NEW YORK — The Charleston Battery suffered a 3-0 road defeat to expansion team Brooklyn FC at Maimonides Park on Saturday.

Brooklyn scored twice in the first half and once in the second half, creating a deficit that proved to be too large to overcome in the end. The Battery recorded more shots (13-10) but had only four on target, all of which were saved.

Charleston (3-2-0, 9 points) will look to rebound when they return home to host the Tampa Bay Rowdies on April 18 at Patriots Point, for their next match.

“We’re really disappointed in the result. No. 1, fair credit to Brooklyn. They took advantage of our mistakes, they punished us big time, and they deserved to win,” Battery coach Ben Pirmann said. “Our focus this entire week was being tough to play against, and I thought we worked hard, and I thought we were tough, and we did a lot of the dirty work, but we’re leaking goals. We’re poor in transition, we get dribbled past. When you’re giving up goals, it’s very tough to win football matches. And, I thought we actually played OK. We created a lot, we got in behind, but that stuff’s moot when you’ve conceded goals in the major critical moments of the game.”

The Battery kicked off against Brooklyn aiming to end their early road stretch on a positive note. Charleston nearly opened the scoring via Emilio Ycaza on a free header after Colton Swan headed the ball back into the box, but the effort went over the crossbar.

Brooklyn managed to take an early 1-0 lead in the 9th minute through Jaden Servania.

No shots were recorded in the match in the roughly 20 minutes after the opener until the hosts doubled their lead to 2-0 in the 32nd minute via Stefan Stojanovic.

“I think we didn’t put Brooklyn under enough pressure. We went down 1-0, then 2-0, early, and they never had to come out of their shell, and then we were forced to very early,” Charleston’s Miguel Berry said. “We played bravely and front-footed, but it didn’t work out today. We weren’t good enough in transition. We took too many risks, but we’ll continue to improve. Hopefully, we try to mitigate some of those risks, especially away from home.