Victoria Soccer Club - The fourth consecutive playoff cup in team history was better than expected for GSE in the St. Albert Men’s Soccer League.
“It’s obviously a big deal to come into the league five years ago and only miss out once and then win it all four years we’ve been here after that,” said striker Terry Esposito after the Green Street Elite lads toppled the SV Spurs 5-2 in Sunday’s final.
“It always feels nice to win the championship. No matter who you’re playing and no matter what the circumstances it always feels good,” Esposito added. “We always come out with the same attitude. We come to win and that’s what we want to do.”
Previous championship scores were 7-1 against Chester City last year and 5-1 and 1-0 against the Rummies.
“I would like to think every year you’ve got to work a little bit harder for it because everyone is kind of gunning for us,” said outside-back Scott McPherson, the recipient of the team’s Player of the Season trophy. “Year after year they’re all special but you want to win the current year. You want to do it right now.”
Visit www.stalbertgazette.com to view the team’s championship picture.
GSE finished 15-0-1 (47 GF/12 GA) and the only pimple on its near-perfect record was last month’s 2-2 draw with the Spurs in the second-last match before the playoffs.
Last year GSE was 15-1-1 after going 10-4-2 in 2013 and 14-1-3 in 2012.
“The undefeated season is obviously nice to get. We’ve really come together as a group over the past couple of years and it’s nice to get the result we were going for at the beginning,” said McPherson, 23, a St. Albert Catholic High School alumnus.
Esposito suggested GSE’s record was somewhat misleading.
“It’s been an interesting season to say the least. We tied one game and won all the others but we played most games short a man for at least half of the game. We would start off with nine and a goalie and we’re fortunate enough to still pull out some wins and make it to the end here and luckily we had the numbers to get done what we needed to today,” said the Golden Boot Award scoring champion in league play with 17 goals, eight more than the runner-up, Rylan Durocher of the Spurs.
The majority of the GSE players have been with the team since day one.
“We’ve got a great coach and manager in Quinn (Smith-Ackerl). He’s always working hard to get us together and we’re not always the easiest group to pull in together,” McPherson said. “We’ve got the all-star keeper (Matt Bergin), the best keeper in the league, and we’ve got a lot of character guys too. We come out, we care, we all know each other and we want to win as a team and that’s the main thing for us.”
GSE found the back of the net four times in the first half after Craig Fleming was tagged with a handball infraction in front of Bergin and Matt Guay converted the penalty kick in the second minute.
“It’s unfortunate but it happens. It could’ve gone either way. (The referee) could’ve called it or he could’ve let it go but at the end of the day we know it’s very early in the game and we’ve got lots of time to come back and no matter what time of the game it is one goal is not enough to beat us,” said Esposito.
His 19th goal in league and playoffs combined was the equalizer in the seventh minute. The small but shifty forward caught up to a through ball and pushed it past Shane Moore before tumbling over the goalkeeper.
Esposito, 23, also scored the only goal in the 1-0 semifinal tilt around the 30-minute mark against Chester City (9-8-3).
“It’s not just one person on this team that can score,” said Esposito, who was denied the 2-1 go-ahead goal in the final on a sliding defensive tackle by Sean Mason. “We’re fortunate enough to have a great group of guys. We’ve been together a long time. Everybody kind of knows what everybody else wants, how we play and where we want the ball. We have a very strong midfield that’s able to win the ball and control it and get it up to us for good chances.”
Coast-to-coast action with the match knotted at one featured chances at both ends before Kris Rasmusens beat Moore with a roller on the short side in the 32nd minute.
Three minutes later, Brandon Kinley converted a throw in with a low shot off a swinging leg kick.
The fourth GSE goal in the 41st minute was a strange one. The second corner kick in a row by Kelly Willis bounced alongside the back line toward the net, forcing Kyle Greschuk of GSE to jump over the ball, but it clipped his cleats and kept rolling past the startled Moore, who was standing on the goal line in the middle of the net.
The teams traded chances to start the second half before Guy was awarded a penalty shot in the 81st minute after Begin punched out a shot and on the ensuing play knocked over a Spur in tight of the line in the goal area for the yellow card.
Kinley replied in the next minute with his second goal of the match and Roland Park the main set-up man on the play. Kinley, a dangerous striker, missed most of the season with a lower-body injury but returned in fine form for the playoffs.
The Spurs (9-6-1) reached the final after knocking off Prestige Worldwide (11-8-1) on penalty kicks after their semifinal ended in a 2-2 stalemate. The Spurs made all five kicks while Prestige missed its third.
Darren Sinke was in net for the Spurs but was unavailable for the final and Moore drew the short straw as his replacement.
“We’ve played these guys before so we knew what to expect. The only difference was their regular keeper wasn’t here so we knew we just had to take a lot of shots and take them from out far and fortunately we froze him a couple of times and picked the inside of the post and got a couple of quick goals after we were down one to get right back into it,” said Esposito, a Paul Kane High School alumni.
Sunday’s third-place game saw Prestige blank Chester 6-0. Chester played a man short the entire match and didn’t have much in the tank after pushing GSE to the limit in the semifinals.
