Portsmouth enjoyed some possession in the Southampton final third early on, with the best chance falling to Ryan Kavuma-McQueen, who darted down the right-hand side of the box and sent a powerful strike across the face of goal.<\/p>\n
But it was Saints that broke the deadlock as Azaz played an in-swinging pass into the box where Bree was making a run into space at the far post.<\/p>\n
The defender then took a touch with his right foot before using the instep of his left to send the ball into the bottom left-hand corner of the net, running off to taunt the travelling Portsmouth fans in celebration.<\/p>\n
Saints looked on course to end the first half well but were reduced to 10 men when Bragg received a second yellow card after pulling Adams down.<\/p>\n
The academy graduate looked distraught as he came off and was consoled by Leo Scienza and boss Tonda Eckert as he left the field.<\/p>\n
Despite being a man down, Saints carved Pompey open early in the second half when Scienza was played through on goal but was denied by Schmid who made a brilliant save.<\/p>\n
The Southampton players then wanted a penalty for handball from the resulting corner but referee Adam Herczeg waved the cries away.<\/p>\n
Azaz went into the book for a heavy challenge on Adams just before the hour mark and this resulted in a melee with some Portsmouth players furious it was not a more severe punishment for the attacker.<\/p>\n
Pompey substitute Marko Milovanovic came close to a late equaliser when he was found in the middle by a cross from the left but his effort went into the side netting.<\/p>\n
Southampton defended well in the second half, limiting Portsmouth’s chances and remaining a compact unit deep inside their own half.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Portsmouth enjoyed some possession in the Southampton final third early on, with the best chance falling to Ryan…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":929065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-929064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929064","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=929064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}