Damus goal, Koleilat shutout end Birmingham Legion winless streak

Birmingham Legion FC ended a nine-game USL Championship winless run with a 1-0 victory over Rhode Island FC at Protective Stadium, and the result came from the kind of defensive correction the club needed most. Ronaldo Damus scored the only goal, and Jassem Koleilat backed it with a six-save shutout that turned a tight match into three points for Birmingham.

The game never opened up into a track meet. Damus supplied the decisive finish, and the Legion spent the rest of the night protecting a narrow lead with a shape that held up under pressure. Koleilat’s six stops were the difference between a tense one-goal win and another late disappointment, with each save helping Birmingham keep Rhode Island from finding an equalizer.

The turning point came in the 63rd minute, when Damus delivered the breakthrough that settled a match shaped by patience and defending. Birmingham did not need a flood of chances to win, only one clean finish and enough organization behind it to close the door. That was the sharpest shift from the recent run: the Legion looked far harder to break down than they had across the nine-game skid.

Rhode Island arrived after back-to-back 1-0 wins, but Birmingham’s response was to make the contest just as narrow and just as tense, only with a different ending. The home side’s back line and goalkeeper held the line long enough for Damus’s goal to stand, and the shutout gave the result a level of control Birmingham had been missing.

The matchup also fit a familiar pattern between the two clubs in 2026. Birmingham had already beaten Rhode Island 3-1 on May 2 at Centreville Bank Stadium, when Sebastian Tregarthen had a goal and an assist and Damus reached his 50th regular-season goal in the USL Championship. This time, the Legion won a different way, by getting the lone strike and then defending as a unit for 90 minutes. It was exactly the sort of response that can steady a team, and Birmingham now has a cleaner template to build from if this result is more than a brief escape from a poor run.