By Ryan Makuch
It was a 1,000-day streak snapped when AFC Ann Arbor kicked a ball on May 7. Two full seasons of soccer were missed.
It sure feels like this iteration of The Mighty Oak has been trying to make up for the lost time.
There are decades where weeks happen and weeks where decades happen.
The 2022 season feels like the latter already.
This is the Matchday Diary, where we talk about the games as they were, after they happened, to learn more about the game, our club, and our community.
AFCAA hosted the women and men of Kalamazoo FC. One of those games was a little smoother than the other. Let’s dive straight in.
Sunday, May 22, Saline HS
The women kicked off shortly after 4 PM on Sunday, opening their home 2022 and USL W League home campaigns. But it wasn’t quite ‘home’ just yet. Around the 13th minute, once Main Street Hooligan Brian Marolf launched into his first ‘COYMO’ chant, then it began to feel more like home.
Sean Kerrigan (pointing) lets Curt Calov (right) know that someone is snapping some pics of them.
The men made themselves right at home almost immediately, too, but not on the pitch, but rather, in the crowd. Sean Kerrigan and Curt Calov were just two of the men’s players who jumped quickly into the MSH section to cheer on their women’s team counterparts. Jumping up and down, the men caught onto the chants quickly and cheered the women forward–a picture of the unity that AFCAA continues to emphasize within our club and community alike.
The men certainly had plenty to cheer. Finally approaching full strength for the first time this season, several women stepped onto the pitch for the first time in AFCAA colors. Stefane Pereira made her first appearance in the net and, while she had just one save to make, she looked cool, confident, and stylish in the sweet new AFCAA goalkeeper’s kit.
Luana Grabias celebrated a big day with her AFCAA debut, and her brother’s marriage.
Pereira’s countrywoman Luana Grabias also immediately showed her quality on the wing in her first match. Playing 55 minutes, Grabias dazzled with her skills, showing off incredible individual defending just before AFCAA’s opening goal. A dogged defender and creative attacker, Grabias also created an excellent chance just before the end of the first half, while she herself hit the post with a shot of her own in the match.
Grabias also made her own fashion statement, celebrating the marriage of her brother with her undershirt for the match.
The Mighty Oak took plenty of shots on target at the Kalamazoo frame, and even despite the 3-0 scoreline, it could have been much more. AFCAA hit the post on three separate occasions, and KZFC’s goalkeeper (Nerea Mora) had plenty to do all throughout the game as AFC fired 30 shots, with over half of them either on goal or striking the post.
The most accurate of the women on target was AFCAA’s Woman of the Match, Lina Berrah, who bagged a brace to secure The Mighty Oak’s victory.
The two goals might as well have been carbon copies of one another. The left-footed Berrah spent time on both wings Sunday afternoon, but it was on the left where both goals came. Running with the ball at her feet down the left-wing and into the box, all it took both times was a neat finish in the low, far, corner of the net to set off the celebrations.
Berrah almost did it again just two minutes after her USL W League Goal of the Week nominee in the 86th minute to seal the deal, but she was denied her hat trick; though not the effusive praise of fans and spectators near and far.
The thread that runs through the entire performance for the women is the first clean sheet of the season. It was Olivia Brannon’s third CB partner of the season, and yet again it was another stout defensive effort, this one being the stoutest of them all, to this point.
Ashley Zugay, an Ann Arbor product who played her high school ball at Pioneer, stood firmly up to the challenge of holding KZFC goalless and meshed immediately with Brannon. Tiffanie Hollingsworth (from South Lyon) made her third straight start at left back to open the season, making way to allow Camila Pescatore her AFCAA debut.
Jayde Riviere, the final piece of the back four, did it all. Her first chance to be seen by the AFCAA faithful did not disappoint. She affected the game in attack as her driving cross in the 51st minute earned an own goal and put AFC comfortably in front. Likewise, defensively, when Kalamazoo sensed a break, it was Riviere using her speed to get over from right back across the line to left-center back to make a tackle and clear out the danger.
It cannot be overstated that this is also the first match that many of these women are playing together. The likes of Grabias and Pescatore also made only peripheral cameos in the attempt to ease the women into the fold, and yet their impact feels immediate. The fact that the offside trap was working all day tells you all you need to know about where this team currently is. There is a real togetherness here.
The women’s home opener was also an opportunity to celebrate Ms. Kallista Walker and Our Community Reads. Members of the Queen’s Club got to accompany players from both teams out for starting eleven announcements and received autographs afterward. It was a special day for all involved in the celebration, and, to be quite honest, I don’t think the Queen’s Club's collective joy on the day will be topped as the happiest moment of the season for me. This sensitive artist sheds a happy tear for the joys of the home opener. :’-)
Tuesday, May 24, Saline HS
Even the quickest glance of the scoresheet for the men’s side of the AFCAA/KZFC battle would tell you all you need to know. Kalamazoo FC toppled The Mighty Oak in the first of three battles between the sides, 2-1, in a match with two goals in the final “ten” minutes, over ten minutes (unofficially) of stoppage time, and seven red cards in the third act of this drama of what can only be described as a match that felt directed by Godard—simply Breathless.
The first half was more or less a feeling-out process between the two sides. Curt Calov saw an impressive long-range effort saved well – a shot that seemed to just keep flying closer and closer to goal before it required a vital intervention. Jared Mazzola was also pressed into action in the 43rd minute and needed to stop a point-blank shot as KZFC’s eventual goal-scorer, Enrique Banuelos, was through on goal.
Banuelos would score almost immediately in the second half, and Kalamazoo was surely overjoyed at what was a best-case scenario for the visiting side. Specialists in playing compact and rigid football, KZFC stumped most AFCAA attacks for much of the second half.
But The Mighty Oak found a second wind with some substitutions to replace some tired legs. And who could blame them! Even to this point, it had been an intense match, made only more heated as AFCAA pushed for an equalizing goal.
And in the 81st minute, Sean Kerrigan had found the breakthrough. The winger had looked dangerous all night but hadn’t really had that one chance to fall his way. But here he was, isolated against an excellent center back in Paul-Florian Efang, but someone who he had an edge on in pace and that first step.
Shion Soga dispatches of a penalty kick for his fourth goal of the season while Moshtaba Al-Hasnawi watches.
Kerrigan feigned cutting inside, but on the right wing, he cut onto his favored right foot, and Efang’s leg was caught in the metaphorical cookie jar as he tripped up Kerrigan. Shion Soga was called on to dispatch the penalty, and he did so coolly, notching his fourth goal of the season, and leading the entire club.
1-1, game on.
For approximately 150 seconds.
Kerrigan went in hard on a slide tackle, but nothing that this writer thought was extraordinarily egregious. That was not the common opinion of the KZFC players, who immediately swarmed Kerrigan in defense of their aggrieved teammate. Kerrigan was initially shown a yellow for that tackle, but with enough players in that close of quarters, and with the quick boil burner already turned on, things got messy as players began pushing and shoving, and the game ground to a screeching halt.
Six players saw red in the aftermath of the on-field quarrel. Kerrigan saw a straight red that replaced the initial yellow for the challenge. Hunter Morse was the on-field KZFC player ejected for his escalation of the matter, forcing KZFC to use their third goalkeeper, this one a position player required to mind the net for the hefty amount of stoppage time. Four players saw red for coming off the bench, two on each side, which would boost the red card tally to six for the skirmish.
It took an understandably significant amount of time for the referee crew to sort out the fracas, and as a result, there was plenty of extra time for either side to find a breakthrough. That side happened to be Kalamazoo, who leveled through an impact sub of their own (Cyrus Harmon).
My second page of notes from the men’s bout, which tells you everything you need to know about what happened in a few short lines (if you can read my chicken scratch).
The result of the stoppage was a total stop of the match, and one that AFCAA could simply not recover from. They had the positive momentum, and a long-term stoppage like that is going to jolt any team from their rhythm. When you double in the fact that KZFC is a side that can cope well with disjointed games, and enjoy breaking play up themselves, there was certainly trouble afoot.
This is the sort of game that you just simply cannot help but roll your eyes at when you come out on the wrong side of it. There is no shame in losing to a strong Kalamazoo FC side. Coming into the match, this was a battle of top-ten teams according to the USL League Two Power Rankings. I don’t think either side did anything to harm their rankings with this match. But when you lose like that? Not super fun.
These two sides will see each other twice more, both times in Kalamazoo, so The Mighty Oak will have plenty of opportunities to make amends, and there are plenty of positives to pull from the match. A very strong defensive effort helped stem the tides against a brawny KZFC attack. All eyes were on Jackson Kasanzu, the Tanzanian center back already drawing oohs and aahs in training, and he showed why here.
Remarkably calm for his first career match in the United States, Kasanzu defended well while also dishing out some remarkable passes. One particular ball was played over the top to Kerrigan, playing on the left. I looked to my right to Jinseong Kim, Assistant Media Director and scorekeeping partner extraordinaire, and said, “Nice idea, but a little overhit.” But the ball sort of just held in the air, as if Kasanzu told it to wait for a moment so Kerrigan could catch up.
Kasanzu did it all alongside his CB partner David Garcia, who has also shown himself to be a gifted technician with the ball at his feet. This is an AFCAA side that has some excellent passers, and Hideyuki Ochi serves as a vital link in the midfield between not just defense and midfield, but midfield and attack from his deeper holding midfield position.
The Mighty Oak looked plenty Mighty at times, but the laws of the universe state that sometimes you must lose even if you really, really, don’t want to. And tonight just happened to be one of those nights.
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