome decisions made against you is to start making some decisions of your own…namely: Shoot the Damn Ball!
“Courage, probably,” Arfield answered when I asked him what the team needed in order to pump those numbers up. “You’ve got ways you can score- you can build up or you can take your chances. That’s one thing we’ve spoke about, is when you get in position to shoot it’s the only way you’re gonna score a goal.”
And there should be no lacking motivation. After two very long trips and one arduously short one, the boys are back in town, and the home crowd will provide a push. Columbus Crew are coming to the Fortress and they haven’t slowed down one bit since winning MLS Cup last year. For all the positive vibes under Deano and the excitement about culture change, results could be a lot better, and a point or three this weekend in a very tough matchup will go a long way to calming any nervous rumblings in the fanbase.
“Naturally when you lose a game, you need some choice words which we’ve had, but at the same time it’s all been positive,” said Arfield. “We know (The Crew) love to play football. It’s up to us to stay compact. They get numbers forward, it’s up to us to look at that in a different way…especially at home, we want to win again.”
Sounds like a guy who’s ready to go the full 90 again to me, and god help Columbus if he gets another look at a dangerous free kick from just on the edge of the box. He’s learned enough at this point that he isn’t going to miss twice.