First goal for Laba Caps off victory
Cup competitions are strange beasts, full of upsets and unlikely heroes.
On Wednesday night at Clarke Field in Edmonton, the hometown Eddies flirted with a shocking result, but fell victim to a defensive midfielder whose last MLS goal came on Aug. 4, 2013, when he played for Toronto.
Matias Laba, the Vancouver Whitecaps’ rock in their own half, a man who rarely sticks a toe into attacking areas, slid the winning goal through a clumsy-looking Matt Van-Oekel six minutes into the seven of added time. It was Laba’s first goal as a Whitecap, and it saved the team from extra time, and saved it from an embarrassing exit against the second-tier NASL Eddies.
Vancouver advanced, 3-2 on aggregate, to the Amway Canadian Championship twoleg final against the Montreal Impact in August. Edmonton gets to ponder another heartbreaking defeat.
In last year’s semifinal, they lost to Montreal on a penalty in the seventh minute of added time. “My team showed character,” Caps coach Carl Robinson said.
He couldn’t be faulted for the lineup he dressed in the second leg. Pedro Morales, the maestro, was in the starting 11. So was hulking centre-back Kendall Waston.
The Caps had more than enough on the field to win it. And for the better part of 70 minutes, they looked comfortable and in control, ahead on Morales’s early penalty.
Then Edmonton came on, granted new life by Canadian teen Hanson Boakai off the bench. And in an ugly stop-start game with eight cards and throw-ins galore, the Caps faded, disrupted by forced substitutions for a creative but cramping Cristian Techera, and for right-back Ethen Sampson, who was cut on his head.
Waston gave the Eddies a goal one minute into added time with a careless bump in the box. Tomi Ameobi scored from the spot and until Laba’s game-winner, the match appeared to be in Edmonton’s favour.