The American University men’s soccer team can’t seem to make up its mind. Five games into the season, they have no wins, one tie and four losses.
On one hand, the Eagles are performing very well against nationally ranked teams. Back on Aug. 29, they hosted the #1-ranked and defending national champions, the University of Vermont Catamounts. It was a very exciting and competitive game that ended in a 1-1 draw. American showed that it can defend against good teams and they can produce some offense against top teams as well.
On the other hand, before the games against ranked opponents, the team traveled out to Southern California where they lost two games, both by a single goal.
The first game of the road trip, and also the season opener for the Eagles, was against California Baptist University. Both teams scored twice in the first half before sophomore Chris Sullivan got two yellow cards within a minute of each other and forced American to play a man down for the remainder of the game. That is a severe disadvantage, and it is a miracle that the Eagles didn’t give up any more goals.
The first of the yellow cards was understandable, as Sullivan got twisted up with a CBU player, but the second card was preventable. Sullivan once again got himself into a situation where he was tangled up, but this time dragged the other player to the ground, which inevitably resulted in a second yellow card, disqualifying him from the game.
Regardless of the cards, California Baptist is a team with a skill level and recent history similar to American, and at the time, this seemed like a reasonable outcome.
The second game in California was against Loyola Marymount University, another team comparable to the Eagles. This game had many similarities to the previous, as they lost by one and an American player got a red card, putting them a man down for a portion of the game.
Despite the loss, this was another result that was acceptable, seeing as they kept it close and identified things to work on.
After American played Vermont, they went on the road to face the #11-ranked University of Virginia. They once again lost the contest by a single goal, but this time got shut out. Sophomore Patryk Rojek was also awarded a red card just over 22 minutes into the game, once again putting American at a disadvantage.
Still, losing by 1 goal to such a highly ranked program is nothing to be ashamed of, especially coming off playing the top-ranked team in the country.
It just feels like American could have had better results in California. Having such close games against two top-15 teams in the country begs the question of why they couldn’t play at that level in their first two games of the season.
I think that the team is simply beating itself. This team clearly has the materials it needs to go out and beat any team it plays, but simple mistakes are made during play that hold it back.
One big area they need to focus on is the number of shots they are allowing opponents to take. In just five games, American has taken 46 fewer shots than their opponents. This is a defensive issue that needs to be fixed. Because even if the offense is playing well, other teams will continue to outscore American.
Similar to the shots taken, opponents have taken over five times as many corner kicks as American. This fits right in with the trend of the American defense lacking in their efforts to get the ball out of their area.
The Eagles have the potential to win these games but they have to stop shooting themselves in the foot. A team does not want to look back after a game or after a season and ask the question “What if?”
If American can clean up those mistakes that put them at a disadvantage, they have so many good players, including the Patriot League preseason offensive player of the year Troy Elgersma, to help lead them to some victories as they get closer to conference play.
This article was edited by Matthias Sandoval, Connor Sturniolo, Penelope Jennings and Walker Whalen. Copy editing done by Sabine Kanter-Huchting and Ariana Kavoossi.
