Central heads to second consecutive CIF soccer final
EL CAJON — If there’s anybody out there doing casting for another Mad Max movie, you might want to get on the horn with the Central Union boys’ soccer team, because they’re a bunch of Fury Road Warriors.
On Tuesday the Spartans defeated defeated the Valhalla Norsemen, 2-0, to advance to the CIF-SDS Division III championship round being held at Mission Bay High School Saturday at 1:30 p.m.
It was their third consecutive playoff win away from home, and their fifth since last year, when they made the Division IV finals against Sage Creek (losing 4-1).
Victory didn’t come easy — Vahalla held the advantage for most of the scoreless first half, generating more and better chances — but the Spartans were able to keep themselves centered and in the game thanks to an engaged defense and strong goalkeeping by Jose Berlin-Torres.
As the game went on, the mood on the field got increasingly chippy.
In the second half, the Norsemen graduated from playing hard-nosed to hard-headed and resultantly found themselves in the possession of several yellow cards, and eventually one red, awarded to a burly forward who delivered an expletive-laden tirade to the refereeing crew and capped it by throwing his jersey in the direction of an official.
These infractions helped the Spartans to get out on the attack, and their forward pressure paid dividends in the form of a pretty goal from Vasilios Syrengelas, who booted it in from the left side of the box after receiving a nice through ball from Miguel Pantoja.
Down 1-0, Vahalla changed up their formation, packing most of their team in Central territory, fighting like mad to equalize.
They couldn’t do it, though. The Spartans hunkered down on defense, refusing to give them a clean look, and Berlin-Torres continued his strong play.
Eventually, the Norsemen’s aggressive tactics backfired on them, as Syrengelas was able to get the ball out on a counterattack and find defenseman Jesus Marquez — who had outsprinted everyone from one end of the field to the other — for the deal-sealing second goal, leaving Valhalla twisting in the wind.
Now the Spartans get to play West Hills, another overachieving team from the middle of the bracket (they’re a 10-seed), whose road to the final ran through El Centro, where they knocked off second-seeded Southwest in a sudden-death shootout. They later knocked out Central’s 2018 bogeyman Sage Creek, 3-1, in the semifinal round.
Spartan coach Demian Rodiles acknowledged the Wolfpack poses a real challenge, noting that they “scored more goals than us and have given up fewer” throughout the year and that their goalkeeper, Carter Orchulli (the bane of Southwest’s playoff hopes and dreams), is tough to get by, but he stressed that the key to the Spartans’ first CIF championship in decades won’t be anything external.
“We just need to play our game,” he said, “They’re just another high school team with boys the same age.”