On Saturday, Sept. 10 Central Maine Community College defeated NECC Knights 6 to 1 in Aburn, Maine.
Before the game I had a chance to talk with NECC Soccer head coach Eusebio Marote.
“We’re hoping obviously to get a result today, long drive player’s got to make sure they are still focused today and I believe this team won their conference last year and they are going to be a tough opponent so we are just going to battle and match their intensity and hopefully get the result,” he said.
Coach Morate was right, it was a tough opponent for the Knights. The Knights were losing five to one at the end of the first half. Central Maine out scored the Knights 10 to 3 on shots on goal. The only goal for the Knights was Jonathan Diaz of Methuen who scored his third goal of the season just in two games.
The goal of Jonathan Diaz came in a penalty kick on 10 minutes of the game.
The first 11 minutes of the game they were combined of three goals.
Two of Central Maine and one for the Knights.
They were a lot of changes during the game, a lot of substitution players came in and came out back and forth during the course of the game.
I asked coach Marote about the struggle the Knights had in the first half they weren’t productive like on opening day as the Knights were in the slow starts.
“Yeah, you know I think we started off a little slow our guys wasn’t ready for those first moment a couple of mistakes as of fouling and a crucial area they capitalize on their two chances so when they were up 2-0 you know very early it kinda put our guys heads down. I tried to motivate them to move forward, we did for a bit, we scored that goal it was 2-1 most of the first half until the last 15 to 20 minutes of the second half that’s when we ran out of gas…” he said after the game.
The Knights in the first half had three saves while Central Maine only had one. Central Maine only had five corner kicks and Northern Essex three in the first half. Central Maine also had six fouls while the Knights had three.
In the second half the Knights needed a miracle as they were down by four with just 45 minutes left in the game.
Coach Marote talked to his players during the half time to know they still in this game for a chance for a comeback and there is no quitting on this ball club. “I told them to keep their heads up to keep working,start the half new like it was 0-0 game. Tried to come back and scored couple more if we can unfortunately we couldn’t do that we were defending for a good amount of the game…” he said.
Central Maine were looking to increase their lead attacking the zone but they didn’t capitalize including one of the shots almost went in on the 76 minutes in into the game.
In the second half the referee was issuing yellow cards something that we did not see at all in the first half.
On the 54 minutes of the game Rayane Elmakhlouk of Methuen had a yellow card. 10 minutes later on the 64 minutes it was Ibrahim Dubai of Lewiston, Maine, who had a yellow card and finally for the Knights it was Sam De Amorim of Methuen.
Central Maine scored one more goal in the second half on the 80 minutes of the game. It was the second goal of the game of Romana Bassa of Lewiston, Maine. Both goals that he scored during the game were unassisted to make it 6 to 1.
“We need to focus on communication and just you know defending first, I mean that’s the main thing, defend,attack. The important thing we can improve o, focused on defending…” said NECC soccer player Fadi Serhan of Methuen.
He also said in the second half they were playing decent having control of the ball most of the time. The Knights had a few chances to score in the second half but they didn’t have luck as the ball didn’t pass through the goalkeeper.
