T&T in­ter­na­tion­als, Ne­veal Hack­shaw and Le­land Archer have been named among the top five cen­tre-backs to watch go­ing in­to the 2021 Unit­ed Soc­cer League (USL) Cham­pi­onship Di­vi­sion sea­son.

Writ­ing on USLCham­pi­onship.com, Nicholas Mur­ray stat­ed that just as many things in life, his­to­ry is start­ing to re­peat in the USL Cham­pi­onship’s cen­tre-back ranks.

Where once the All-League ho­n­ours lists were reg­u­lar­ly pop­u­lat­ed by the likes of Or­lan­do City SC’s Rob Valenti­no or the Rich­mond Kick­ers’ William Yom­by and oth­ers, now there’s a new peck­ing or­der of es­tab­lished cen­tral de­fend­ers that have be­gun to mo­nop­o­lize the end-of-sea­son award lists. That’s re­flect­ed in our se­lec­tions for the Top Five cen­tre backs in the league go­ing in­to the 2021 Cham­pi­onship sea­son, where play­ers who are al­so suc­ceed­ing at the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el are joined by those who’ve made a se­ri­ous im­pact in re­cent years in the Cham­pi­onship.

In se­lect­ing the 25-year-old Hack­shaw of In­dy Eleven, now in his eight-sea­son as a pro­fes­sion­al, Mur­ray said the hard-tack­ling de­fend­er who played 15 match­es in 2020 with 151 re­cov­er­ies, and 84.6 tack­le suc­cess rate, and 78.2 pass­ing ac­cu­ra­cy rate to be among the league’s best.

Dur­ing his first three sea­sons in the Cham­pi­onship with the Charleston Bat­tery, Hack­shaw emerged as one of the most in­trigu­ing young de­fend­ers in the league, mak­ing 33 ap­pear­ances as Charleston fin­ished in the top four of the East­ern Con­fer­ence in 2018.

Over the past two sea­sons with In­dy Eleven, the T&T in­ter­na­tion­al has ful­ly come in­to his own, earn­ing back-to-back Cham­pi­onship All-League se­lec­tions through his dy­nam­ic play.

Hack­shaw’s game has in some ways mar­ried per­fect­ly with In­dy head coach Mar­tin Ren­nie’s sys­tem, in which as a nat­u­ral­ly left-foot­ed play­er he mans the left side of the de­fen­sive back three for the side.

The 25-year-old is a dif­fi­cult play­er to beat – he’s con­ced­ed on av­er­age less than one foul per game (72 fouls in 94 ap­pear­ances) and has on­ly been beat­en off the drib­ble 44 times in the past four sea­sons while win­ning 70.6 per cent of his con­test­ed tack­les.

What adds a no­table el­e­ment to Hack­shaw’s game, how­ev­er, is his abil­i­ty to read the game and take ad­van­tage of space when it’s of­fered to push in­to the op­pos­ing half. In ad­di­tion to lead­ing all de­fend­ers with 714 re­cov­er­ies in the past four reg­u­lar sea­sons, Hack­shaw has al­so record­ed 47 key pass­es and four as­sists. That abil­i­ty makes Hack­shaw not on­ly one of the best de­fend­ers in the league but one of the most en­ter­tain­ing to watch as well.

With re­gards to Archer of Charleston Bat­tery, Mur­ray said: There’s a method be­hind the way Charleston head coach Mike An­haeuser brings play­ers along, which meant Archer’s first two sea­sons on­ly saw him make 31 ap­pear­ances for the Bat­tery.

As it proved with For­rest Las­so – who made 32 ap­pear­ances in his first two sea­sons in Charleston – the third year was the break­out for the T&T in­ter­na­tion­al.

Play­ing every game of the sea­son, Archer earned his first All-League se­lec­tion in 2020 in ad­di­tion to some ma­jor club end-of-sea­son awards and will be aim­ing for more suc­cess this cam­paign.