Goals:
5' Vancouver: Davide Xausa (Winston Griffiths)
Vancouver Griffiths had a fast break on the right of the box , and passed it to Xausa, also on the break, in the centre, who it by Campi.
66' Vancouver: Davide Xausa
Xausa sent an unexpected 30 to 40yard kick from near the right sideline which sailed into the upper left net past goalkeeper Campi, who was standing unawares just inside the 18 yard box line in the centre.
Edmonton: Jose Luis Campi; Liam DeSilva (Chris Devlin 56’), Ibo Mollaibrahimogaoglu, Jaime Lopresti; Chris Hansor (Daniel Drummond 80’), Paul Dhaliwal (Robin Hart 45’) Kurt Bosch (Vikram Kaushal 45’), Nikola Vignjevic, Gordon Chin; Fred Akok, Sean Fraser.
Substitutes not used: Nick Stankov, Eric Munoz, Sipho Sibiya.
(now 2-7-6 for season)
Vancouver: Alex Marques; Nick Dasovic, Fuseini Dauda ( Jeremie Piette 64’) , Justin Thompson; Dave Morris ,Jeff Clarke , Martin Nash, Steve Kindel, Chris Franks (Mark Gomes 51’); Davide Xausa (Umbertino Cucck, 69’), Winston Griffiths.
Substitutes not used: Mike Franks, Geordie Lyall.
(now 2-5-2 for season)
Cautions
VAN: Dauda 25, Piette 75, Nash 79
EDM: Vignjevic 56
Ejections
None
Referees: Mauricio Navarro, Charlene Douglas, Dave Gantar, Jamie Gamlin
Statistics from uslsoocer.com
Goalkeeping:
Vancouver Whitecaps
Pos. No. Name GKM GA GKW GKL GKT SO Saves SHFC
GK 29 Marques-Delgado, Alexander 90 1 1 5 5
Edmonton Aviators
Pos. No. Name GKM GA GKW GKL GKT SO Saves SHFC
GK 1 Campi, Jose Luis 90 2 1 2 4
Other:
Goals Half1 Half2 OT1 OT2 Final
Vancouver Whitecaps 1 1 2
Edmonton Aviators 0 0 0
Shots
Vancouver Whitecaps 3 1 4
Edmonton Aviators 2 3 5
Saves
Vancouver Whitecaps 2 3 5
Edmonton Aviators 2 0 2
Fouls
Vancouver Whitecaps 8 9 17
Edmonton Aviators 8 5 13
Offsides
Vancouver Whitecaps 4 2 6
Edmonton Aviators 0 4 4
Corners
Vancouver Whitecaps 3 2 5
Edmonton Aviators 3 3 6
Announced attendance: 1,983 [underestimated]
A hot sunny night at kick-off ( 6:05 pm, MDT, 29 C, with thunder threatening in the distance) The evening continued warm and dry, with wind largely not reaching field level.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was a tired and under-strength Whitecaps team that came into Commonwealth. This was the 3rd match in 5 days for the Whitecaps, who played Seattle home on the 9th and away on the 10th. They were missing several players because of duty with the Canada B squad duty on the coast (Valente) and injury (Corazzin), and had several new players not on the programme and without names on the jerseys.
The Aviators, on the other hand, had just come off a 6-day rest, last having played on the in Portland the Thursday before. They were only missing one regular, Chris Lemire, to Canada B squad duty. Other than Robin Hart, they had played with the most of the same squad for most of the season. They were home, and seemingly confident because their last meeting with Vancouver ended in a come-from-behind victory in Burnaby.
However, it was the tired Whitecaps that predominated through most of the evening, and would have run the 2-0 score up even higher if it were not for Campi’s excellent saves in the first hour of the match. Victory was assured due to a combination of the brilliance of a 30 to 40 yard strike by Xausa and the inattention of Av’s goalkeeper Campi who was wandering too far off his line. With that second goal at 66’, the Av’s fate was sealed.
It was a largely incident-free match that featured little physical contact. The heat on the field was only due to the weather, not the players. The only injury of note is when new Whitecap player Dauda took himself off for a few minutes early in the second half to stretch out his cramps from lack of recent game time and the heat on the field. He carried on until he was substituted at 64’.
The Whitecaps game plan was obviously to ride the game out by maximizing possession and going for the quick breaks. They started with a 4-3-3 formation, with a sweeper, and kept the formation most of the evening. After the second goal, they switched to a holding 4-4-2 formation, and were even more successful at maintaining possession through the remainder of the match.
The Aviators employed a 4-3-1-2 formation through most of the match. A notable change from past matches was that the usually energetic Gordon Chin was placed in a central, forward midfield attacking position, rather than his usual left wing position. This was undoubtedly done in an effort to assist attack up the middle in the absence of Lemire. He was remarkably less effective than in previous matches, and the few successful forays at net that he was involved with originated when he wandered off to the wing.
The lackadaisical and disorganized actions of the Avaitors at the opening was punished early by a straight attack up the middle by the speedy Jamaican international Griffiths (whose probes would bother the Av’s defence all evening) and Xausa. The Av’s defence’s poor efforts at the off-side trap was punished by both of the Cap’s attackers getting alone in front of Campi, with Griffiths deciding to pass to the centre to Xausa who banged it past a helpless Campi just before the 5’ mark.
The next 15 minutes produced a lot of soft back and forth in the midfield with nothing remarkable.
At 20’, the Av’s Fraser was able to run on alone from the left into the front of Marques, but he hit it just right of the post on the ground.
At 36’, there was a good series of give and go between caps Kindell and Griffiths, ending in a last second rob save by Campi on a close shot by Griffiths on the left side of goal.
At 38’, after a corner-kick, Chin was in a good position to score, but crossed instead, with no one picking it up.
At 41’, a goal by Griffiths was called off because of a foul on the keeper by
Xausa. Keeping up the pressure, Griffiths was alone in front of Campi again, with Campi making a pointblank save. The Caps kept up the pressure until the half was called after 2’ of added time.
The Avitaors made two substitutions at the half involving midfielders (Bosch and Dhaliwal off for Kaushal and Hart), but there did not appear to be a significant change of tactics or formation. Hart did add spark to the Av’s centre, and the former Trinidad and Tobago U-23 international made some very good moves throughout the second half.
The Caps did not sit back protecting their one-goal lead at the start of the second half. At 48’ they came close to scoring on a free-kick just outside the box by Xausa that just missed its mark. For the next ten minutes, The Whitecaps played a tight possession game, punctuated only by an Av’s goalstrike at 55’ by Hart that was called back on the offside.
At 58’, griffiths again caused problems with his incredible speed by breaking away and just failing to chip a shot over a drifting Campi that just grazed the centre of the cross-bar.
Vancouver’s off-side trap again produced defensive results when a nifty give and go by Chin and Frazer was called back after a near miss by Chin on the right at 67’.
Vancouver made its first sub of the night at 64’, when an exhausted Dauda was replaced by Piette.
A minute later, Xausa scored from between 30 to 40 yards out by kicking from near the left sideline, catching a wandering and inattentive Campi (and most of the stadium) unawares. It sailed by the unmoving and later embarrassed keeper, and landed in the top right of goal.
Xausa was replaced at 69’ by Cucck, another Cap player without his name on the jersey.
Vancouver then played manly defensive ball for the last 20’. The Av’s did have some promising runs involving service by Hart and Chin to Frazer and Akok, but the usual team failings of failure to finish was the story. Hart came close at 90’ with a hard shot just outside the box.
Campi’s wandering almost cost the Av’s again at 89’, as Griffiths just missed with a chip. Griffiths open-field work was electrifying throughout the game. His demonstrated weakness is the ability to win the close one-ones and tackling, however.
There was a generous 3’ of injury time at the end of the match, and the only action of note during that was a right side run in the second minute by the Av’s Fraser who managed a tricky shot near the touch line that Marques managed to glove.
Other than the A-League standings, the win leaves the Whitecaps (6 points in 5 matches) 5 points from the lead of the Montreal Impact (11 points from 5 matches), with 3 matches to play for each club, in the unofficial Voyageurs Cup competition (between the five clubs based in Canada) for Canadian soccer supremacy. Edmonton follows at 5 points (with 4 matches remaining), then Calgary at 4 points (5 matches to go) and Toronto (5 to go) with only 1 point so far.
The second match of the doubleheader was the W-League contest involving the Calgary Wildfire, won by the Women Aviators by a similar 2-0 score.
The announced of attendance of 1,983 again calls into question the reporting of attendance on the USL website in general, and for the Edmonton games in particular.
Even the most conservative estimates of the crowd by the 60’ minute mark were 3,500.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Post-Game Quotes (from Edmonton Sun):
Davide Xausa:
"I like playing here. I'm scoring good goals here"
"I don't know what my record would be here with all teams but I don't think I've lost too many games here. It's too bad there's not more fans. The Aviators play decent football so it's too bad they don't get more support, especially in their first year."
(Sun: Xausa's prowess in Edmonton includes two goals against Australia for the Canadian Olympic team, another while with the full national squad against Ecuador, and the game winner as a second-half sub for the Whitecaps when they topped the Aviators at Clarke Park back on June 22. The two last night give him five on the ! year, tops on the Whitecaps (10-5-2) who lead the A-League's Western Conference.)
"I tend to score in bunches so I hope they keep coming. This was a great result. We've got 10 players out injured and we probably had five (regular) starters playing.
"A couple guys that don't usually start for us picked up the slack."
Chris Hansor:
”We weren't as sharp as we should have been, but it wasn't like we weren't in the game. We did well to beat them in their place and they did well to beat us here. We're doing well to keep the ball out of the goal but we've got to score goals to win games.”
"If we weren't taking any shots it would be a different story. We're shooting it's just not going in for us."
