Chill, Lucania in final

Chill, Lucania in final
By Emmanuel Moutsatsos
May 21, 2006, 00:05

Email this article
Printer friendly page


Wilson Rodriguez of the Thunder Bay Chill (3) heads the ball against Winnipeg-Lucania at Chapples Park on Saturday. (Sandi Krasowski/The Chronicle-Journal)
Chapples Park resembled a scene from the Wizard of Oz Saturday afternoon with Wilson Rodriquez playing the part of Dorothy.
“I don’t think we’re in Brazil anymore, amigo,” Rodriguez told his southern hemispheric teammates, who make up part of the Thunder Bay Chill.
With winds gusting with enough force to knock your uncle’s hairpiece into Winnipeg, Rodriguez waited until the last possible second to take to the pitch against Thunder Bay Italia-Juventus, but no one could find shelter.
“It was unbelievable out there,” said Chill defender Wilson Neto. “The game got tough. There was no real strategy, it was pretty much a physical game.”
And what the ferocious wind did was level the playing field between the two clubs to some degree as Juventus mustered a 2-2 tie, but a tie is what the Chill were hoping for anyway.
Coupled with a 0-0 draw they had with Winnipeg Lucania earlier in the day, the Chill only needed a tie to advance to today’s final, which will be played at 1 p.m. and against Lucania.
“We wanted to ensure that we got a tie, so we did very well to keep possession and we didn’t let them take it away from us,” said Chill coach Tony Colistro.
In what was an almost comical opening 10 minutes, with both teams trying in vain to adjust to the winds that had picked up increasingly as the day went on, Chill forward Guilherme De Souza sprung loose to flick the ball over Juventus keeper Tony Notarbartolo’s reach at the 15-minute mark to open the scoring.
“That was probably one of the worst winds I’ve had to play in. The ball was going everywhere,” said Notarbartolo.
But unlike their professional peers, who are embroiled in a match-fixing controversy in Italy, Juventus needed no help from the referees as Anthony Lombardo was the recipient of a well-placed Kyle Kawahara cross at the 31-minute mark to even the game. And then they gained the lead only minutes later when Ron Badanai did well in veering off the defence of Chill defender Preston Pierce to give Juventus a 2-1 edge heading into the second half and cause eyebrows to raise from the few that were in attendance.
Just who is Thunder Bay’s best team?
Colistro answered that by subbing in his usual starters, who proceeded to control the second half right from the start — Chill midfielder Marcelo Santos scored in the half’s opening minute — and if it wasn’t for the outstanding play of Notarbartolo the scoreline would’ve been much more lopsided.
“He stood on his head for us today,” Juventus coach Frank Lacaria said of Notarbartolo.
Juventus will play the Ottawa Fury in the bronze medal game slated for 11 a.m. in what promises to be a good affair considering when they met yesterday it was 2-2 with 40 seconds remaining before the Fury scored on a freekick.

© Copyright by Chronicle Journal.com