Rhode Island

Rhode Island FC has been picking a fight with Hartford Athletic since it arrived in USL Championship, and the two sides have already given the rivalry a name: El Clamico, sometimes just the Route 6 Derby, after the road linking the two cities. It is the kind of needle that tends to matter more to a young club than any trophy.

The club plays out of Pawtucket, at Centreville Bank Stadium, a 10,500-seat ground on Taft Street that was not actually ready in time for the team's debut USL Championship season — 2024's home games were played instead at Beirne Stadium, across the state line in Smithfield. By the time the season proper got going, Rhode Island was already further along than a first-year side has much right to be: a run to the Eastern Conference final, a 2-1 win there over Charleston Battery.

Khano Smith, the former Bermuda international, has run the team as head coach and general manager through that stretch, and in 2025 he took Rhode Island back into the play-offs, as far as the USL Cup semi-final and the conference semi-final. The club's colours — Bay Blue, an amber it calls RIFC Amber, and white — are still new enough that they carry no history beyond the one the team is writing itself. For now, that history reads as a club still working out how far a fast start can carry it, with the Hartford fixture there every year to measure it against.