The Canada Day celebrations at the Wanderers Grounds didn’t last long, as visiting Atl\u00e9tico Ottawa scored early and often en route to a 3-1 win.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ballou Tabla led the way with a brace, as well as an assist, moving him into a tie for the Golden Boot lead with five on the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It continued a strong run for the Atleti attacker, who now has seven goals contributions (five goals, two assists) in his side’s last five CPL matches.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Atleti, it was a return to action after nearly a month away for the league’s World Cup break. They last played on June 9, when they scored four goals in the second half to come back and defeat FC Supra du Qu\u00e9bec in the nation’s capital.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They picked up exactly where they left off. Just three minutes into the match, Manny Aparicio won the ball high up the pitch, putting the ball into a dangerous area where Erling Myklebust poked it to Tabla. The latter dribbled along the top of the box before curling the opening goal into the bottom corner.<\/p>\n
Halifax looked to respond quickly, as moments later, Francesco Troisi’s low strike was deflected just wide of Chris Kalongo’s post. They had most of the ball for the opening 25 minutes of the match.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But on a counterattack in the 26th minute, Atl\u00e9tico Ottawa added a second. Tabla picked out Antinoro overlapping down the wing, and the Atl\u00e9ti wingback smashed the ball into the top corner to make it 2-0.<\/p>\n
The Atleti onslaught continued, as after a successful FVS challenge in the 36th minute, the visitors were awarded a penalty with Jonant\u00e1n Villal being brought down in the box. Tabla stepped up and fired home his second of the match, and Atleti’s third.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was the league-leading tenth goal that Halifax have conceded in the first half of matches this season, Improving the way they start matches will unquestionably be on the team’s to-do list for the remainder of the season. On this occasion, they trailed by three at the half.<\/p>\n
Vanni Sartini elected to make a pair of changes at the half, bringing on Ryan Telfer and Kareem Sow.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Halifax looked to cut into that lead early in the second half and had a decent chance to do that in the 58th minute through a free kick in a dangerous area. Telfer’s effort was lifted just slightly wide of the target. A few minutes later, Telfer forced a good save from Kalongo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the 68th minute, Halifax finally got themselves on the board.\u00a0 Isaiah Johnston cut down the left flank and forced a good stop from Kalongo, but an attempted clearance on the rebound was deflected into the net by Tavio Ciccarelli.<\/p>\n
The goal ignited the Wanderers Grounds, as the host began to push deeper and deeper into Atl\u00e9tico Ottawa territory, looking to mount an improbable comeback.<\/p>\n
Having overturned a big deficit in their most recent match, however, Atl\u00e9tico Ottawa were in no mood to have that script flipped on them. They defended well to see out a big three road points in Halifax.\u00a0<\/p>\n
With the win, Atl\u00e9tico Ottawa successfully defended third place in the table, and now head home to TD Place where they will play three straight league matches in the nation’s capital.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Canada Day celebrations at the Wanderers Grounds didn’t last long, as visiting Atl\u00e9tico Ottawa scored early and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774327,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-774326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}