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Two late first half goals jump started San Antonio FC as it advanced to the quarterfinals of the Prinx Tires USL Cup with a 2-0 win over Chattanooga Red Wolves SC on Saturday at Toyota Field.<\/p>\n
Courtesy of SAFC<\/p>\n
San Antonio FC\u2019s fast start in USL Championship play is anchored by its strong play against some of the top teams in the league. Its few struggles have come from the bottom of the table.<\/p>\n
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SAFC (6-2-7, 25 points), second in the USL Western Conference standings, hopes to avoid another letdown against Las Vegas Lights FC (4-7-3, 15 points). The Lights are next to last in the West as the two teams kick off at 8 p.m. Saturday at Toyota Field.<\/p>\n
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The match caps a three-game\u00a0homestand for SAFC, which is 1-0-1 in the first two contests, including a 2-0 win over Chattanooga Red Wolves SC on July 11 in the final match of group play for the\u00a0USL Cup. San Antonio clinched one of eight spots in the knockout rounds with Miami FC looming in the cup quarterfinals next month.<\/p>\n
Beating Chattanooga to advance to the\u00a0USL Cup knockout stage certainly uplifted the spirits of SAFC, which came after a disappointing 0-0 draw against the West\u2019s bottom team, Monterey Bay FC, on July 4.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe mood has been good,\u201d\u00a0SAFC coach Carlos Llamosa said. \u201cThe team looks positive, they look good. They\u2019re looking forward to this Saturday. Hopefully, we can perform well and get the three points.\u201d<\/p>\n
SAFC took advantage of two late first-half goals from Santiago Patino and Curt Calov to finish off Chattanooga.<\/p>\n
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San Antonio was fortunate to salvage the draw against Monterey as two of its players, goalkeeper Joey\u00a0Batrouni and defender\/team captain Mitchell Taintor, were ejected because of red cards. It was the second time this season SAFC and Monterey played to a 0-0 draw, the first occurring on Monterey\u2019s home pitch in April.<\/p>\n
Monterey isn\u2019t the only last-place club in the league that has given\u00a0SAFC trouble. In late May on the road, San Antonio had to settle for a 4-4 draw against Sporting Jacksonville \u2014 the last place club in the Eastern Conference \u2014 after SAFC rebounded from a 3-0 halftime deficit.\u00a0
SAFC defender Nelson Flores Blanco said he isn\u2019t taking anything for granted in the match against Las Vegas.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo team in this league is easy,\u201d\u00a0Flores Blanco said. \u201cSo, we\u2019re definitely not going in cocky. We\u2019re going in, obviously, with confidence. But, if you know anything about this league, you should take no team lightly and we\u2019re working on a lot of things to exploit those weaknesses (of Las Vegas) and obviously things that will strengthen us in the defensive end as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Lights have scored 21 goals in league play, with forward Johnny Rodriguez scoring nine of those, tied for third most in\u00a0USL Championship play. Las Vegas has struggled on defense, conceding 25 goals for a goal differential of minus-4, and doesn\u2019t have a clean sheet in league play so far.
While Las Vegas has lost three of its four previous matches across all competitions, all three defeats were by one goal.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThey don\u2019t get the final result, but overall, they play good matches,\u201d\u00a0Llamosa said. \u201cThey have quality forwards, midfielders. So, we have to be worried about the whole team, not a specific player. When they put the ball on the ground, they play well. It\u2019s going to be about us, not about them, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
SAFC counters with a balanced scoring attack led by midfielders Jorge Hernandez and Dmitrii Erofeev, who each have five goals, defender Alex Crognale with four and forward Christian Sorto, three. Defensively, San Antonio has nine clean sheets across all USL competitions this season, with Batrouni collecting 38 saves in USL regular season play, seventh most in the league.<\/p>\n
Batrouni said SAFC needs to find a way to exploit weaknesses in the Las Vegas defense early on.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey don\u2019t get a lot of clean sheets,\u201d\u00a0Batrouni said. \u201cSo, we got to take advantage, and I think put some (goals) away early and make it an easy win for us at home.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Despite getting the red card in the match against Monterey two weeks ago,\u00a0Batrouni will be available Saturday against Las Vegas after SAFC appealed the ejection to the league. The USL overturned the red card against Batrouni last week.<\/p>\n
Taintor, in his seventh season with San Antonio, will not be able to play against Las Vegas because of his red card. But SAFC has a deep defensive center backfield, which includes Tiago Suarez, Alexis Souahy, Crognale and Danny Barbir.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re going to miss\u00a0Mitch (Taintor), but we have four center backs that can perform on Saturday as well,\u201d Llamosa said.<\/p>\n
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Flores Blanco said the club has the next man up mentality when it comes to Taintor\u2019s absence.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously,\u00a0Mitch has been a great leader,\u201d Flores Blanco said. \u201cHe\u2019s been here for a long time. But he knows and we know it\u2019s the next man up. Anyone can step up and play the part that the team needs. So, obviously it\u2019s going to be a bummer not having him, but next man up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two late first half goals jump started San Antonio FC as it advanced to the quarterfinals of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[82,84,83],"class_list":["post-377097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio","tag-san-antonio-headlines","tag-san-antonio-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}