Valour FC hit the halfway mark of the Canadian Premier League season Sunday afternoon serving up one of their best performances of the campaign.
Alas -- and yes, this is a familiar and recurring theme -- they were victimized following a breakdown in a critical moment and paid dearly for it.
Winnipeg's professional soccer side fell 2-1 to Cavalry FC in front of 2,961 faithful at Princess Auto Stadium, conceding the winning goal in the 93rd minute after clawing back to tie the game with their own bit of magic in the 82nd. Still, there are no style points in soccer or medals for valiant efforts and the result is Valour's 10th loss against just two wins and two draws through the first 14 matches of the season, tied for last in the CPL with Vancouver FC with eight points.
"Look, the guys did everything but get something out of this game," said Valour GM and head coach Phillip Dos Santos post match. "Playing against a very good team -- Cavalry will always have moments where they have an upperhand -- and we dealt with those.
"I want to focus on the positives and I want the team to grow and build from that."
Asked about the difficulty of staying positive given the circumstances -- Valour is 14 points back of the final playoff spot -- Dos Santos was succinct:
"We're all aware. Sometimes we talk as if there's a magic recipe. Things are emotional and we forget that we deal with 20 players or more and they're all coping with things differently.
"There's no magic to this. It's reinforcing the message that we just keep doing the little things well and hope in some way the wind changes a little bit for us because this team needs a win, needs a result.
"We did enough today to get it and we didn't get it. It's just keep pushing, keep going."
Valour did have some solid moments throughout and almost opened the scoring 90 secons in as Safwane Mlah's shot was stopped by a brilliant save by Marco Carducci. Frankie Facchineri also hit the crossbar from in tight in the second half.
After a scoreles first half, Cavalry opened the scoring on a Callum Montgomery header on a Fraser Aird free kick.
Valour equalized on a moment of brilliance by Bruno Figueiredo, who came off the bench just five minutes earlier.
Valour looked to have salvaged at least a draw after that goal-of-the-year candidate, but was sloppy in extra time on the equalizer -- a moment Dos Santos called a 'freak football play' as Sergio Camargo was all alone in front of the net after a throw-in and a Valour turnover.
"It's a throw-in, a loss of ball that you had already recovered and players already taking position to try and go the other way," he said. "These things need to be managed. We need to see what went wrong. For me, I focus more on the big picture and we've been hit by late goals -- late in half or late in the game. These are things you can't reproduce in training sessions. You can't. It's impossible to recreate that exact same situation in training."
"It happened quickly. It was difficult to recognize it and to extract any lesson in the moment -- I haven't seen it back yet. In the moment it just flashes before your eyes," said Valour goalkeeper Jonathan Viscosi. "You see a player completely free and you try to come up with a save. It's just a moment of disbelief to lose it at the end like that."
Viscosci, like Dos Santos, stressed the importance now of find positives in the overall performance. That will be this club's challenge in the second half of the season.
"It's especially difficult right now," said Viscosi. "It's important to feel the loss and watch the game back and see what went well for us and what were the areas where we could have done better individually and collectively as a group.
"We stuck together and we kept working at it. We fought back in and clawed a goal out and then just being that close, being one minute away from seeing the result over the line. That's what we need to build off -- grab hold of it and really take it over the line with everything we have knowing that nothing is going to come easy to us in this time.
"We're learning every lesson that a team can go through in a season. If we can stay committed to it and keep our heads through this process we will build on performances like this and turn good performances into results because at the moment even though we've had good performances they haven't led us to the results we want."
Valour will next be in action this Friday in B.C. against Vancouver FC and is home again on July 29th against Cavalry.
"We can't take steps back. We have to cling to the progress, we have to hold on to the progress," added Dos Santos. "I'm with the guys. You have a choice as a coach -- if you start caring more for the results than the people you have to work with every day, you're going to lose their response. I'm there to help and I want to hold on to a positive approach and help them, help them in their careers because there's nobody in that locker room that starts a game wanting to lose. Nobody."
Valour FC 1 Cavalry FC 2
Goals
Valour FC
82′: Bruno Figueiredo (assist: Safwane Mlah)
Cavalry FC
51': Callum Montgomery (assist: Fraser Aird)
93': Sergio Camargo (assist: Tom Field)
Card summary
Valour FC
22′: Kian Williams (yellow)
59': Raphael Ohin (yellow)
65': Elias Himaras (yellow)
96': Safwane Mlah
Cavalry FC
42': Levi Laing (yellow)
61': Max Piepgrass (yellow)
88': Callum Montgomery (yellow)
—
VALOUR STARTING XI
GK – Jonathan Viscosi
D – Zach Fernandez
D – Kelsey Egwu
D – Frankie Facchineri
D – Roberto Alarcon
MF – Raphael Ohin ©
MF – Safwane Mlah
FW – Kianz Froese
FW – Myles Morgan
FW – Kris Twardek
F – Kian Williams
—
Valour substitutions
70’: On Themi Antonoglou; off Kris Twardek
77′: On Bruno Figueiredo; off Kianz Froese
77′: On Diogo Ressurreicao; off Roberto Alarcon
89': On Jevontae Layne; off Kian Williams