Orlando SeaWolves fall to Baltimore Blast
Orlando SeaWolves took on the defending champions on Friday night and after going into half-time level, fell to the Baltimore Blast 4-1.
“They’re three-time defending champions and they’re a very good team,” said Head Coach Tom Traxler (pictured above) after the game. “We’ve played three games. We’ve shown that we can defend in this league and we can defend very well. I’m sure they’ll tell you we gave them a hard time tonight defensively. We need to be better in possession but that’s going to come with chemistry. We’re a new team together. We’ve had three games. They’ve had 3,000 games. That’s a great club and you can’t take anything away from them.”
Orlando started the match on the front foot, converting a breakaway goal thanks to Luiz Mota’s first goal of the season. Eduardo Cruz was able to find Mota over the top on the right hand side and volleyed home a sweet strike to the far post to give the home side the early advantage midway through the first half.
The second quarter saw the Blast assert themselves on the game and it was no surprise when Andrew Hoxie equalized off a free kick for the Blast with his fourth goal of the season.
The Blast then came firing out on all cylinders in the third quarter and took the lead just three minutes into the third quarter as Josh Hughes tapped in a deflected shot from Jon Orlando to make it 2-1. Four minutes minutes later, Elton de Oliveira found Juan Pereira who calmly lobbed the ball over SeaWolves goalkeeper Rainer Hauss to extend the Blast’s lead to 3-1.
A late penalty shootout goal from Juan Pereira with a minute remaining capped off an impressive defensive performance from the Blast. Orlando played with six attackers for the rest of the game but the Blast defense held strong for a 4-1 victory.
“They know where they have to be and they know what to do at the right time,” Hauss (pictured above left) said of the Blast. “Definitely Baltimore is a team that will punish whoever is playing against them and has little mistakes. It takes like one second for them to get into space and score a goal. I think we defended well but we need a little more offense.”
The SeaWolves will now play their last game of a three-game home run on Saturday, December 22 at 7:05 p.m. EST as they host the Mississauga MetroStars.
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