After a shaky start against an unfamiliar opponent, El Farolito went back to basics and delivered a 3-2 win over Sun City FC at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco on Thursday night.
With the win, El Farolito maintains its perfect record in NPSL Golden Gate Conference play.
Sun City FC is based in El Paso, Texas and is in its first season in the NPSL. No other teams from the NPSL’s Lone Star Conference are participating this season, so Sun City FC is currently playing road matches with all five of the other teams in the Golden Gate Conference. The first was last Saturday night and they defeated Real San Jose by a score of 11-0.
Sun City Comes Out Firing
On Thursday, Sun City came out firing immediately after the opening whistle and El Farolito goalkeeper Kevin Gonzalez stepped up to keep his team in the match.
Gonzalez was tested by a Sun City breakaway in the first 40 seconds of the game, and came up big with a diving stop.
However, the visitors did get on the board in the 13th minute. Gonzalez was able to clear the ball away after a cross, but Yahir Meza won the loose ball and scored on the rebound.
Sun City nearly scored another in the 17th minute, hitting the crossbar on consecutive shot attempts.
After the match, Farolito’s Head Coach Santiago Lopez said he was impressed with Sun City players’ skills, but told his players to stick with the game plan for the remainder of the match.
“They have a great team,” Lopez said. “The two strikers are very quick. The center back, I think he won more than 75 percent of the duels against Dembor. Dembor is very good in the air.
“The players knew the game plan was always set. We recognized that we’re playing with the line of three in attack and then four in defense. We needed to keep looking for those central channels and then looking for the wide areas. Exactly what we’ve been doing lately.”
Farolito Strikes Back
El Farolito soon equalized in the 20th minute, when Dembor Benson converted on a penalty kick, after Herlbert Soto was taken down in the penalty area.
Gonzalez came up big again in the 26th minute, tipping away a header from a Sun City striker for a corner kick.
Farolito also wracked up three yellow cards in the remainder of the first half, including Jesus Martinez in the 27th minute, Sergio Villareal in the 39th minute, and Gabriel Arias in first half stoppage time.
“It got very, very chippy in the beginning,” Lopez said. “I always say to the players you’ve got to remain focused on what you need to do individually, and that will help out the team. We’re very fortunate that the team kept on maintaining possession. [Sun FC] were just looking for counters with the long ball they had.
“We just needed to switch the point of attack. We kept on losing a lot of the balls in the middle, and that was causing us damage. They try to play out of the back. We just maintained the high pressure and they couldn’t build up. The keeper was having a bad day, the center back that came in didn’t have a good day, so we kept on pressuring him up top, and they lost a lot of balls. So that was the main focus.”
Miscues in the Back
The match was ultimately decided by a pair of defensive miscues by Sun City players, under pressure from Farolito’s press.
El Farolito took the lead in the 39th minute, when Kipre Sacre intercepted a slow back pass intended for Sun City goalkeeper Alejandro Molto and quickly deposited it into the goal.
Disaster struck again for Molto in the 47th minute. As he stood alone in the goal area, he tripped over the ball and accidentally deflected it into the net for an own goal.
Farolito Hangs On in the Second Half
With a two-goal lead, Farolito was getting most of the chances now. Sacre had another one in the 52nd minute, dribbling into the penalty area but sending his shot attempt over the crossbar.
Benson had another chance in the 68th minute, after a few passes left him unmarked, but his shot sailed over the bar.
Sun City drew to within one goal in the 79th minute, when Rodrigo Pedroza Robles took a shot from distance that ducked in under the crossbar. But El Farolito controlled much of the possession until the final whistle.
Coach’s Quotes
Lopez talked about the challenge of playing teams from outside of Northern California.
“It reminded me of the national playoffs, where you don’t know the opponents,” he said. “You only see something in videos, but with this team, there’s are absolutely no videos. That’s how we were years ago, but now there’s a lot of video and YouTube from our games, so they they have an idea of what they’re playing against.
“We had zero knowledge of this team. So, it was a big surprise to the team and within the first 15 minutes we noticed that individually they are very, very good. But tactically, in the second half, we managed how to pressure them, and they couldn’t build out from the back, and we had more possessions and more chances at the end.”
Schedule Congestion
Sun City FC continues its meetings with Golden Gate Conference teams on May 30, when they face Vacaville Elite. They close out their regular season schedule with matches against Cruizers FC (June 11) and Oakland Stompers (June 13).
El Farolito’s next three matches are on the road, including dates with Vacaville Elite (June 3), the Oakland Stompers (October 5), and Real San Jose (June 16). They close out the regular season hosting Cruizers FC (June 20).
Lopez talked about the challenges of playing a compressed schedule in a conference that often played weekly in previous years.
“Yeah, it affects us a lot. Sometimes it’s better to rest than train, and these games are so intense right now. We didn’t do a lot of subs because I felt like we didn’t need to. It was only man-to-man type of substitutions, so a lot of my players right now are fatigued. Right now, we’re just gonna be focused on recovery and when we get to train it’s just going to be very simple, very light technical work, not tactical. Nothing physical, just point out the kind of cues that we need to work on. So, yeah, not a lot of rest, but we’re looking forward to it. We love to play. You learn learn with the games, not with training.”
