Charleston Battery host Loudoun United with East lead in sight

Charleston Battery’s home meeting with Loudoun United FC carried more than a regular-season label: it was a chance to keep pressure on the Eastern Conference front-runners while protecting second place in a crowded table. Charleston entered Week 17 at 7-4-2 with 23 points, while Loudoun came in 11th on 10 points after grinding out a 1-1 road draw at Birmingham Legion FC.

The Battery also arrived with a sharp edge in front of goal. Their 2-5 win at Sporting Club Jacksonville gave Charleston consecutive five-goal performances, and Miguel Berry led the way with a brace and one assist in Jacksonville, his first two-goal match since August 2021. Maalique Foster, Jeremy Kelly and Alec Hughes also scored in a night that finished as a season sweep of the expansion side and pushed Charleston further up the standings. Even a two-and-a-half-hour weather delay from thunderstorms in Jacksonville could not slow the Battery’s attack.

That form met a matchup Charleston had controlled for years. The Battery beat Loudoun 2-1 in Prinx Tires USL Cup group play at Segra Field on April 25, when Graham Smith delivered the stoppage-time winner after Berry had opened the scoring. USL said that result stretched Charleston’s unbeaten run in the series across all competitions to 13 games, the longest active streak of its kind in the league. Charleston’s 4-1 home win over Loudoun at Patriots Point on Aug. 24, 2025 had already moved the club’s regular-season home winning streak to nine, a run USL described as the seventh-longest in league history.

Patriots Point Soccer Stadium in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, was scheduled to host the Week 17 game at 7 p.m. ET, with ESPN+ carrying the match and Palmetto Sports Network airing it locally. Charleston entered unbeaten at home in 2026 with six wins and two draws, the sort of record that turns a midweek date into a test of whether a contender handles the games it is supposed to win.

Loudoun still had a path to make that uncomfortable. Abdellatif Aboukoura had recently returned to the scoresheet, and USL has pointed to him as one of the league’s breakout young players. Loudoun’s own preview framed the trip as a chance to build on its road point in Birmingham and take three points from one of the East’s top teams, a spoiler role Charleston could not afford to dismiss while chasing the top of the conference.