UK men’s soccer suffers heartbreaking loss to Louisville, and continues a troubling trend

Kentucky men’s soccer continued a troubling trend Monday night: Allowing late goals that cost the Wildcats results.

On Sept. 2, UK allowed an 88th-minute equalizer to Virginia Tech that saw a home win turn into a 2-2 draw. Last Friday night, Kentucky allowed a 79th-minute winner to a top-10 ranked Wisconsin team that saw a valuable home draw, or potentially a win, turn into a defeat.

And on Monday night in front of a boisterous home crowd of 1,439 at the Wendell and Vickie Bell Soccer Complex, UK was dealt more late-game heartbreak, this time by the Wildcats’ biggest rival.

With just 53 seconds remaining in the annual rivalry showdown between No. 16 Kentucky and No. 15 Louisville, U of L’s Leon Kondic was played into the UK penalty box and sent a powerful right-footed blast with the outside of his foot into the top left corner of the net, evading the grasp of veteran UK goalkeeper Casper Mols and sending the visiting players and fans into pandemonium.

This was the first college goal for Kondic, a freshman midfielder from Slovenia.

The Cardinals then saw out the remaining time to secure a 1-0 rivalry win and their first victory in Lexington since 2014.

UK, 1-2-1 (W-L-D) this season, has now seen three straight matches marred by allowing late goals. Monday’s result also gave Louisville a second straight win in the series with UK, after the Cardinals defeated the Wildcats 4-2 in the Derby City last year.

UK head coach Johan Cedergren didn’t meet with media members following Monday’s loss to Louisville, which is now 4-1-0 (0-1-0 in the ACC) this season.

Since 1991, Kentucky still leads the series over Louisville, 15-10-5.

Physicality, red cards define Louisville soccer’s win over Kentucky

Monday’s matchup between the Cardinals and Wildcats was the first athletics meeting between UK and U of L in the 2024-25 school year. And the game came with all of the expected physicality and vitriol, plus a little more.

Both teams played the final 32 minutes of the match with only 10 players after UK’s Mateo Franzotti and U of L’s Olayinka Ogunleye were both shown red cards in the 58th minute. Both players are freshmen defenders for their respective schools.

Ogunleye, who picked up a yellow card in the first half, was shown a second yellow card following a late head-to-head challenge to earn his sending off. Franzotti received his straight red card following a scuffle that broke out after that challenge by Ogunleye.

Franzotti was shown a red after a lengthy video review of the incident, and the stat report for the match listed “violent conduct” as the reason for his dismissal.

In total, eight yellow cards were shown in Monday night’s match, along with the straight red card to Franzotti.

A total of 16 fouls (10 called on UK, six called on U of L) were whistled in the contest, often leading to stoppages of play and altercations between the teams.

Both goalkeepers also had standout performances Monday: UK junior Casper Mols made seven saves and Louisville sophomore Harvey Sellers made five stops en route to his second shutout of the season.

For UK fans, this recent run of results will bring back bad memories of the way the Wildcats started the 2023 season.

Last year, Kentucky won just three of its first nine matches, before staging a late-season comeback to earn a spot in the NCAA Tournament.

Kentucky has won at least one match in each of the last six NCAA Tournaments.

The next head-to-head team matchup between Kentucky and Louisville this school year will be on Sept. 18, when Kentucky volleyball hosts Louisville at the newly renovated Memorial Coliseum.

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