LYNN — It was a tale of two halves at Manning Field as the Lynn Tech Tigers (5-1-1) scored three goals in the second half to beat Saugus (0-3-3) 3-1 on Monday afternoon.
Last week after a loss to Marblehead, Sachems coach Guillermo Sepulveda mentioned that he wanted to change his team’s formation and change some starters’ positions. One of his changes was to move defender Cam Soroko to striker. The decision paid off as Soroko opened the scoring for Saugus.
Soroko received the ball inside the penalty box and turned past the Tech defender before slotting the ball past the goalkeeper to give Saugus a 1-0 lead with 14:30 left in the half.
“One of my star defenders scored a goal today,” Sepulveda said. “He’s very soccer smart and knew what was transpiring when it was happening and scored a goal. He would have had more opportunities if we fed him the ball a few more times. We kept the ball on the ground for too long.”
The goal seemed to wake the Tigers up as they started to create more scoring opportunities.
With only a couple of minutes left to play in the first half, Ricky Merida volleyed a ball from a corner kick that was heading for the top corner, but Saugus’ Xavier Martinez made a spectacular save to keep the score at 1-0 going into halftime.
In the second half, Tech started to control possession and kept Saugus under pressure.
Tech took a corner kick that was headed out of the penalty area by Saugus. The ball landed at the feet of Merida, who laced a shot past the Sachems’ keeper to level the game at one, five minutes into the second half.
“It was important (to score quickly in the second half). When that happens, the team settles down a bit and it relieves some of the pressure,” Tech coach Eric Moreno said.
With 28 minutes remaining in the half, Tech took a shot from outside the box. It was initially saved by Saugus’ Massimo Pagliocco, but Pagliocco couldn’t hold onto the ball and it was tapped in by Saul Mejia to give the Tigers a 2-1 advantage.
“I told them that we needed to keep the pressure on, to keep shooting, and to keep playing together as a team,” Moreno said.
Despite the error, Sepulveda was complimentary of his keeper.
“Massimo played awesome. He makes his body do things to stop the ball,” Sepulveda said. “He was outstanding today.”
Tech has been playing recently without one of its better strikers, Gregoire Amissi, who recently transferred to Greater Lowell. Despite the hole his departure left in the team, Moreno is pleased with his players’ ‘next-person-up’ mentality.
“We lost our best striker in Greg and even losing him, my team has been playing well in the last two games, and it shows even though we miss him, other players are stepping up,” Moreno said. “We were down 1-0, my team continued to fight and continued to make things happen.”
With less than five minutes remaining, Alan Mendez scored Tech’s third goal off of an assist from Felipe De Oliviera to ice the game.
After the game, Moreno praised the athletic Saugus team.
“Saugus has a great team. They’re fast and tall,” Moreno said. “We just never gave up.”
“I don’t know if we got tired or we just lost interest. It was two different games,” Sepulveda said. “We wanted to score and be aggressive. We just made some mistakes and they made us pay.”
Despite the loss, there were positives that caught the attention of Sepulveda.
“We can work on what we saw today. We can work on countering faster,” Sepulveda said. “We don’t have to wait for them to show up with their defense to score. We were more aggressive this game and that’s what we need. It was fun attacking today and not just being on our heels.”
Saugus’ next game is on Wednesday when it hosts Swampscott, while Tech will look to continue its winning ways against Mystic Valley on Thursday.
