Florida Soccer Saturday Night 3/11/23

Miami FC and Tampa Bay Rowdies Open USL Campaigns at Home With Collective 1-1 Draws

The USL Championship season kicked off Saturday afternoon with Miami FC sharing the spoils with FC Tulsa in a 1-1 draw that will have both sides knowing improvement is required. In the 7:30 timeslot, Tampa Bay will be severely hard done by as some slight of hand from Sebastián Guenzatti saw Indy Eleven awarded a penalty that was converted by Aodhan Quinn to see the Tampa Bay Rowdies share the spoils with Indy Eleven 1-1.

Before I get to my match thoughts, I want to compare broadcasts presented by ESPN Plus. Miami FC broke two major pet peeves of mine in the first half alone. The first being showing empty stands as the opening crowd shot to the match giving off very poor astethics in providing the assumption the team doesn’t matter to the market. Midway through the first half we have a play by play presenter, while the ball is in play, go ‘these guys are professionals’. If you are having to tell your viewing public, which isn’t as gullible as you may want to believe, they are professional it only leads one to question: actually how professional is the team? We know they play in a professional league, act like they do.

While the broadcast from Al Lang looked and sounded much cleaner than the game at Riccardo Silva Sadium, the one thing that caught me off guard was looking at the team sheet online (well done USL with the clean look of the website) and seeing Antley had been subbed off for Areman to start the second half. While halftime did run long, that would have been valuable information to have.

Miami FC 1 FC Tulsa 1 Match Thoughts

• Tulsa was more than content to sit back, soak up Miami pressure and pick them apart on the counter attack, but their counter attack was way too slow to capalize on the opportunities presented to them. Until late, the eye test showed they had the better of the chances to get all three points due to the few opportunities they were able to increase their tempo.

• Both sides were way too willing to part the seas in letting chances go from distance. Both goals were effectively long range efforts (Valot from Miami directly from distance and Tulsa’s equalizer collected by Yosef after Zenedjas couldn’t collect). Speaking of Valot’s opener, Tulsa’s lack of clearing abilities in the sun were on display for everyone to see.

• Salazar for Miami had only one option in the 71st to give Miami the lead, and nearly got it through the near post. The lack of any help in the box would have given him options.

• Haji’s effort late was well saved by Zendejas, and was their only decent effort late to find a second goal.

• If there is anything FC Tulsa can feel hard done by is the fact Florian Valot was very lucky to stay on the pitch and not being booked for his challenge in the 23rd minute. My feeling is if he wasn’t already on a yellow card, he would have gotten one for that challenge. To me, it was a second bookable offense and early shower. Of course it would be Valot getting the opener.

Tampa Bay Rowdies 1 Indy Eleven 1 Match Thoughts

• Indy Eleven’s structure was only truly breeched three times. The first resulted in a handball, the second resulted in the opener and the three should have been the game winner. While Mark Lowry will not be happy with this, if you are giving up 3 very clean chances on goal a game you are only asking for trouble.

• Charlie Dennis has to keep his temper in check not challenging the referee in the manner he did 2 minutes into the game. Yes Rissi’s challenge was borderline but I have seen the called both ways.

• Spekaing of Rowdies penalty kicks, Jennings penalty almost felt like foreshowdowing. Yes, even only twenty minutes into the match. It was also one of the easiest penalties to award with Vázquez having his hand out inside the box on the turf.

• Fjeldberg should have opened the scoring for Indy in the 32nd minute following up Blake’s shot from outside the box. Breno should have collected it and Fjeldberg had the net at his mercy and failed to put it on frame. That would be their best chance in my view until they were awarded the penalty late.

• Let’s talk about both Tampa Bay efforts in the 2nd half. The opener was just pure brillaince by both Dalgaard to get the ball across the goal mouth as he did with two defenders on him, and Jake Areman to get unmarked and ghost across to the far post to finish with a keeper flat footed. Their second came with 10 minutes to go in regulation. Ekra found Harris perfectly and there was an angle to finish the chance. Credit should be given to Oettl for cutting it off just enough to keep Indy in the match.

• While Tampa Bay was pinned in their own half for the last 20 minutes and the first half of stoppage time, I didn’t think they were in any danger of giving up an equalizer. But we all know that the longer you are pinned back, the more likely you will get caught once and that’s what happened in the 4th minute of second half stoppage time. Sebastián Guenzatti got the right side of Forrest Lasso and Lasso decided to go for a wrestling take down. This act started outside the penalty area, but Guenzatti knew he was close enough to the penalty area to try something. The only reason I think the referee called it a penalty was because of the angle Lasso’s arm was at when Guenzatti went down. From the opposite camera angle, there was separation between the two and that’s why I don’t think a penalty should have been awarded. As we all know though, if there’s any doubt, don’t be surprised if you don’t get the benefit of said doubt. Quinn calmly sent it down the middle to share the points.

Miami FC host New Mexico United in their next league match March 18th at 7:00 pm. The Tampa Bay Rowdies will begin a 2 game road trip with a trip out to face Orange County SC with a 10 pm kickoff.

Attendance
Miami FC: 2,092 (20,000 capacity, 10.46%)
Tampa Bay Rowdies: 6,893 (7,227 capacity, 95.38%)