San Benito Outshoots Salinas 21-6, but Loses Game 1-0
Hollister – Judging on their reaction walking off the field yesterday, don’t expect the Haybalers to underestimate any of their future opponents.
After two consecutive solid outings, the San Benito boys soccer team took a step backwards yesterday in losing1-0 to a Salinas team it expected to defeat.
“We were kind of confident that we had this game easy, but that’s not how it goes,” said ‘Balers midfielder Christian Mercado. “I’m frustrated. We knew we could’ve had this game.”
Said San Benito head coach Juan Carlos Martinez: “We lost this game ourselves. We just played awful. Let’s face it … it’s unacceptable.”
Say this for the Haybalers. They dominated much of the game. They outshot Salinas 21-6 and controlled the ball for almost the entire second half.
But in soccer, all of that goes for not if you can’t put the ball in the back of the net.
The Cowboys, on the other hand, found that capitalizing on an early opportunity was enough to carry them to the win.
Five minutes into the game, Salinas’ Adon Ochoa came up with the ball in a pack of players in front of San Benito’s goal. He volleyed a shot forward and ‘Balers goalie Eddie Trujillo couldn’t secure the ball. The Cowboys’ Francisco Medeiros trapped the carom and powered a shot high over the crowd to put Salinas up 1-0.
“We wanted to get an early score and then get back to a 3-5-2,” said Cowboys head coach Carlos Casapia, who promptly stacked an extra defender in the mix.
The Cowboys (5-5-2, 1-1-2 TCAL) kept the momentum and appeared to have two other legitimate scoring opportunities in the next three minutes, but were whistled offsides both times.
Meanwhile, San Benito players suggested their team took too lackadaisical an approach in the early going.
“We’d lose the ball and we wouldn’t go fight for it,” said Mercado.
“If we just had more rhythm in the first half, we could’ve probably set the other team back,” said ‘Balers sweeper Jose Carlos Vasquez.
Once San Benito (3-6, 1-4 TCAL) realized it had a game on its hands, it started firing away at Salinas’ goal, but many of its nine first-half shots were wayward, typically wild and to the right. The Cowboys matched the ‘Balers’ newfound intensity, but were stymied by three additional offsides calls.
Just before halftime, San Benito had a golden opportunity to tie the game, but Mercado’s header following a ‘Balers’ corner kick strayed left.
After an animated lecture from Martinez, the ‘Balers came out of the half determined to put the ball on frame.
In the 45th minute, San Benito nearly got on the board when Mercado alertly deked a Salinas defender by running past the ball to give teammate Efrain Magallon an open shot. Magallon sent the ball spinning to the left corner of the net, but Cowboys goalie Daniel Wheaton dived to his right to knock the ball down and then lurched to secure it before it rolled into the goal.
The ‘Balers continued their all-out assault, peppering the Salinas goal early and often. By the time the Cowboys managed their first shot of the half, San Benito had already generated nine attempts, not including its three fruitless corner kicks and three offsides violations.
The invigorated ‘Balers kept the ball on Salinas’ half of the field for most of the remainder of the game by winning almost all of the 50-50 balls, especially as the Cowboys attempted to set their offense with goal kicks or kick-outs on counterattacks.
San Benito had a breakaway with eight minutes remaining when Allan Nieves lofted a pass to Magallon, who had teammates Jaime Torres and Randall Lopez flanking him to outnumber the Salinas defense. But Magallon collided with Cowboys sweeper Larry Pinto and was called for a yellow card, nullifying the threat.
Though the ‘Balers amassed 12 second-half shots to the Cowboys’ three, none found the back of the net, leaving Vasquez and his teammates wishing they had come out in the first half with the same fire.
“You have to control the whole game, rather than just a half of the game,” said Vasquez. “We need to put everything we have into it for the whole game.”
After his team showed progress in pushing TCAL-favorite Live Oak to the ropes and defeating Sobrato on the road last week, Martinez saw this defeat as inexcusable.
“They didn’t play today,” said Martinez. “They took it too easy and that’s what happens. Playing like this, we’re not going to beat anybody. We can’t score against a weak team like this? Apparently, we’re weaker because we lost. If we play like this against Live Oak or Gilroy, it’ll be 10-0.”
San Benito continues its four-game homestand by facing Palma tomorrow at 3:30.
