On Saturday we were facing our old foe United in the quarter finals of the SIFL cup. From our last encounter with them we knew that they were a quality side, who made a couple of strong new signings in the last weeks. Our list of injured and non-available players was very long that day so we barely managed to gather a full squad. Even coach Seb had to put his boots back on and was our only sub that day.
The condition of the ground was horrible, but the first half saw an open game with not too many chances on either side. Consequently it stayed 0-0 at half time.
Just after the start of the second half disaster struck for us in an unfortunate way: In minute 46 United ran a fast counter-attack towards our goal and tried to shoot on target from just outside the box, however in an effort to clear the ball off our goal Thomas’ header deflected the ball into our own net – unstoppable for Cody. Nevertheless from that time on we ran relentless efforts to make it even, while United mainly focused on defending. Finally in minute 78 Adam pushed over the left side into the box, beating two defenders and passed the ball into the center of the box. United keeper Igor Tsudin managed to block the first shot on goal, however Joe was there for the rebound and poked the ball in – 1:1. We pressed for the winning goal and United were running counter attacks but no further goals were scored.
After 90 minutes we went into 20 minutes of extra time, where we also had clear advantages, but still did not manage to finalize the game by scoring the winning goal. Therefore we had to battle it out in a penalty shootout. Here’s a rough summary of the goal sequence:
1st penalty ReU: Sascha scored into the right side of the goal 1:0
1st penalty United: Filotar scored into the right side 1:1
2nd penalty ReU: Adam stumbled and played the ball right to Igor. Still 1:1
2nd penalty United: Devin scored into the right side 1:2
3rd penalty ReU: David Wu shot into the lower right corner but Igor managed to make a fantastic save. The referee said Igor moved before the whistle and let David repeat. This time David blasted the ball into the left side of the goal leaving Igor no chance – 2:2
3rd penalty United: Bondarchuk shot into the higher right corner but Cody was there to make a fantastic save. Still 2:2
4th penalty ReU: Sam stepped up and smashed the ball into the right side. Igor was there but could not save it 3:2
4th penalty United: Povarchuk shot high to the left, Cody was there but could not get his hands on the ball, which ultimately hit the cross bar. Still 3:2
5th penalty ReU: Thomas blasted the ball into the left side of the goal, Igor jumped and stretched out his hands but could not reach it. 4:2, the 5th United shooter did not need to step up anymore.
It was a very hard-fought win with 11 players playing 110 minutes each, against a very strong United side. Next step is Azzurri in the league on the coming Saturday.
