Decline continues as Valour fall to Pacific FC

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This article was published 29/09/2021 (1788 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg soccer fans deserve better.

Valour FC’s results since The Kickoff concluded are inexcusable and downright embarrassing.

The club’s monumental collapse continued Wednesday night as Valour fell 3-1 to first-place Pacific FC at IG Field.

It feels like a lifetime ago when Valour sat on top of the Canadian Premier League table with a 6-0-2 record after dominating the Winnipeg bubble, but since teams have gone back to travelling around the country to play matches, the maroon and gold have gone a horrendous 1-2-9 in league play. They were in prime position to coast to one of the four playoff spots, but instead, they crashed into a wall and now find themselves in sixth place in the eight-team league. Valour is 7-2-11 on the year while Wednesday’s result pushed Pacific to 11-6-4.

“Very frustrating. We’re still in it. We can still make the playoffs. That’s still our goal. Of course, it’s frustrating, but we can’t focus on what happened before,” said Valour midfielder Moses Dyer after his club’s latest defeat.

Valour’s all-time record with Pacific is 1-1-8 with their lone victory coming in their first match in franchise history back on May 1, 2019.

“Forge is our kryptonite, so we are Valour’s kryptonite. Sometimes that’s the (case) in football,” said Pacific manager Pa-Modou Kah.

“Stats for me aren’t the most important thing, I always look at the games. They’ve always been tough games and sometimes the result doesn’t go their way, but for us, sometimes you know how to play against an opponent.”

Valour fired head coach and general manager Rob Gale last week and replaced him with former Vancouver Whitecaps assistant Phillip Dos Santos who is now 0-2 since taking over.

Dos Santos’s first match as Valour’s boss was a 2-1 road loss to York United on Sunday.

“It’s already hard enough to win games. If you want to win games, you have to stop shooting yourself in the foot and that’s exactly the message that I passed to the guys,” said Dos Santos.

“I think that there’s a lot to work with. I think the guys played a good game, a solid game. Yes, at times we lacked a bit of solutions when we were on the ball, but I don’t think Pacific was superior… I think Pacific didn’t make mistakes and we made mistakes… But I want people to know that I’m not the type that’s going to blame players. I spoke with the players at the end and said ‘These things happen, this is football.’ Now how can we grow from there and how can we limit these situations in order to start putting the chances on our side?”

Wednesday got off to a horrific start for Valour as defender Rocco Romeo committed a foul in the box to set up an Alejandro Diaz penalty kick goal in the third minute. Valour attacking midfielder Moses Dyer was able to make up for the mistake in the 30th minute when his shot split a pair of defenders and got past Pacific keeper Callum Irving to tie the match. But Dyer’s efforts were all for nothing as his teammate Stefan Cebara misplayed a ball near the net just before the half-time whistle which allowed Diaz to pot his second on the night. In the 69th minute, Pacific got some insurance from forward Victor Blasco who blasted a shot past goaltender Jonathan Sirois for his first goal of the year.

“I think all the goals that we conceded probably could’ve been solved through communication. That was it,” Dyer said.

It was Blasco’s first match at IG Field this year. The 27-year-old Spaniard was at home with family at the start of the season due to his father passing away. Blasco, who had six goals for the club in 2019, was scoreless in his first six appearances this season.

“For me, as everyone knows, it hasn’t been an easy season. But since I came here, the team has been really good to me. They are family to me. And honestly, I knew the goal was going to come. It wasn’t a thing I was worried about… But the most important thing is the team is doing well,” said Blasco.

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Pacific was playing without star attacking midfielder Marco Bustos, a Winnipeg native, who’s been nursing a knee injury for the past month. Bustos is expected to return soon.

Valour has eight matches left this season with the next one coming on Saturday at 2 p.m. at home against FC Edmonton. Valour is currently six points behind fourth-place York.

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31

Taylor Allen
Reporter

Taylor Allen is a sports reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. Taylor was the Vince Leah intern in the Free Press newsroom twice while earning his joint communications degree/diploma at the University of Winnipeg and Red River College Polytechnic. He signed on full-time in 2019 and mainly covers the Blue Bombers, curling, and basketball. Read more about Taylor.

Every piece of reporting Taylor produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.