The University of Memphis mens soccer team lost 3-1 to Florida Gulf Coast Wednesday night at the Park Avenue campus to fall to 1-2-2 on the season and 1-2 at home.
The Tigers controlled most of the first half and were poised to go into the break with a 1-0 lead thanks to a goal by Saad Chaouki off an Eben McIntyre assist in the 23rd minute. That was until FGCU's Caio Oliveira got a wide open goal from a rebound where a Memphis defender kicked the ball out of goalkeeper Filip Sabatti’s hands just 48 seconds before halftime.
”I thought we lost our discipline,” Memphis head coach Richard Mulrooney said. “I thought we did well in the first half, what they did to us, we did it to ourselves. To give up that goal, it took the wind out of it.”
The wind that got taken out of the Tigers sails by that goal was put into the Florida Gulf Coast sails, as the game opened up for the Eagles after they finally broke through.
”That gave us a lot of momentum,” said Oliveira about his goal going into halftime. “It was a hard game, very transitional… if the game was transitional, we knew the space was going to be wide and behind their centerbacks, and we were able to use that.”
After that goal, the Tigers began to unravel, as Florida Gulf Coast quickly scored two more goals coming out of halftime. In the 54th minute, Brooks Beeman launched a ball into the left side of the goal, then assisted Ignatius DeMark’s header in the 60th minute that put the Eagles up 3-1.
”They outplayed us, they played a smarter game in the second half, we lost the discipline," Mulrooney said. "They’re good on the counterattacks and we were trying to dribble out of pressure and they punished us."
In just 15 minutes, the game went from one the Tigers were controlling to a two goal deficit that proved to be insurmountable.
A theme throughout the night that plagued the Tigers was communication problems between Sabatti and his defenders, particularly with that game changing goal by Oliveira at the end of the first half.
”(The communication issues) surprised me, because you have a player at right back who has a ton of experience being a junior, you have a goalie who’s the (AAC) Goalie of the Year, and then you got the other player, Ryan Ruguaru, who started games last year,” Mulrooney said.
Memphis will try to bounce back when they continue their season at Jacksonville on Sunday at 5 p.m. The game will be streamed on ESPN+.
