Valour looking to bounce back

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This article was published 03/08/2021 (1840 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Valour FC will look to steer the team’s ship back in the right direction after suffering their second loss in a row with a 3-1 defeat to FC Edmonton on Saturday.

After a strong start in the bubble kickoff in front of their home fans, the Winnipeg club travelled to Clarke Stadium in Alberta’s capital to begin a four-game road trip. Valour head coach Rob Gale says his club gifted Edmonton too many chances to score and their opponent made them pay.

“Honestly we gave away soft goals and you can’t do that,” said Gale.

“You have to make a team earn a win. That was really the difference between the two teams. We gave them golden opportunities to score and they didn’t. They were defensively resolute. They didn’t make silly mistakes to give us opportunities to score and unfortunately we did defensively.”

Fans who anxiously awaited the Eddies return to Edmonton were not disappointed as the hometown club got off to a quick start in the 12th minute. After some miscommunication between Valour defenders, Easton Ongaro split the defence and tucked in his second goal of the season.

Towards the end of the first half, Valour midfielder Raphael Ohin took a long strike towards the net that sailed off the edge of the crossbar keeping a thin 1-0 lead for Edmonton at halftime.

In the second half, Edmonton’s attack established itself early as Ramon Soria accepted a long stretch pass from midfield to make a great passing play over to Tobias Warschewski who notched his first goal on the year. Warschewski, after being denied on an offside play in the first half would not miss on a strong kick. Gale said his team wasn’t able to adjust to Edmonton’s attack.

“The second goal we talked about getting narrow and not getting across, we were late arriving at the back post,” said Gale.

“It was really just individual errors and it’s usually two or three individual mistakes that lead to a goal and watching it back, that’s what happened.”

Shortly, Edmonton team leader Fraser Aird built on his team’s offensive momentum as he struck a corner kick towards the net. Amer Didic, was left open on the play and would not be denied his first goal of the season on a header placing his club up 3-0 in the 62nd minute.

“We should’ve collected the corner, Jonathan said he wanted that one back,” said Gale.

“The player just lost his man.”

In the final stretch of play, Valour defender Andy Baquero notched a late goal to break Connor James’ clean sheet in the Edmonton net. The midrange strike took a deflection in the 87th minute setting the final score of 3-1. Gale said the loss to Edmonton remained different from the defensive trap that Halifax had set up in their final match in the bubble.

“Edmonton is very direct, they have the two big guys up front that they try to clip the ball to,” said Gale.

“We addressed the spaces in the pre-game and the halftime and we talked about the central defenders staying narrow and tracking runners. No. 1 we didn’t get enough pressure on the ball and the runner didn’t give track and we let the striker get between players. It was a collection of individual mistakes and that can get punished.”

With the victory for Edmonton, the Alberta club improves to 3-2-4 through nine games. Despite leading possession 59 per cent to 41 per cent and maintaining a higher passing accuracy, Valour falls to 6-0-3 and will now face Pacific FC at Starlight Stadium, Wednesday in Victoria. Gale spoke on what his club will need to do to stay atop of the league as the second-place team is on their heels coming off another victory against Cavalry FC last week.

“I think getting back to some basics, and our principles of defending,” said Gale.

“We haven’t had much training time. It’s a reiteration of our principles and game models. Building a game every three or four days is tough.”

The Victoria club welcomed the return of attacker Victor Blasco and midfielder Manuel Aparicio in the past week. Gale says the addition of these players alongside MVP runner-up Marco Bustos and Ollie Bassett offer a collective offensive threat for Valour to contain.

“That’s one of their main strengths, we’ll need to be defensively well structured and organized to stop that,” said Gale.

“We need to be good offensively and exploit the spaces because they do get quite expansive in attack, things in transition, counterattacks, use of possession, being direct and exploiting the space behind them is going to be key as well.”

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Rocco Romeo, who was recently acquired on loan from Toronto FC, played a full 90 minutes in the loss to Edmonton. The Valour head coach described what he liked from the team’s newest acquisition at the defensive end.

“Rocco is a kid I’ve known for many years from the national youth teams,” said Gale.

“He’s quiet but he’s got good aggression and a physical profile. We’ve got Amir Soto, Rocco and Rodrigo Reyes and Tony Mikhael. This gives us good options to field different defensive formations. He played pretty solid. He had a difficult assignment on the set pieces and he’ll be disappointed Amer got one on the third goal.”

jbernacki@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JosephBernacki