Shadow lose their first at home
The Spokane Shadow soccer team has made a habit of starting out games slowly, at times even spotting their opponents a goal or two. Saturday night, they paid for it.
The Cascade Surge (7-2, 21 points) scored twice in the first 10 minutes, were up 3-0 15 minutes into the second half and then held on to beat the Shadow 3-2 at Joe Albi Stadium, handing Spokane its first home loss of the season.
The victory pulled Cascade, which has one game in hand, to within one point of the first-place Shadow (7-2-1, 22 points) in the Premier Development League’s Northwest Division.
Playing from behind is never an easy task, especially when the goals are scored right off the bat and the comeback has to come against a team of the Surge’s quality.
“It’s horrible, I’m just exhausted, if that’s any indicator,” Shadow defender Rob Anderson said. “It’s taxing, it’s taxing mentally. As hard as you work, you score a goal and you’re still down. It’s just a struggle, especially when our plan was to come at them early.”
Instead, the Surge were the ones to get on the board early.
Left midfielder Dana McGregor’s corner was headed down by Surge forward Pedro Figueriedo to Cascade defender Shelly Kellar, who had moved up for the corner. Kellar took a shot from the top of the 18-yard box that was deflected but fell right to forward Andriy Budnyy. Budnyy turned a defender and from 6 yards out beat Shadow keeper Shaun Kalnasy just 3 minutes into the match.
The Surge doubled their lead in the ninth minute. Budnyy got free on the right side of the Shadow box and sent a perfect cross to Figueriedo who headed past Kalnasy from 8 yards away.
It marked the second time in the past two meetings that Cascade had taken a lead early against the Shadow, and the second time the Surge won.
“Unfortunately, the last two with that team, we’ve done the same thing, we’ve given them a head start,” team captain and assistant coach Kieran Barton said. “We’ve proven we’re capable of scoring goals … so if we can stop spotting these guys a couple, these are games we can very easily win.”
It got worse for the Shadow in the 18th minute when midfielder John Palladino went off with a possible stress fracture in his right foot. Palladino had the foot looked at before the game and tried to give it a go, but he was stepped on in the first 5 minutes and had to be subbed out.
The Surge got their third goal in the 58th minute. Adrian Balc’s corner was played short to former Shadow player Elliot Fauske. Fauske sent in a cross that was headed out by Anderson, but it fell right to Balc just inside the Shadow penalty area. Balc cut to his left and, with no defender stepping up, had a clean look and put his shot to the right of a helpless Kalnasy.
The Shadow’s defensive struggles, especially early on, may in this case be attributed to a lack of familiarity. Communication in the backline is crucial and with newly-signed defender Will Flanagan in the starting lineup – a move that pushed Barton from his normal central defender spot up to the midfield– and Kalnasy starting his first match of the season, there were some miscommunications.
“I’m still at the point where I’m getting to know everyone’s name,” Flanagan said. “It was probably that (getting used to each other) in the back.”
But, as they’ve done most of the season, the Shadow fought back.
With the Surge trying to play keep-away, Brett Hite stole the ball from defender John Ames, sent it to Barton at the top of the box, who pushed it out wide to Ben Sawyer. Sawyer cut to his left and delivered a perfect cross to Hite, who, from 12 yards out, headed it into the top right corner of the net for his ninth goal of the season.
Spokane scored its second thanks to the goal-keeping of Kalnasy. Budnyy was sent through on a break away, but Kalnasy got down well to stop his low shot. The ball bounced to Barton, who carried it through the midfield and sent a pass to substitute Jake Moug. Moug settled it with his chest, sent a ball to Garth Cummings, who one-timed it with his left past Surge goalie Aaron Treadway. .
But that was all the Shadow got.
“I think now, dropping this one at home, kind of gives them a little bit of an advantage with two games left (head to head)” Barton said. “It would be really nice to take care of our game at home when we play them again and see if we can steal one on the road.”
Spokane returns to action Sunday at Joe Albi for a 2 p.m. exhibition match with the A-League’s Seattle Sounders. The match is part of the opening ceremonies for the Far West Regional youth tournament, which Spokane is hosting throughout the week. Gates open at 12:30.