Atlético Ottawa Gets Held to a Draw by Pacific in the First Leg of the CanChamp
Ottawa dominated the first leg of a two legged affair but were unable to grab an important goal going into the second leg.
Atlético were held to a draw by Pacific in the first leg of the CanChamp. During the first half, Ottawa dominated possession and were building out of the back, but were unable to convert anything. The second half was a bit more of an even affair with both sides having their attacking moments. The game ended in a somewhat frustrating way with Pacific deploying some time wasting tactics to run the clock down, and keep the game at 0-0.
Lineup
Atlético made some lineup changes for this game compared to their game on Sunday. Salter started upfront instead of Del Campo, Morer made his first starting appearance in a right wing role, Tissot made his first start of the season, and Yesli started in goal.
Game Notes
Ottawa started the game off attacking with their first corner kick coming within the first 5 minutes of play. Nothing came of the corner but it set the tone for the first half.
Morer was quite impressive in his first start, early on in the game showing his skill by dribbling around a number of players. He kept this up for most of the first half.
Atlético played out of the back in the first half with almost all of the play flowing through Didic. He would be passed the ball to reset the play, and would then pass it forward to the midfield or up the sides.
Ottawa had the best chance of the game off of a free kick in the 40ish minute of play. The free kick was just outside the left side of the 18 yard box. Tissot and Bassett lined up to take it. Bassett dummies over the ball, flicking it to the side, where Tissot took a shot at goal. The ball bounced off the wall, and hit the crossbar before going off to the side for a corner.
The following corner Bassett took, he was trying to be cheeky by aiming for the front post, but it ended up hitting the front post and bouncing out.
The game was played at 7pm on Wednesday in May on what had been a rainy day. But there was a noticeable lack of production from Atlético staff at half time. Only half the concessions were open, there was no halftime show (there normally is), just some music playing over the loud speakers.
At the start of the second half it was obvious both teams had changed the way they planned on playing, with both teams attacking more directly.
In the 50ish minute of play a weird collision happened where number 12 for Pacific collided with Tissot and landed on top of Tissot. The Pacific player then just laid on top of Tissot for a couple of minutes. Most people in the crowd thought he had been knocked out. In the stadium the replays were shown which caused quite a stir in the crowd as there was no obvious hit on the Pacific player that would of caused him to pass out. In the end he got up and seemed to be no worse for wear.
The referee had kept the cards in her pocket for most of the first half but during the second half it seemed as if every other foul was a yellow card, no matter how soft it seemed.
At the end of the game things started to get heated with Ottawa gunning for a goal and Pacific trying to keep a clean sheet. To do this Pacific started to time waste, with various players going down “injured” with cramps to waste a couple of minutes. This did not result in any cards for time wasting.
In the end it was a fairly good game with Ottawa being the better team stat wise. Ottawa had 56% of the ball, took 9 shots, with 4 being on target. Pacific only had 44% of the ball, 4 shots, and only had 1 on target.
MVP
This is a challenging game to pick and MVP for as a lot of players did a great job. However, Manny Aparicio is my pick for MVP. He was running all over the pitch, getting into tackles, jumping for headers (he can jump quite high for a person his height) and playing key passes. This being up against his former team he did not hold back.