The St. Albert Impact are kicking themselves for not winning more this season in premier men’s soccer.
But with 10 matches remaining the Impact are still on pace to surpass last year’s seven-win, 23-point campaign in the Edmonton District Soccer Association.
“We should take that as a good thing but I still feel like we should’ve taken a few more points because some games we didn’t show up,” said centre-back Takeyuki Hakii, an Impact veteran at age 23.
The fourth victory in eight matches was Thursday’s 4-2 come-from-behind effort against the DV Oldboys (1-6-1) in St. Albert.
The Impact rallied from a 2-0 deficit with 10 players on Jeff Bruha’s hat trick for a team-high five goals this season and Moritz Schmidt’s marker.
Connor MacEachran started in net and Adam Pinco finished the contest as the Impact improved to 4-3-1.
“We played so well once we got down to 10 men but it’s really too bad that it took us going down to 10 men to play like that. I guess we weren’t working hard enough when it was 11 against 11,” Hakii said. “When we had one man sent off I guess we said, ‘OK, we’ve got to work a little bit harder now because we’re one man down.’ At the end of the day we just finished our chances.”
Earlier in the week the Impact dropped their second in a row, 3-1 to Sherwood Park Karpaty (4-2-1) in St. Albert. Ciaran Thompson scored and MacEachran was the goalkeeper.
“We didn’t play well that game against Karpaty. We should’ve taken three points there if we had finished our chances,” Hakii said.
Under head coach David MacEachran the Impact have found the back of the net 17 times – twice they were shut out – while letting in two less goals. Last year the Impact posted 32 GF and 32 GA to finish 7-7-2 overall in their first stint in premier since 2008 after three winning seasons in division 1B.
“Our organization is our strength this season. We’re really organized. We understand the system and we’re doing what we’re supposed to do on the field,” Hakii said. “We also have to be humble enough to admit there are players better than us technically in the league because we’re in premier now and we just have to be humble enough to play like that. We have to play the shape and be organized and play defence first so they can’t break us down. If we get cocky and think I can take that player all day we lose the ball and bam! In premier they finish their chances.”
The third match in six days for the Impact was Saturday’s exhibition against the FC Edmonton reserves (academy team) in St. Albert. The premier squad brought on board five players from the Impact U16 Tier I ranks to fill in for those regulars unavailable to play. For most of the second half all the U16s were on the field together in the 8-1 loss.
“It was tough and tiring but we’re not 50. We’re still young,” Hakii said. “It was a good experience. It didn’t help that we didn’t field our core guys, I suppose, but to be fair to the under-16 boys that came out they did OK. I thought they were pretty confident for their age.”
Schmidt converted a penalty shot for the Impact’s lone goal.
“The first half I think they were running too much and we were chasing too much. We were just getting tired and they were playing around us. They had a few midfielders coming through our back line and that’s something we have to sort out. We were playing the long ball too much too,” said Hakii, a St. Francis Xavier High School alumnus who played his club soccer with Victoria before joining the Impact men’s program. “In the second half we decided to play the ball on the ground and it helped that they changed their team as well.
“In the second half we played better because we played more of our soccer. We didn’t chase them too much and we didn’t play their game but we tried to play our game. We said if we try and keep the ball and take that extra touch and lose the ball that’s OK and it’s not a big deal so let’s just try and play our soccer and it went OK.”
The Impact are back on then pitch this Thursday against AC Milan (5-2-1) at 8:30 p.m. at Riel Recreation Park.
