Watching a game where another team holds your playoff fate in their hands might be the least comfortable position a player can be in.

For Detroit City FC’s Stephen Carroll and the 30-or-so players and staff that were at the club’s Fieldhouse watching Miami FC visit Sacramento Republic FC on the west coast after its scoreless draw with Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC had concluded, the mood was certainly tense.

“I watched it, just hoping and praying that someone would come through for us,” said Carroll this week. “It was crazy because the game was going just as expected. You were just hanging on for dear life until the very end. There was a lot of missed charges by Sacramento, so everyone’s getting more and more frustrated, more and more antsy about the game.

“Towards the end, I couldn’t even watch it. I just walked away and heard everyone start screaming and then came back to them to make sure that they got over the line.”

Like Carroll, teammate Maxi Rodriguez was somewhat solitary as the final whistle blew in California, signaling DCFC’s season was still alive. Having celebrated wildly at home with his girlfriend and dog – admittedly more than he had expected to – when Russell Cicerone put Republic FC ahead in the second half, he was out taking said dog for a walk and watching the ending on his phone around midnight in his neighborhood.

“My dog didn’t even let me watch the final whistle [on the couch],” said Rodriguez. “So, I had to watch it on my ESPN app walking the dog. I celebrated on my own outside.”

All that mattered the following morning was there was at least one more game to be played.

No matter that it was against a Pittsburgh Riverhounds SC side Le Rouge had played close in prior meetings but sat on top of the Eastern Conference after losing only once at home all campaign.

For both Carroll and Rodriguez, advancing to the USL Championship Playoffs represented a clean slate after the regular season.

After comfortably making the postseason field in the club’s first year in the league in 2022, it was a challenging year for the longtime Le Rouge players.

“Going into the weekend I just knew that they didn’t want to play us in the playoffs, first round,” added Carroll. “100 percent did not want to play us in the first round, because they know that we battle with them stride for stride every time we played them. So, we kind of almost took that into the week of training that, like, ‘they’re shook. They don't want to play us, they would prefer someone else in the first round, for sure.’ That’s just the way it played out in the end.”

Confidence? Sure.

But there’s also the feeling of that chip on the shoulder the club has carried from well before it joined the USL Championship. For Rodriguez, it embodies the spirit of the city. Given the way the season played out for DCFC, there was reason to believe the visitors would bow out at the first hurdle again against the Hounds in front of a packed Highmark Stadium, but being doubted is almost how Le Rouge prefer it.

When the side arrived in the Championship it heard the chatter about the players it was bringing with it from prior seasons, and that the supporters chirped too much for their own good.

“People said they dislike the club because they’re getting so much grief from the supporters,” said Carroll. “We think we have to back it up, and we don’t really get respect because other supporters have started talking crap about us, in that kind of situation.

“But over the years it’s always been, we’ve taken a step up. … Detroit has something to prove. Last year when we first came to the USL and the squad that we brought to the USL, people had doubts about us from Day 1. So last year was just proving that we were there to play, we were there to compete, and we were going to be a very tough team for anyone to play this year.”

Having disposed of one club with which a rivalry is brewing in the Hounds, Le Rouge are now focused on another in a trip to face two-time Championship title winner and four-time Eastern Conference winner Louisville City FC this Saturday at Lynn Family Stadium.

As with the Hounds, there’s a level of respect within Le Rouge’s squad for what LouCity has accomplished over almost a decade. The last time they played in a knockout game, Louisville eliminated Detroit in the Fourth Round of the 2022 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup. This Saturday’s hosts also claimed victory in the first three league meetings between the sides before DCFC won the last outing in July.

With all of that behind it, DCFC believes it has nothing to lose, just as it had in its clash with Pittsburgh.

“I think we’re going into it with the same mentality of we have to work hard, we have to win second balls, we have to rise to the challenge, because it’s not going to easy,” said Rodriguez “At the same time we’re the 8-seed, we really have nothing to lose, so we can go out and try to prove people wrong.

“We understand how good that team is and how much history they have when it comes to the postseason. They laid the foundation when it comes to setting a culture, having a stadium, having a training ground, that is what the USL is striving for. So, it’s exciting to play against a really good team with a lot of history in the postseason. It’s going to be a challenge, but I think all of us in Detroit really embrace that challenge.”

Certainly, it beats the alternative at this time of year.

“We went from sitting on our couch at 10 o’clock hoping that a team can score a goal so we can get into the playoffs to beating the No. 1 team, surprising everyone who thought that we were going to get blown out of the water,” said Rodriguez. “Anything can happen in the USL. I think that's the beauty of it. I think any team can beat any team anytime, anyplace. It’s just a matter of who shows up on the day and who gets a couple of lucky breaks.

“It’s going to be high intensity. I’m looking forward to it.”