The Ottawa Fury travel to San Antonio, Texas, Saturday night to face the Soccer Bowl title-holders Scorpions. The Fury will be looking to put an end to their three-match winless run, while the Scorpions will be trying to salvage something from a disastrous season.
Much like last week against Tampa, the Fury will be facing an opponent performing well below previous standards. Scorpion fans could have been forgiven for being optimistic heading into this season, as they were coming off a Soccer Bowl championship. Things haven’t gone to plan for head coach Alen Marcina and his squad, instead finding themselves at the bottom of the combined table with only one win in their last seven matches.
For their part, the Fury will be attempting to start the month of September on the right foot after a disappointing run of home matches that saw them pick up only two out of a possible nine points. However, they have lost only one match in their last 15, so perspective is in the eye of the beholder.
Every match is crucial going forward in the tightly packed North American Soccer League. With 10 matches remaining for the Fury, they will be eager to pick up some points against teams in the lower half of the table. Pointing to how tough their past three opponents have been to explain the lack of wins is fine as long as they feast on weaker opponents.
Fury head coach Marc Dos Santos made it clear, however, that his team wasn’t about to take the Scorpions lightly. In an interview with TSN 1200 on Friday morning, he was clear that this version of the Scorpions was, in his estimation, better than the Soccer Bowl winning side from last season, stating: “I think they’re better on paper than they were last season, but they’re not getting the results that they probably want. It’s a lion and it’s sleeping, and they could wake up at any moment.”
Lions tend to sleep 20 hours out of the day, and perhaps the balmy weather of South Texas is a factor. Temperature at kickoff is expected to be 35° Celsius. Difficult conditions won’t be anything new to the Fury players, having played in the intense heat of 3pm kick-offs in Ottawa throughout July.
The Fury will be without defensive midfielder Julian de Guzman while he is on international duty with Canada as they face Belize in a home and home series for World Cup Qualification. Drew Beckie will miss two weeks with a foot injury. Beckie has spent most of the year on the bench, and has been replaced by fellow Canadian Waleed Cassis, who recently represented Canada at the 2015 World University Games in Gwangju, South Korea. The Fury will also be without new signing Uğur Albayrak for two weeks as he recovers from a leg injury suffered in the early minutes of the Tampa Bay Rowdies match.
The league’s top defence will have to keep their eyes trained on former Houston Dynamo striker Omar Cummings as he chases the NASL’s Golden Boot award. The former Jamaican international is currently on 10 goals for the season, hot on the heels of Fort Lauderdale’s Stefano Pinho who, with his 12 goals, comes to Lansdowne Park Stadium next week to face the Fury. Supplying many of Cummings’ goals is evergreen Colombian midfielder Rafael Castillo, who at 35 years of age continues to keep his motor humming.
For their part, the Fury are running out of players to score their first goal of the NASL season, with Paulo Jr. and Oliver completing the feat last week against the Rowdies. Goals-by-committee is definitely one of the themes of this Fury season, and should it continue it would have to come from either Colin Falvey or Ryan Richter, the only Fury players slated to play Saturday night who have yet to find the back of the goal in 2015.
In their short history against one another, the Fury and Scorpions have played to three draws, with San Antonio the only one to have recorded a win, a 3-2 affair back in May of 2015 at Carleton’s Keith Harris Stadium. In their only previous matchup this year, the teams played to a 0-0 draw.
Catch the action tomorrow at 8:30pm on Rogers TV, TSN1200 or 94.5 Unique FM on radio, or online at www.OttawaFuryFC.com.
