August 2, 2004 - EDMONTON - It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was a tale of two halves as Edmonton FC once again lost by a goal, this time to the visiting Seattle Sounders who were outplayed by the home side in the first half and matched up evenly in the second. It was also the debut of professional soccer at Coronation field, normally used for High School Football, but whose intimate surroundings gave the 625 strong crowd a nice evening of entertainment.
Seattle, fresh off a loss to the Calgary Mustangs, came out in a 4-4-2 formation with Preston Burpo in net, Marco Velez, Danny Jackson, Ryan Edwards and Kevin Sakuda on defense, Sean-Michael Callahan, Billy Sleeth, Jonathan Bolanos and Ben Somoza in the midfield and Roger Levesque and Welton Melo as Strikers.
Edmonton employed their usual 3-5-2, with Nic Stankov minding the net, Robin Hart in the middle of the defense flanked by Chris Devlin and Simon Kassaye, Paul Dhaliwal and Sean Fraser patrolling the wings, Nikola Vignjevic, Eric Munoz and Captain Kurt Bosch in the middle and Sipho Sibiya and Daniel Drummond up front. Notable exceptions were the energetic Gordon Chin who was serving a one game suspension for yellow card accumulation and stalwart defender Liam DeSilva who is nursing an injury.
Edmonton started well with some good chances early on. At the 5th minute, Sibiya ran in along the right side of the box and let go of a shot that went up and above the net. Two minutes later and arguably the most exciting play of the night, Fraser intercepted the ball in Edmonton's own half, sprinted up field, played a give and go with Drummond and passed it to Sibiya whose shot hit the post and unfortunately bounced out for Burpo to cover.
A few free kicks followed with no success, but the momentum that Edmonton enjoyed came to a halt at the 13th minute when a cross to Somoza at the far post was headed in to give the visitors an unexpected 1-0 lead.
At the 18th minute, Fraser again leading the Edmonton pressure, unleashed a howitzer of a shot that knocked Burpo down to the roar of the crowd. Fraser continued with some fancy footwork that resulted in a corner kick for the home team a few minutes later. The resulting play did amount to Edmonton being awarded a free kick well outside the box which was unsuccessful.
At the 24th minute, Paul Dhaliwal showed his frustration with the apparent favouritism of Referee Alnar Bernhardsson towards the visitors by throwing the ball after an erroneous call and earning himself a yellow card. The referee called Seattle on 21 fouls while Edmonton was only called 10 times. With Seattle now controlling the game, numerous rushes were created and on one of them, Stankov tackled the rushing Sounder instead of the ball along the touchline inside the box, thus deservedly giving Seattle a penalty kick. Welton Melo made no mistake and put Seattle up 2-0.
Three minutes later, and with Edmonton fighting back, Captain Kurt edged out the last Sounder defender and went in to a challenge with Burpo at the edge of the box, but backed off at the last moment and Seattle cleared the ball. Seattle came back and at the 33rd minute caught Stankov out of position on a free kick which luckily went wide.
Nikola, who had a good first half, was able to feed Munoz at the 36th minute whose blistering shot went right at Burpo for the easy save. Edmonton continued the pressure and with 5 minutes remaining in the half, Fraser had another great run along the right side, crossed it perfectly to Bosch whose sweet header cut Seattle's lead to 1 goal. Edmonton came close again at the 44th minute when Vignjevic, Bosch and Dhaliwal combined on a pretty play, but were unable to convert.
With Edmonton needing to press the visitors in the second half, things began to falter with Kassaye getting hurt at the 48th minute. Edmonton was slow in getting to the ball and Seattle had an opportunity at the 51st minute, which was cleared in time.
Edmonton made its first substitute at the 58th minute with the somewhat ill Freddy Akok going in for Sibiya who was unable to use his physical presence to his advantage. Two minutes later, Captain Kurt did his best Phil/Gary Neville (Man U) impression and off his throw in, took the ball to the Seattle box - it must be noted that the field was smaller than normal. At this time, Seattle took the opportunity to bring in defender Scott Jenkins at the expense of Callahan in order to protect the lead. Fraser continued his pace from the first half and won a corner at the 64th minute which ended up netting Bosch another Neville throw in.
Carmelo Rago Jr. made his Edmonton debut at the 66th minute, replacing Daniel Drummond who although normally a midfielder, was playing up as a striker. The scoreboard died at the 68th minute, so all remaining times are courtesy of my not so reliable cell phone. Game winning goalscorer Melo was taken out a minute later in favor of midfielder Darren Sawatzky.
Seattle came close again at the 73rd minute when a long distance shot was again misjudged by Stankov but tipped over for a corner kick. Chris Devlin did well to clear after some congestion in the box. Four minutes later, it was Devlin himself who had a crack at goal, but his shot went right at Burpo. In the mean time, Kyle Smith came on in place of Melo who had scored the first goal.
Fireworks almost exploded at the 79th minute when Bosch had to shove a Sounder away from encroaching on his free kick as the Referee looked on unfazed. A minute later, Bosch would give way to Desmon Tachie, with Vignjevic assuming the Captaincy. With the Referee losing control of the match, Seattle's Kyle Smith endeared himself to the cheap seats as he went up for two consecutive headers with his elbows up and created some instant memories with two unfortunate Edmonton players.
With six minutes from time, Vignjevic made some nice moves but his concluding shot went up and over. Kassaye was subbed out for Ebo (Ibrahim Mollaibrahimagaoglu who is recovering from an earlier injury) at the 86th minute, who immediately impressed the fans by throwing the dead ball at a time wasting Sounder when the Referee wasn't looking.
With time running out for Edmonton, the home side was unable to convert from two corner kicks, had to defend one Seattle corner and missed several crosses into the box. Although Edmonton outplayed Seattle in the first 45 minutes, their unfocused approach in the second half cost them an ego-boosting 3 points.
On a personal note, it was nice to see the premiere edition of '90 minutes' a fan produced programme available at http://www.90minutes.ca )
Sergio Teixeira
