The Impact Alumni and DV Youngmen battled Saturday's snowstorm and each other in a chippy and chirpy St. Albert Men's Soccer League final.
Two red cards in the second half, finger-pointing and verbal umbrage between players, disagreements with officiating, sliding tackles on the slick Riel Park pitch as long as a curler's delivery out of the hack before releasing the rock, and a tussle during penalty kicks summed up a match that had to be seen to be believed.
“It was just a battle. The weather was awful. I don’t think either team wanted to play in this weather,” said the Impact’s Vince Bustamante, who notched the 4-2 winner in penalty kicks for the Impact after the referee ended the match before full time and the teams at loggerheads with two goals apiece.
“It was a good snowball, a wild final. It’s fun to play in these type of games,” said Matt Lischynski of the Youngmen. “It sucks when it goes down to PKs but the two top teams were out there.”
The final kicked off with seven Youngmen against the Impact’s 11-man lineup but as reinforcements trickled in the first half ended with 10 Youngmen and the match scoreless.
Justin (Melo) Melton, a striker, was in net for the first half with goalkeeper Josh Richardson a late arrival, and after a stint playing up front the lanky Richardson switched spots with Melton to start the second half.
Melton and the Youngmen stood their ground defensively while short-handed as the Impact tried to capitalize with the man advantage before the Youngmen’s ranks swelled to 10 before the 15-minute mark.
Melton’s sliding kick save in the 27th minute kept the Impact off the score sheet.
The Youngmen also managed to test goalkeeper Jason Krebes a couple of times towards the end of the half as things started to heat up.
“That’s kind of the theme of our team. We play short and it doesn’t matter; we all play for each other and we're all there for each other,” Lischynski said. “We just play hard no matter what and grind it out. Everybody just kind of filled their roles where they needed to be.”
The teams continued to ratchet up the intensity after spending the halftime break warming up inside the change rooms.
In the 59th minute, Melton chased down a ball and chipped it over top of Krebes to open the scoring.
Down by one, the Impact stayed the course with its pro-active attack as Brent Anderson and Alex (Scotty) Sinclair came close to scoring against the rock-solid Richardson.
The Impact pulled even in the 71st minute on Bustamante’s penalty shot even though it was tough to see where the infraction took place with the penalty area covered in snow.
Five minutes later, Naif Algharei finished off a sequence of events that started with a free kick by the Youngmen from around midfield, but the Impact’s clearance attempt went sideways and the Youngmen retrieved the ball to set up the go-ahead marker.
“When it gets tied up you’ve just got to keep pushing no matter what,” Lischynski said. “Our goals today were perfect. Deep long balls to our strikes where they needed to push that ball.”
With the Youngmen in defensive mode, Richardson punched away a corner kick and Lischynski proceeded to pull off a World Cup-calibre bicycle kick in tight of the goal line, and while looking north the left back sent the ball a long way south.
The Impact eventually persevered in the 84th minute with a “squeaker goal” to knot the count at two.
“All season we’ve been pretty good at conceding the first goal and having to battle back, so it was kind of status quo for us but we knew we had lots of time left and we knew what we were doing was going to work. It was definitely a grind and we got lucky to get one near the end of the game,” Bustamante said. “Adam King hit the ball, he just hit it really hard and low at the goalie, and it skipped off the ground and (Richardson) had control of it and it just slipped out of his hands.”
All heck broke loose the next minute after the goal as Melton and Scott Lysenko of the Impact were red- carded over what appeared to be some form of a kicking incident – Melton was carded first and Lysenko shortly after – that prompted both players to loudly discuss in great detail outside their respective change rooms what playground to meet at recess time to settle their differences.
After a lengthy break, play resumed but emotions were still running high so the referee quickly blew the whistle and it went straight into penalty kicks.
“It would’ve been nice to play against them with them down a man and it would’ve been nice to have that littler bit more time but PKs are PKs,” Lischynski said.
The first penalty kick by the Impact was teed up by Sinclair but Richardson got both hands on the ball. Sinclair, a fiery Scotsman, then made a beeline to the Youngmen’s bench where an individual was stationed and they started hugging it out, prompting players from both teams standing on the halfway line to rush to the scene and restore order. Sinclair was sentenced to the change room while his combatant was escorted away from the field.
It was 2-1 Impact when Krebes got a piece of the ball to deflect it away.
Bustamante eventually pulled the trigger on the playoff cup clincher.
“It’s a lucky thing. It’s a little bit mental. I was a little nervous because I hit one in the game but you never know what the goalie is thinking,” said the runner-up for the SAMSL Golden Boot regular-season scoring title with 13.
The Impact finished 12-1-7 overall after falling short in last year’s final to the Forest Park Rangers in the two-game aggregate format.
“It was a great season. We got the league title (8-1-6) and we got the cup. I’m just proud of the guys for putting in a good effort and battling in this tough weather,” said Bustamante, an Impact newcomer and arguably the league’s MVP.
The Youngmen placed third in the six-team table at 7-6-2, while going 11-7-2 overall.
“We would’ve liked to be first obviously but to see where we finished we're pretty happy with it,” said Lischynski, who booted the ball over the net on the Youngmen’s second penalty kick with the shootout tied 1-1.
“We would’ve had a more successful season if we had more of our guys out. We were missing five key guys today but we just played for each other and that’s the big thing for us. We just play hard and it showed today being down one man the whole game.”
