On a rare Friday night home match for San Antonio FC, with the team and their fans celebrating all things Fiesta, it was a Fiesta of goals on the pitch that carried San Antonio FC to their third straight home victory, winning over Tacoma Defiance 3-0.
SAFC Midfielder Jack Barmby had a beautiful first half goal, and then he followed it up with an even better one just five minutes later, earning SAFC's second straight brace. Ironically, in both cases, Gomez last week and Barmby on Friday night, both players did it with two first half goals.
Said Barmby after the match, "As long as the forwards can keep scoring and our defenders can keep a clean sheet, that's the biggest thing, it's the name of the game. Matt (Cardone) and the back four have to keep the clean sheets with the back four and we have to provide the goals. I got a bit more forward tonight which helped my game and helped the forwards, and it was nice to get a couple of goals."
SAFC Manager Darren Powell was relegated to watching the game from a team suite for disciplinary reasons stemming from the previous match against Real Monarchs when he was sent off from the touchline area for arguing with an official. That left Assistant Coach Alen Marcina at the helm for the night. It was his first match as Manager for a San Antonio team since his days leading the Scorpions in the same venue.
Powell was left impressed by the performance, saying after the match "I'm proud of the players and staff. We wanted to make sure we got back on the right track this evening after last week's score, and I felt we got off to a wonderful start and were able to maintain good professionalism to maintain the ball during the course of the game. Three points is what we were looking for, and we got them this evening."
San Antonio Forward Bradford Jamieson IV got things rolling for the home team early on in the 9' when a defensive pass for Tacoma deep in their own end went awry. Jamieson IV pounced on the errant ball and calmly slotted the ball past Tacoma keeper Trey Muse for the early 1-0 lead.
Then Barmby would get the crowd going with his two show stopping goals. Both from incredible shots from outside the box. One in the 19', and the second just five minutes later. They were SAFC's first goals from outside the area all season long. The second one was a real beauty and is worth a second look.
The only downer on the evening for SAFC came in the 60' when Defender Pascal Eboussi, making his starting debut for the team, was given a straight red card for a tackle on Tacoma Defender Connor Drought. Despite the foul and being down on the ground for several minutes, Drought got up on his own power and appeared to be running fine before being subbed off six minutes later.
SAFC was forced to finish the match with ten men. Tacoma would do plenty of attacking in the final 30 minutes, trying to take advantage of the depleted San Antonio side. But the defense held true, earning their second clean sheet of the season, and the second straight clean sheet at Toyota Field.
San Antonio FC travels to face New Mexico United on May 5th.
Scoring Summary:
SAFC: 1-0, Bradford Jamieson IV 9’
SAFC: 2-0, Jack Barmby (Moises Hernandez assist) 19’
SAFC: 3-0, Jack Barmby (Brian Gomez assist) 24’
Disciplinary Summary:
Tacoma: Yellow Card (Peter Kingston) 42’
SAFC: Red Card (Pascal Eboussi) 60’
SAFC: Yellow Card (Walter Restrepo) 69’
Attendance:
6,357
TWEET OF THE NIGHT:
MATCH HIGHLIGHTS:
PHOTOS: DARREN ABATE/USL CHAMPIONSHIP PHOTOGRAPHER/INSTAGRAM @PEAKACTION
IMAGES: SAN ANTONIO FC TWITTER