Last Sunday the Roc City Boom played Syracuse FC and fell to a late second-half comeback from Syracuse to lose 3-2 after ending the first half 2-0 up. Boom had a very successful first half, after goals from Konrad Zydowicz and Tamas Nagy. Boom looked fantastic in the first half which seemed to have been caused by the newly installed formation by Marc Mandell (3-4-1-2).
The first half was a very impressive and significant step forward in giving the Boom a chance to make the playoffs by the end of the season. They created more chances, defended, and worked well with the back 5 in defense. Konrad Zydowicz was able to find mass amounts of room, the only issue being that Taner Bay and Joe Balls weren’t able to find him enough.
But why did it collapse? For the first 20 minutes of the second half, the Boom were comfortable and still looked the better side while they cruised through the game, until the 59th minute when Syracuse scored a penalty which was conceded by Robert Hinds after leaving out a leg and fouling a Syracuse player inside the box.
After conceding the penalty to make it 2-1, Syracuse were able to complete their comeback making it 3-2 after goals in the 79th and painfully in the 88th. It’s very hard to say why it collapsed in the last 20 minutes. Some reasons Marc Mandell and assistant coach Ray Martinez gave as possible answers were:
-Because the players were afraid to get physical,
-Along with being afraid to get into challenges for the whole game,
-Especially after conceding the penalty, as they didn’t want to concede another or give up dangerous free kicks,
Overall the performance was positive. Including Tamas Nagy who played his first home game of the season and scored his second goal in two games. Besides his goal, he had a fantastic performance and was absolutely the man of the match for the Boom. Creatively he was amazing and as a goal-scoring threat, he worked great with Isaac Kissi. Within the first half, they bullied the Syracuse backline. The only disappointing part is that we won’t be able to see him partner Peter DiLorenzo this season due to his injury.