With the Toronto
Lynx far removed from their own play-off race, they were
at least able to play the role of spoiler by defeating
the Staten Island Vipers 2 nil. A large group of 4,544
soccer fans made the trek to venerable Varsity Stadium in
order to say good-bye to the doomed facility.
The Vipers went into the match trailing the first place
Rochester Raging Rhinos by five points with hopes for a
maximum point effort (four points for a win plus one
bonus point for scoring three goals) but the Lynx had no
intention of cooperating.
The match became ugly early when in the ninth minute,
Lynx defender Ricardo Munguia and Vipers midfielder Sal
Leanti exchanged flying mucous near the Staten Island
bench. After consulting with fourth official Mike
Lambert, referee Steve DiPiero red carded both players
leaving both sides with only ten men.
Vipers defender and former Lynx, Rick Titus saw the
incident at close range, "Ricardo Munguai spit
on our player and (Leanti) spit back. (Munguai)
does that a lot."
The Lynx got into trouble in the 17th minute when Adrian
Serioux lost the ball on the edge of the box to Vipers
striker Kevin Wilson. Serioux recovered by tying up
Wilson only to have the ball run to Staten Island's
Canadian striker Giuliano Oliviero. Lynx keeper
Theo Zagar was able to cut down the angle and Oliviero
shot wide.
Toronto broke the scoreless tie in the 28th minute.
Nikki Vignjevic received the ball in the midfield and
immediately relayed to a breaking Rudy Doliscat. He
threaded a perfect pass to an open Francisco Dos Santos
who broke in on the left and fired a low blast that beat
Viper keeper and Toronto native Peter Pappas at the near
post. It was his 13th goal of the season in only 20
games.
The Lynx would continue to threaten but couldn't
capitalize and went to the interval with their one
goal lead.
The second half continued the pattern of the first with
the Lynx maintaining the advantage in ball possession and
scoring chances, but it was not until the 72nd minute
that they would finally score their insurance
marker. The ball was crossed from the left wing to
Lloyd Barker who passed back into space where an
onrushing Brian Ashton connected with a rocket of a shot
that beat Pappas low and to the right just inside the
goalpost.
Ashton, commenting on his fourth goal of the season said,
"I always seem to get the long ones. I know I
have a pretty powerful shot and Lloyd saw me on the edge
of the box. I just wanted to make sure it didn't go
into the street."
With 18 minutes to play, the Lynx looked assured of
victory but then referee Steve DiPiero became a
factor. Rudy Doliscat, having been yellow carded in
the 51st minute for dissent, attempted to chest a ball
only to have it strike his upper arm. Referee
DiPiero, apparently believing the handball to be
intentional, awarded Doliscat his second yellow card of
the match thus leaving the Lynx a man down.
Even the Vipers' Titus was shocked, "That was
ridiculous. You could tell that he was trying to
shoulder it. I think that for an infraction like
that, in a game like this, let it go."
One minute later, as Lynx head coach Peter Pinizzotto was
replacing Dos Santos with defender Joe Mattacchione, the
Brazilian striker stopped to loosen his socks only to be
immediately yellow carded for time wasting. Dos
Santos looked up and said something to the official only
to be red carded leaving the Lynx with only seven field
players in the match.
A furious Pinizzotto commented, "(It was)
brutal. The ref. had time to stop the clock, which
he did, and just let him go (off the field). It's the
last game; there's no need to give red cards for
that. I guess he just wanted to show that he was
the main man on the field".
Despite being down three men to the Vipers one, the Lynx
were able to withstand Staten Island's late pressure and
finish the match and their season with a 2 nil victory.
Both sides were frustrated by DiPiero. Titus
commented "The refereeing was going badly for both
teams. They were making errors at both ends.
(DiPiero) really didn't have control of things."
Titus was obviously disappointed with the outcome.
"The team is pretty banged up. We're missing
half our guys right now and a lot of the good players
couldn't even make the trip. We've got a couple of
guys on the field today that haven't played in the last
three or four months. Monday (against Rochester) is
going to be a tough game. We're going to have to
play more intelligently than tonight and try to get a
result."
Pinizzotto, though saddened by the clubs early exit from
the season, was pleased with the way the year ended,
"It was great to finish with two wins. We are
trying to build for next year and we'd like to have the
majority of the players back. We are going to try
and negotiate their contracts as soon as possible.
Basically, we're happy that we can play with
anybody. It's unfortunate that we had such a rough
start."
Stuff: It was "Girl Power" night at
Varsity and the ceremonial kick-offs were handled by
Canadian internationals Helen Stoumbos, Tina Blaskovic
and Sarah Barradas ... the 16 year old Barradas scored
seven goals in six game while representing Canada at the
Pan-Am games ... the Lynx have been experiencing a
massive 40% increase in attendance ... tonight's crowd
was the fourth largest of the season behind only the two
visits by the Rochester Raging Rhinos and Portugal's
Santa Clara ... Canada is well represented on the Vipers
line-up by Titus, Pappas, Oliviero and Martin Dugas ...
Rick Titus' father Carl is equipment manager for the Lynx
... Lynx keeper Theo Zagar finished the season with five
shutouts in eight starts and a goals against average of
1.00 ... both striker Leonel Bolsonello (injury)
and defender Marco Reda (suspension) were
unavailable tonight ... while this is the last
professional soccer match to be played at Varsity
(assuming that demolition goes ahead as scheduled), there
are a number of University of Toronto Blues football
games to be played this fall ... while missing the
play-offs again, the Lynx have improved their overall
season record from 1998's nine wins / 19 losses to 12
wins / 16 losses ... only 9 of the Lynx total of 31
goals were scored by players that started the season with
the club while the remaining 22 were scored by late
arrivals Vignjevic (7), Bolsonello (2) and Dos Santos
(13) ..... referee Steve DiPiero was the man in the
middle for last week's Rochester - Toronto match .....
tonight, he was even worse. |
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