On Tuesday Sept. 20, Roxbury Community College defeated NECC Knights 3 to 1 in the Men’s Soccer home opener at the Haverhill campus in Haverhill, Mass.
Before the game I had a chance to interview NECC Soccer head coach Eusebio Marote and he gave me an injury update on Andrew Valdes of Lawrence who got injured in the previous match against Massasoit “Unfortunately we believe that he might be out for the rest of the season…” he said.
The Knights won the coin toss against Roxbury which means the Knights would have the ball first.
The game officially started at 3:36 pm.
In the first half the Knights were playing good defense preventing Roxbury from scoring early in the game.
The Knights almost scored on a corner kick. Johnathan Diaz of Methuen kicked the ball, the ball in mid air Matheus Moreira of Dracut headed as the ball went over the net and the Knights did not scored.
In the 33 minutes of the game made it 1-0 Roxbury a goal of Isandro Lopes and an assist from Kervens Charles.
The Knights missed a few opportunities during the game where they could’ve tied the game and possibly taken the lead.
One minute later one of the Roxbury players left the game due to an injury.
Roxbury made it 2-0 in the 43rd minutes of the game. It was again Lopez with an assist this time by Ronilson Semedo.
In the first half the Knights had two corner kicks, Roxbury had three. The Knights had four shots on goal and Roxbury had one. The Knights had five fouls and Roxbury had four.
In the second half the Knights goaltender was complaining a little bit of a hip injury, but he managed to stay in the game.
In the 70 minutes of the game Sam De Amorim of Methuen made it 2 to 1. That goal was a relief for the Knights because with that goal it ended the Knights 290 minutes stretch without scoring a goal.
I had a chance to talk to De Amorim after the game. “It definitely good a lot of work to be [ done] and back into it tomorrow on practice and I feel great about scoring even though I’m coming off an injury and almost giving my team a tie here. It’s a tough loss, they are really good team and we (will be) back at it the next game for sure try to win the next game,” he said.
De Amorim almost scored his second goal of the game, which would have tied the game at 2, but he missed the game tying shot by inches as the ball curved.
Lopes scored a hat trick in the 81st minute as he was responsible for all three goals for Roxbury thanks to an assist of Jorgenson Delice.
In the second half the Knights had one corner kicks while Roxbury had two. The Knights and Roxbury both had four shots on goal. The Knights had three fouls and Roxbury had two fouls meanwhile in the second half. The Knight’s had one yellow card and Roxbury had two.
There were fouls during the game and yellow card that the referee missed during the game.
“Yeah it’s a little frustrating, obviously when he is not making the right call in our opinion but at the end of the day everybody makes mistake… no matter what level it is. Even at the professional level obviously they have video review now in professional so it helps the ref and helps the teams but here obviously we don’t have video reviews so it’s kinda the ref to call…” Coach Marote said.
