Whitfield is a very well coached team consisting of players who have played together for a long time and it showed. Clearly they were the better team but we didn’t allow them to slow us down because we played very hard as well and executed the game plan very well in the first half to shut them down. In the second half we made some changes to give ourselves some opportunities on offense and defensively we stuck to our game plan.
We did a good job for the first twenty minutes in the second half but in the 60th minute of the game we lost marking on one of their forwards and they scored on a questionable onside call. I thought their forward was clearly offside because our sweeper Roman Cepeda played a tight line but the official didn’t seem to recognize that. We tried to protest that goal but the referees had already made up their mind.
After that goal Whitfield struck two more goals rather quickly on our defensive lapses and that was the game.
I am disappointed with the result of the game but I am also proud of our team who was so resilient throughout the season. We respected every team we played against, but at the same time we never backed down to any opponent. We always came back from a tough loss to win our next match; our players accepted their team roles and did their best to help our team win. Our team played every game with a lot of heart and we were relentless in our efforts to win. CPT Syed