It may have been a Battle for the Belt, but it was by no means a belter. In a slog of a game that found no real flow Union Omaha managed to pull out a 0-1 victory against Greenville Triumph on Saturday night. Marred by constant whistles, a couple of first-half injuries, and a blazing summer sun, the Búho backline stayed disciplined and helped Rashid Nuhu keep his first clean sheet since April 20 to support Pedro Dolabella’s second-half strike and ensuring all three points and the Belt would be coming back to Omaha.
Dominic Casciato seems to have found his preferred team sheet as he made no changes to either the starting XI or the bench. Given the energy and dominance shown in the last match against a Lexington side that had frustrated this same Greenville team, it made sense that he would want the same fast start and good control to help pin the Triumph back.
For Rick Wright’s league leading squad, there were three changes from the Lexington match, but none of them were purely tactical in nature. Battling injury, illness, and a red-card suspension, Greenville trotted out Carlos Anguiano (for Chapa Herrera), Tyler Polak (for Sebastian Velasquez, who still made the bench), and Brandon Fricke (for Daniel Wu). While still a capable force, the rotation provided some nervousness for the hosts on how well they would be able to deal with the Owls’ skilled midfield.
From the beginning of the match, it was apparent that skill might be having an off night. While the Owls were able to get a couple of dangerous runs early, including Lagos Kunga making it into the Triumph box off a press-induced turnover, but they were unable to do anything with it as the Greenville defense recovered well. When it wasn’t the Greenville defense doing the work, inaccurate passing and long balls would do the work for them. Several crosses or final balls would come into a dangerous area but would be just too far for anyone to get on the end of them. It would be a theme throughout the match.
This wasn’t just an issue for Omaha, though. The hosts had a hard time finding balls through the middle, but did find some success on the press. The Búho Backline always managed to recover, though. One such instance found Polak running free after taking a switched ball to get away from a clumped-up midfield. The run took him almost all the way to the box where he was able to find league-leading scorer Lyam MacKinnon. The striker turned only to find the Luca Mastrantonio had read the run and was ready to clear the danger.
The first major shift in momentum then came not because of an attack, but due to injury. During a play stoppage for a foul on PC Giro, Dion Acoff sat down on the pitch clutching the left side of his back. Though the broadcast showed no apparent contact cause for the injury, the playmaker had been treating it gingerly since an earlier spell of possession that saw him dribble past Ben Zakowski to sustain an attack. Dion was down for a couple minutes, but attempted to play through the discomfort. After running back on a Triumph break and deflecting a shot from Leo Castro into Shilo’s hands, the defender sat back down on the pitch to be replaced by Isaac Bawa after only 17 minutes.
Shortly after the substitution, the Owls would see their first really good chance at goal. A great long ball off of a free kick in the defensive half found the feet of Aáron Gomez inside the Triumph box. With the defender beaten, Gunther Rankenburg had no choice but to come out and challenge Aáron on the dribble. The forward found a trailing Joe Gallardo for what should have been a great shot at goal. However, Joe opted for accuracy and attempted to pass the ball into the far side of the goal. Fricke had good positioning to see the shot and deflect it wide for a corner, though Jaime Smith was also back in position to do his best keeper impersonation if needed. It was just another example of things being slightly off for the Omaha attack.
About this point in the match, the flow began to get severely disrupted by a flurry of whistles and yellow cards. Referee Andrew Musashe started by giving Steevan Dos Santos a card for running into Rankenburg on a 50-50 challenge that the keeper corralled into his arms and that the striker had pulled up on. After what seemed like an eternity of talking to Steevan, the ref finally pulled out a yellow card, much to the surprise of the broadcast commentators. A few minutes later Zakowski got a card for a lunging challenge on Luca. Minutes later, Aáron found his way into the book for dissent, apparently for arguing that Fricke’s challenge/elbow to the head of Steevan also warranted a booking. Any momentum that either side had started was pretty well killed by the stoppages and ongoing discussions.
On the plus side, this meant that the Owl defense was able to hold MacKinnon and the Triumph attack to mostly counters. The few times Greenville got into the attack they were either unable to get a shot off or Shido saved them easily. With no big chances the defense was holding strong.
On the down side, this also meant that there were 7 minutes of added time in the first half—time that would see yet another injury to a major piece of Omaha’s play style. Marco Milanese went down at midfield clutching his left leg after contorting his body to try to redirect a pass from Blake Malone toward one of our attackers. The wayward pass led to an attack for Greenville, which meant that Marco was down for quite a while before play was halted. The trainers worked on massaging the leg, but it would be no use to keep the defender in the match. In came Mechack Jérôme for the Owls’ second forced substitution in the first half.
The second half didn’t get much better for the attack, but a pair of early mental mistakes from Oliver Hald gifted the opener to the Owls. With no one around him, Hald took a hopeful ball from Isaac on his feet and turned to play back to his keeper. Rankenburg, not expecting the delivery, had to scramble off his line and poked the ball out to conceded a deep Omaha throw instead. From the throw in, Isaac found Steevan on the byline. With his back to the goal, Steevan played an overhead cross to six-yard box that seemed like it would be easily intercepted and cleared. However, Hald attempted to chest the ball back to his keeper, unaware that Pedro was running in to challenge the defender. The ball went too softly for Rankenburg to get to it, and Pedro was right there to fire into the net.
Omaha’s attack seemed somewhat energized by the goal for a few minutes with some quick transitions and a couple of threatening attacks coming, but it also allowed some good counter chances for Greenville. Isaac and Mechack had really good periods of play to shut them down, but by the 60’ the pressure really started to mount on the defense. The Owls, on the road and with an advantage, took the opportunity to become more compact and try to absorb anything the Triumph would throw at them.
The entire team showed all of their defensive prowess to contain the attackers, even forcing MacKinnon off as a tactical substitution in the 70’ while the hosts chased the game. Several times forward players such as Missael Rodriguez and Zeiko Lewis came back on defense and made crucial interventions to stop promising attacks. These would usually result in an Omaha counter attack that provided some threat, but mostly required Greenville to expend energy in response and help the clock tick down.
By the late stages of the game, Triumph looked completely out of options to break down a team that showed no signs of the mental lapses that plagued them in previous matches. With the away supporters clearly chanting “UNION! OMAHA!” and spurring on the team, the Owls frustrated the opposition and professionally ended the defensive slog of a match. With the final whistle, the Belt and the Table returned to where it belonged.
The Positives:
- The biggest positive I can take from this game is the fact that for the first time in (seemingly) forever, the Owls kept a clean sheet. It wasn’t pretty, but it was determined and physical. In my lineup discussion show, I mentioned that this game might come down to a mental error in one of the back lines. That turned out to be the case, and while there were a few mental mistakes in the beginning—mostly centered around attempts to play out of the back and not putting enough on passes—but the majority of those were gone by the time it mattered most.
If you really look at what Greenville didn’t accomplish, it’s quite staggering considering how they performed in a 1-0 defeat to Lexington the week prior. In both cases a mistake of a goal caused the Triumph to chase an equalizer for a long time. However, where Lexington gave up 26 shots for the 88+ minutes they were resisting, Omaha only gave up 5 shots in the 41+ minutes of their resistance. This meant a full team defense, collapsing on the ball, and challenging the dribblers and passers into mistakes. Where Greenville couldn’t equalize against Lexington because of accuracy issues (3 shots on target), against Omaha they couldn’t even get a faint look at goal.
I’ve already shouted out Missael and Zeiko for their contributions—specifically Zeiko’s bullying (but legal) challenge on Hayden Anderson in the 90’+5’ to win a goal kick and pretty much seal off the game. But everyone contributed to the defensive effort tonight with Pedro and PC clogging up the middle and quickly winning back possession when needed, or Joe and Brandon pulling in to stop the passing lanes in the defensive half and keep the game from opening up.
Of special note were Isaac and Mechack, though. Isaac, in his first real minutes, got put into an unexpected scenario having to cover for Dion—and he did it without trying to be Dion. We lost Dion’s speed up the wings, but we didn’t need it. We needed a defender to make smart decisions, run up when needed, and hold down the right side in place of a man who makes so many non-scoresheet plays for us. Isaac answered that call.
Mechack also answered his call in replacing Marco. He was able to concentrate on staying back, kept his positioning well, and managed the game. We didn’t need him to be Marco, we needed him to be Mechack, and the veteran presence and decision making showed up in the most crucial of times. He even managed to out dribble a pressing striker with a calmness that made you believe he could see exactly what the Greenville man would do before it happened. I’ve criticized Mechack’s performance before, but tonight showed how valuable he can be when he’s on his game.
The Negatives:
- As good as our defense was, our passing and offense was often just as bad. Thankfully, so was Greenville’s mostly. There didn’t seem to be a good rhythm between the players at all. It wasn’t completely gone, but it was just off enough to where things that normally come off (free kicks and lofted crosses) missed their mark. Sometimes, it was by the most painful of margins before opening up a threatening attack. Others, it was just sloppy play.
The free kicks, corners, and crosses didn’t come off as well as normal either. Often they were well past any attacking player or entirely too close to Rankenburg to be effective service. You can maybe point to the turf or the smaller dimensions of the field, but to do that would be just looking for an excuse. The real fact is things were just a hair off.
And that’s ok. Teams are going to have off nights with their passing and touch. At least this time it happened to be on a night where Greenville were just as off. I wouldn’t expect another gift like that against a good opponent for the rest of the season.
What’s Next:
Union Omaha continues their road trip by visiting Northern Colorado in Jägermeister Cup action on Friday, July 19. The Hailstorm leads Group 3 by 2 points with 3 matches remaining and also leads in total goals scored with 16 (4 better than Omaha). The last meeting was a 1-2 loss for the Owls in League One play while the previous Jägermeister Cup match ended 2-2 with Omaha picking up the extra point in PKs.
While the Hailstorm attack is potent, they will be without the competition’s Golden Boot leader as Bruno Rendon must serve at least a one-match suspension for getting a straight red card in their match against One Knoxville last night. Unless the League overturns the suspension on appeal, this could be a huge absence considering his scoring history against Union Omaha.
Interesting Facts:
- Union Omaha lost every major offensive category on the night, except for shots, shots on target, and touches inside the opposition box. They recorded 70% passing accuracy and only 54% accuracy in the final third. Most of this disparity came in the second half where they kept only 36% possession while defending their 1-goal advantage.
- The Owl defense did a great job of neutralizing Lyam MacKinnon. The Triumph striker managed only 2 shots (1 on target), significantly lower than his 4.22 shots-per-90 average. That shot on target was in the 3’ from outside the box and an easy save for Shido. He was shut down the rest of the match and limited to a total xG of 0.07.
- Pedro Dolabella’s hot run continues. He’s now scored in 6 of his last 7 matches (all competitions) and 5 of his last six in League One play. He’s still two behind Lyam MacKinnon for the League One Golden Boot and three behind Bruno Rendon for the Jägermeister Cup boot.
- The eight matches (all competitions) that Rashid Nuhu has played without having a clean sheet is tied for his longest stretch with the club. The last time was from August 2 to October 7, 2023—a span of 2 months and 5 days. This current stretch had gone 2 months and 23 days.
Key Events:
Greenville Triumph Yellow Card: 13’ – Evan Lee (Tactical Foul)
Union Omaha Sub: 18’ – Isaac Bawa ON; Dion Acoff OFF (Injury)
Union Omaha Yellow Card: 24’ – Steevan Dos Santos (Bad Challenge)
Greenville Triumph Yellow Card: 27’ – Ben Zakowski (Bad Challenge)
Union Omaha Yellow Card: 31’ – Aáron Gómez (Dissent)
Union Omaha Yellow Card: 38’ – Marco Milanese (Bad Challenge)
Union Omaha Yellow Card: 45’+1’ – Pedro Dolabella (Bad Challenge)
Union Omaha Sub: 45’ + 8’ – Mechack Jérôme ON; Marco Milanese OFF (Injury)
Greenville Triumph Yellow Card: 47’ – Carlos Anguiano (Kicking Ball Away)
Union Omaha Goal: 49’ – Pedro Dolabella (6th) (Unassisted); 0-1
Union Omaha Subs: 63’ – Brandon Knapp ON; Joe Gallardo OFF
– Zeiko Lewis ON; Lagos Kunga OFF
– Missael Rodriguez ON; Aáron Gómez OFF
Greenville Triumph Yellow Card: 69’ Jamie Smith (Bad Foul)
Greenville Triumph Subs: 70’ – Sebastián Velásquez ON; Ben Zakowski OFF
– Zion Scarlett ON; Tyler Polak OFF
– Hayden Anderson ON; Lyam MacKinnon OFF
Union Omaha Yellow Card: 73’ – PC (Tactical Foul)
Greenville Triumph Sub: 87’ – Pascal Corvino ON; Nate Shultz OFF
Greenville Triumph Yellow Card: 90’+4’ – Rick Wright (Bench)
Who Gives A Hoot? 