Goals galore in home opener

By Sean Tepper

The men’s soccer team shut out The Royal Military College of Canada Paladins 4-0 during Saturday’s home opener at Lamport Stadium.

Both offenses appeared to be stalled in the opening minutes of the game, as both the Rams (2-0-1) and the Paladins (0-2-0) had trouble maintaining possession in the other team’s end. Ryerson finally took a 1-0 halftime lead when rookie forward Viktor Anastasov broke the deadlock in the 43rd minute.

In the second half, third-year mid-fielder Adrian Mancini scored two nearly identical second half goals with shots that bounced off of the post and into the back of RMC’s net.

“I was just trying to test the goalie from anywhere,” Mancini said after the game. “We saw that their goalie was a little shaky from previous seasons so I had no preference on which foot to use. Whether it be my left foot or my right foot, I was just hoping to target the net and I pretty much got lucky twice.”

Second-year mid-fielder Armin Tankovic also scored.

“I think that the reason there wasn’t as much physicality from RMC as there was last year was because this year we really focused on getting fit and I can easily say that I think we are the fittest team in our conference,” Tankovic said.

“I don’t think that we are going to get pushed around easily this year.”

The Rams have yet to be scored upon. They trail conferenceleading University of Toronto by just two points. Yet despite their undefeated start, head coach Ivan Joseph still sees room for improvement.

“We have to work on our distribution from the centre of the park, our missed headers in the back and most importantly our poor choices in the final third that led us to lift shots over the top of the goal,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do.”