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Season Review Oct 18, 2026

Connecticut’s 2026 summer soccer season, club by club

Three Connecticut clubs play in national amateur leagues that run in the summer. In 2026 New Haven United FC won the NPSL’s North Atlantic Conference and reached the league’s national semifinals for the first time. In USL League Two, Connecticut Rush finished eighth of ten in the Northeast Division in its first season, and AC Connecticut finished ninth. This review is built from the league tables, match reports and match records listed at the end.

Two summer leagues

Both leagues are amateur. In the U.S. Open Cup, their clubs count as amateur teams, in what U.S. Soccer calls the Open Division. Connecticut’s professional clubs play at higher levels: Hartford Athletic in the USL Championship, which U.S. Soccer lists as Division II, and CT United FC in MLS Next Pro, a Division III league. This site’s guide to how Connecticut soccer is organized shows where each level fits.

USL League Two calls itself pre-professional and says its clubs let amateur players train and compete while keeping their college eligibility. Each club plays 14 games against teams in its own division between early May and mid-July, and the league had 158 clubs in 2026. The NPSL began play in 2003. In 2026 it had 55 teams in eight conferences, a regular season from early May to early July, and playoffs that ended with its national final on August 1.

New Haven United FC: conference champion, national semifinalist

New Haven United, coached by Kledis Capollari, won the six-team North Atlantic Conference with 6 wins, 2 ties and 2 losses. Its 20 points were one more than the New York Shockers had. It split its home games between two college grounds: Yale’s Reese Stadium in New Haven, where it opened its home schedule against the Shockers on May 17, and the University of New Haven’s Kathy Zolad Stadium in West Haven. There, on May 30, it beat American Soccer Club New York 3-0, with goals from Ali Taleb, Parker Vasic and Johan Bermudez.

The top three teams reached the playoffs. American Soccer Club New York beat the Shockers 3-1 in the conference semifinal, and New Haven United hosted it in the final at Kathy Zolad Stadium on July 12. The final finished 2-2, and New Haven United won the penalty shootout 5-4.

Next came the East Region final on July 18 in Chester, Pennsylvania, against West Chester United SC, the team that had ended New Haven United’s first season with a 4-0 win in 2025. This time New Haven United won 4-2. Lucas Almeida and Ali Taleb scored, and Preston Alessio scored twice. It was the club’s first East Region final, and the win took it to the national semifinals.

The semifinal was played on July 25 at Gene Malcolm Stadium in Bristol, Virginia, the home of Bristol Rhythm AFC, in front of 896 people. Bristol Rhythm, the NPSL’s top-ranked team and still unbeaten, scored in the 75th and 87th minutes to win 2-0. On August 1 it lost the national final 3-0 at home to El Farolito of San Francisco, the 2026 champion.

Alessio, a midfielder from Beacon Falls who plays for UConn, was named TopDrawerSoccer.com’s 2026 NPSL Young Player of the Season on July 16, when he had three goals and three assists. In August, U.S. Soccer listed New Haven United among the 16 amateur clubs that had qualified directly for the 2027 Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup, skipping its qualifying rounds, and said it was the club’s first time in the tournament proper.

The club joined the NPSL in 2025 and won the North Atlantic Conference championship in that first season too. New Haven has had an NPSL champion before: Elm City Express won the 2017 national title, beating Midland-Odessa FC 5-0 at Reese Stadium.

North Atlantic Conference, 2026

#TeamWTLGFGAPts
1New Haven United FC622211420
2New York Shockers613281619
3American Soccer Club New York442241616
4AC Newport424252414
5Stana Cruz FC424162014
6OSNER'S FC0198321

Final regular-season table, 10 games each. W, T and L are wins, ties and losses. From the NPSL’s standings, as recorded on this site’s standings hub after the season; the table in Wikipedia’s article on the 2026 NPSL season has the same numbers.

Connecticut Rush: a first season in USL League Two

Connecticut Rush is part of a larger organization, Northeast Rush, and 2026 was its men’s team’s first season in USL League Two. When the season was announced, the club’s technical director and head coach, Greg Cumpstone, said the league would give its college-level alumni a way to stay sharp over the summer. The club said its 2026 home games would be free to attend.

It opened on May 16 with a 1-1 tie against Boston City FC at Valley Regional High School in Deep River, where it played five of its seven home games. The other two were at Middlesex Health Stadium in Middletown. Its first win came four days later, 3-1 at AC Connecticut in Danbury. It also won 3-1 at Seacoast United Phantoms in Epping, New Hampshire, 3-1 at home to the Boston Bolts in Middletown, and 2-1 at Albany Rush in Schenectady, New York. Three of its four wins came on the road.

The season ended with two losses: 2-0 to AC Connecticut in Middletown on July 1, and 6-2 at Vermont Green FC in Burlington, Vermont, on July 7. Connecticut Rush finished with 4 wins, 2 ties and 8 losses, and 19 goals for and 26 against. Its 14 points were the same as seventh-placed Seacoast United Phantoms, and it finished eighth.

AC Connecticut: ninth in the Northeast Division

AC Connecticut has a longer history. It was founded in 2011 as CFC Azul, played its first season in 2012 and took its current name in 2014. In 2026 it played its first three home games, all in May, at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, and its last four at Post University’s LaMoy Field in Waterbury.

It opened with a 4-1 loss at NEFC in Worcester, Massachusetts, on May 16, and its first win was 4-0 at home to Boston City FC on May 30. Seven straight losses followed, among them a 4-1 home loss to Vermont Green FC in Waterbury on June 10. On July 1 it beat Connecticut Rush 2-0 in Middletown, and on July 11 it finished the season with a 1-0 win at Seacoast United Phantoms.

Its record was 3 wins, no ties and 11 losses, with 18 goals for and 29 against, for 9 points and ninth place. Six of the 11 losses were by one goal.

Northeast Division, 2026

#TeamWTLGFGAPts
1Vermont Green FC1310641240
2NEFC1202322136
3Western Mass Pioneers833272027
4Black Rock FC563221721
5Albany Rush617223519
6Boston Bolts437192715
7Seacoast United Phantoms428252914
8Connecticut Rush428192614
9AC Connecticut301118299
10Boston City FC041018504

Final regular-season table, 14 games each. From USL League Two’s standings, as recorded on this site’s standings hub after the division’s last game on July 11; the table in Wikipedia’s article on the 2026 USL League Two season has the same numbers. The two Connecticut clubs’ rows also match their 14 game results.

Only Vermont Green FC and NEFC went on to the playoffs. Vermont Green, unbeaten in the regular season, then won the league’s national title for the second year in a row, beating the Flint City Bucks 2-1 in Flint, Michigan, on August 1. U.S. Soccer noted it was the first team to win back-to-back USL League Two titles since 2003.

Following the clubs

Each club’s page on this site has its record and its division’s table: New Haven United FC, Connecticut Rush and AC Connecticut. The standings hub has the tables for all four leagues that Connecticut’s professional and summer clubs play in.

Sources

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