Photo courtesy Michael Rincon / Phoenix Rising FC
A glance at the current USL Eastern and Western Conference standings will give you a look at how things stand in the race for the 2018 USL Cup Playoffs, but on Friday world-renowned data analysis website fivethirtyeight.com looked further into the future as it added the league to its club soccer predictions matrix and global rankings.
And, according to the projections going into this weekend’s contests, Orange County SC is currently the side most likely to lift the USL Cup at the end of this season with a 12 percent chance ahead of its visit to Phoenix Rising FC this Saturday night (10:30 p.m. ET | Match Center | ESPN+).
Orange County sits ahead of current conference leaders Real Monarchs SLC and FC Cincinnati, both of whom sit with a nine percent chance of lifting the trophy in November according to the projection model. The Monarchs, meanwhile, are favored to lift the USL Regular Season Championship with a projected total of 70 points, three ahead of FCC in the race for the first silverware of the season.
Cincinnati, however, sits with the highest Soccer Power Index rating in the league at 38.9, a mark that places it the highest of any USL side in the global rankings at No. 326, where FCC sits directly below the Eredivisie’s NAC Breda and one spot ahead of Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup finalist the Houston Dynamo of Major League Soccer.
As the 2018 USL regular season comes to the crunch, we’ll be keeping an eye on the numbers in the standings and the projections as the debate on which side will lift the USL Cup picks up steam.
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