The Varsity Blues’ men’s soccer team beat the Nipissing Lakers 4-1 in a heated affair Saturday afternoon. The game saw multiple yellow cards, tight midfield play, and an offensive charge in which four different Blues players scored.
The Blues opened the scoring early in the first half with a goal by fourth-year midfielder Veljko Lukovic, only to give up the lead minutes later after a goal by Nipissing forward Ryan Mantle. Toronto regained the lead before the end of the half on a blast shot from 40 yards out by Ezequiel Lubocki. Both Mario Kovacevic and Nikolay Savaleiev scored in the second-half to build upon the Blues’ lead.
The game saw a heavy flow of midfield play, with limited scoring opportunities on both sides despite the three-goal gap in the score.
Defender Dakar Charles wins a header.
“I think we have to give a lot of credit to the Nipissing team,” said head coach Anthony Capotosto. “They denied us a lot of long-range strikes, with the exception of Ezequiel’s goal, which came off a long-range shot, which was a tremendous goal.”
Still, the Blues’ shots continued to pile up until the game ended and they walked away with a 4-1 win. The team endured in part, Capotosto says, because of strength and conditioning coach Jesse Assing, adding that: “he’s done a tremendous job in preparing our team.”
At the centre of the physical play was Blues defender Dakar Charles. Charles was involved in several large collisions — one of which resulted in a yellow card — and was visibly displeased with the penalization of teammates, but, he says, that’s an important element of their game.
“I feed off my team, and my team feeds off me, so when the intensity gets going, we start to get going, and we start to flow. That’s how we play,” said Charles.
Charles gives some credit to the aggressive play of his back line for his team’s defensive success. “We played a solid backline, we stepped, we pressed, and they didn’t have much chances,” he said, “and it worked.”
Still, Charles managed to keep cool during a more heated moment — even pulling teammates from a scrum in the first half.
Third-year defender Justin Liendo.
“We don’t want anyone getting hurt, right? At the end of the day, it’s a soccer game. We love to play, so we want to play the game; we don’t want to have any fighting or brawling and everything,” he concluded.
Charles and the Blues played again on Sunday against Laurentian ending in a 1-1 tie, and will compete again on Wednesday, September 11 at 8:15 pm against Trent University at Varsity Stadium.
