Rising needs to remember the pain of recent years to lift the trophy on Sunday, according to former Phoenix defender Amadou Dia.

Now playing in MLS with Sporting Kansas City, Dia weighed in on what his message to the team would be ahead of tomorrow’s playoff final.

“They know how it felt last year after losing to RSL, and the pain and the anger and the sadness that we went through in the locker room after,” he said. “So I say: just remember that feeling when you step onto the field and make sure you don’t feel that way again.

“Especially, you guys are in the finals. All you’ve got to do is work. Work, work, work, the hardest you’ve ever for about 95 minutes, and at the end you get to accomplish the goal you’ve been striving for all year.”

Two years ago, in a bitterly cold Louisville, Dia was there. Looking back on the match, he’s come to his conclusions about what went wrong.

“I don’t think we played our game,” he said. “I think we played Louisville’s game. To me, the home field advantage is a big thing. I think if we had played that game in Phoenix, I think that we’d have had a very good chance. It starts with home field advantage, but when we go down there, and instead of playing our game, the Phoenix beautiful game, we started playing the Louisville game.”

That leads into his key for Sunday’s match from a Rising perspective.

“I think they’ve just got to go down there and make sure they play their own game, and not submit to Tampa’s game plan,” Dia said. “I think if they go down there and play the way Phoenix Rising plays, between Solomon Asante and Jon Bakero and getting in behind the lines, making sure they play the pretty soccer that they always do, I think they’ll go down there and win.”

Dia says that he watches as many Rising games as he can, and he’ll be cheering for his ex-teammates from afar come Sunday. But how hard was it for him to leave the team last year, after not quite making it over the line?

“My ultimate first goal when I got down to Phoenix was to try to make my way back into MLS, so yes I was happy about that,” Dia said. “But once I got to Phoenix, I mean, I fell in love with the club, the city, the teammates, the fans. So I wanted to win a championship not just for myself, but for them as well. We were right there. We should have won the championship, but we fell short. So it was even harder to leave the club after that, because it was some of the best three years I ever had.”

He’s still in touch with many of his Rising teammates.

“I love those boys on there, and I miss them sometimes, a lot of the times, because the last three years, we had some of the best chemistry I ever had,” Dia said.

And put on the spot, if he had to take one up with him to the next level, he settled on a certain Jamaican midfielder.

“I’ve always said this: I think Kevon Lambert is the best midfielder in the USL by far,” Dia said. “Like, there’s no comparison. I think he deserves a shot in the MLS, and I think that once he does get it, that he’ll be a starting force and a big force in the years to come.”

Now, he’s backing the team to score two goals at Al Lang Stadium. He reckons that Solomon Asante will definitely find the scoresheet, with another nodded in by a center-back from a set piece.

And if it goes to penalties?

“They’ve got big boy Zac Lubin back there,” he laughed, “so they’ll be ok.”