Musse snags first goal of season as Valour FC beats Edmonton

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This article was published 02/06/2019 (2329 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Welcome back, Michael Petrasso.

After missing the past two games with a hamstring injury, the 23-year-old midfielder from Toronto was back on the pitch for Valour FC on Sunday in Edmonton and he showed why he was missed.

Petrasso found Winnipegger Ali Musse with a beautiful bouncing cross into the box and Musse knocked it down and scored in the 79th minute to give Valour FC a much-needed 1-0 road win over FC Edmonton at Clarke Field. The goal was Musse’s first of the season. Valour, who entered the game with only one win in the final four contests, improved to 3-3-0 while Edmonton fell to 1-3-1.

“He’s a terrific footballer,” said Valour head coach Rob Gale on Petrasso after the game in a phone interview. “One versus one, he’s very difficult. He likes to go forward. He’s good in tight spaces. Obviously, he provided a killer pass on the goal as well which was a great cross. He was a threat. 20 minutes onwards, he really pinned back their fullback and gave him everything he could handle.”

Valour, who last played on May 16 in a 2-0 loss to Forge FC, got off to a sluggish start. Outside of a nice run into the box by Petrasso, who got by three defenders before having his shot blocked, Valour’s offence struggled. After 45 minutes, Edmonton owned the possession at 57 per cent and outshot the Winnipeg club 5-3. Valour ended up outshooting Edmonton 11-9 and increased their ball possession to 47 per cent. The game easily could’ve been 2-0 if it wasn’t for a great save by Edmonton goalie Connor James in extra time. Winnipegger Marco Bustos, who’s still looking for his first goal, had a breakaway in the 91st minute but James came out and made a big save to keep it a one-goal game.

“The first 15 or 20 minutes they were on top. Toward the end of the half, we were absolutely controlling the game,” Gale said. “Michael Petrasso came very close a couple times and it was just looking like ‘are we were going to find that killer instinct?’ But second half, we just told them to be brave and get on the ball. We made three attacking substitutions to try to win the game and luckily it paid off today.”

Mathias Janssens got his second start of the season in net for Valour, as Winnipeg goalie Tyson Farago was on the bench. The 21-year-old Belgian-born keeper has yet to allow a goal, as he has clean sheets in both of his appearances.

“He’s making the saves we’re expecting him to make,” Gale said.

Valour had a scare at the end of the first half. Canadian-born Chilean defender Diego Guitierrez went down at the end of the first half with what appeared to be a lower-body injury. The 22-year-old, who has been one of Valour’s most impressive players this season, had tears in his eyes as he walked off the field to be subbed out for Dylan Sacramento. With veteran Croatian midfielder Josip Golubar already lost for the season with a torn ACL, an injury to Guitierrez would be a huge blow. But Gale said after the game the team believes it was just a muscle cramp.

“It’s not ideal getting back on the plane and only having one day to recover, really. We’ll address that when we get home. Hopefully, it won’t take him long to get the muscle moving again,” Gale said.

The game was scheduled for Saturday at 5:30 p.m., but due to an air-quality alert in Edmonton because of wildfires in northern Alberta, the game was moved to 11:30 a.m. Sunday. The early start was due to the Edmonton Eskimos having Clarke Field booked later in the day and to help Valour get home at a decent time.

Valour will head to Halifax to take on the Wanderers in the first leg of their second round Canadian Championship matchup on Wednesday. The second leg will be played in Winnipeg on June 12.

“The difficult part is if we would’ve played (Saturday), we could’ve recovered today and trained fully on Monday,” said Gale. “So now, obviously, we have to recover (Monday) and we don’t get a full training session in. By the time we fly into Halifax, it will just be a light workout for Tuesday. A little bit unfortunate again with the schedule that we miss out a day of preparation for Halifax. But we’ll take stock as quickly as we can on Monday and then we’re out early 5 a.m. again on Tuesday.”

Winnipeg natives Dylan Carreiro and Bustos started the game for Valour, while Musse and Sacramento came off the bench.

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31