Photo courtesy of San Antonio FC<\/p>\n
San Antonio FC earned a hard-fought home point and delivered one of its finest defensive masterclasses of the campaign on Saturday night, battling Eastern Conference pacesetters Tampa Bay Rowdies to a 0-0 draw at Toyota Field.<\/p>\n
Facing one of the USL Championship\u2019s most prolific attacking units, Carlos Llamosa\u2019s side dictated proceedings for much of the match – an affair that was increasingly chippy in the last twenty minutes. SAFC controlled 58 percent of the possession and thoroughly dominated the shot count by a 16-4 margin. Crucially, San Antonio\u2019s backline completely neutralized the Rowdies\u2019 attack, holding Tampa Bay without a single shot on target while putting five on frame themselves. <\/p>\n
Jahmali Waite was impregnable in goal for the Rowdies making five saves, the final the most dramatic as Lilian Ricol was in on goal having beat the Rowdies backline and Waite lunged and made a fingertips save toward the far post. It was one of the best one-on-one saves this season in the USL Championship. <\/p>\n
Llamosa made two adjustments to the starting XI that previously lined up against Sacramento, introducing Lucio Berron and Christian Sorto into the lineup to inject energy and vertical pressing which gave the Rowdies fits. <\/p>\n
San Antonio disrupted Tampa Bay\u2019s build-up in the middle third and repeatedly forced turnovers to spark transition opportunities. <\/p>\n
Dom Casciato countered with three changes at about minute 60 including the crucial insertion of Lewis Hilton which allowed the Rowdies to control more of the tempo in midfield if not possession. <\/p>\n
San Antonio getting a point kept them five clear of missing the playoffs in the West while Tampa Bay\u2019s draw puts the Rowdies six points clear of Charleston in the East and five points clear of El Paso for the Players Shield.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo courtesy of San Antonio FC San Antonio FC earned a hard-fought home point and delivered one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412059,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-412058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=412058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412058\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}