Championship club Indy Eleven holds on for 1-0 win at Covenant Health Park
After setting a torrid pace to start both the USL League One season and its Jägermeister Cup campaign, One Knoxville SC has hit a bit of a snag in its last couple of outings. A step up in the quality of opposition combined with injuries to key players has resulted in a lackluster last two weeks of May. However, with the team playing just one match every seven days or so through the end of June and almost all of them coming against clubs that have been struggling, there is plenty of time for the squad to heal and for the coaching staff to right the ship before a more congested run of fixtures commences in July. The most recent action occurred in a cup game at home against Championship side Indy Eleven on Saturday, May 24.
Though Stuart Ritchie and (a freshly shorn) Jaheim Brown have established themselves on the left and right sides of the back line, respectively, it initially seemed like manager Ian Fuller had implemented a back three instead of his regular bank of two central defenders, but Sivert Haugli was positioned as a stopper just in front of Jordan Skelton and Scott McLeod on the night, which was overcast and surprisingly yet refreshingly cool for a late-spring East Tennessee evening. It was a unit that has performed admirably thus far this year but would be tested routinely in the first 45 minutes by the tightly controlled possession game, switches of play and frequent attacks of the visitors.
Knoxville started out well, winning back and dominating possession in the first few minutes and putting sustained pressure on the Indy back line. It won a couple of early free kicks – the second drawing a yellow card when Gio Calixtro was hauled down after a clever outside-of-the-foot pass by Mikkel Gøling had released him down the left flank at the 5-minute mark – but neither manifested in a clear goalscoring opportunity. The away team, meanwhile, demonstrated how quickly it could move from defense to attack with a swift movement in the 9th in which veteran striker Elvis Amoh flashed inside the penalty area and latched onto a precision cross from the right. Although he sent the effort just wide, it foreshadowed his role as a continuous direct threat.
In fact, it was only a handful of minutes later when Amoh fired another warning shot. Misplaying a ball across the touchline, McLeod was slow to react to the danger of a quick throw-in. Maalique Foster collected the lead toss and centered it to the Ghanaian, who rattled the bar from the edge of the area. It was a fierce drive that had goalkeeper Sean Lewis easily beaten, but it likely would have found the net had he taken a little something off of it. Still, the chance seemed to force One Knox to revert into a defensive shell, a posture it would assume for much of the rest of the half.
A giveaway by McLeod in the 20th minute released the speedy Foster, who was denied a shot on goal by the telescoping leg of Skelton, who adeptly slid to break up the play. When the resulting corner was cleared and the ball made its way back to the midfield, Stavros Zarokostas stripped an Indy player of it and bundled off toward the Modelo Watering Hole for what was shaping up to be a distinct two-on-one with Kempes Tekiela. Much to the consternation of the crowd, though, the referee whistled the play dead for a foul, a controversial decision given the minimal contact Zarokostas looked to have made with his opponent while controlling the ball.
One Knox’s best opportunity before halftime arose from a brief but superb spell of play that featured an incisive succession of passes between Brown, McLeod, Haugli and Tekiela, who fed Calixtro on the left edge of the penalty area. The winger whipped a hard first-time shot with his right peg back across the goal but didn’t start the ball out wide enough and bent it into goalie Reice Charles-Cook’s grateful grasp instead of into the top corner at which he was aiming. The run-in to the break featured quite a lot of start-stop action courtesy of fouls, balls put out of play and aimless clearances from an increasingly pressurized home defense.
Perhaps wanting to limit his minutes after a return from injury, Fuller replaced Callum Johnson with Abel Caputo in the midfield to start the second period. Nico Rosamilia, having made an impact both off the bench and in recent starts, came in for Calixtro, as well. And while they would go on to impact the proceedings in the latter frame, it was an instinctive yet brilliant moment of inspiration from Amoh that altered the course of the match just two minutes after the restart. Reaching out to intercept an attempted back pass after a foul near the center circle, he took a lone touch before launching it 45 yards on a rope over Lewis and into the Knoxville goal. The keeper couldn’t even be considered at fault for being too far off of his line; the long-range effort was so pure, so true and so perfectly placed that it might have bested him even if his positioning hadn’t been quite so advanced.
As adroit of a finish as it was, it was an embarrassing manner in which to concede, and the home side immediately went on the front foot when play resumed. After Zarokostas won a corner, a redirected ball fell to Skelton in the box. While he might not have been the ideal choice to take a shot on the offensive end, the captain sent a screamer on frame that drew a sharp near-post save from eight yards from the Indy netminder.
While Caputo was a steadying force in the center of the park and helped flip the possession percentage in Knoxville’s favor, Rosamilia’s vision and movement proved to be a boon as the second half progressed. Finding Zarokostas on the right in the 53rd minute, he drifted into the area and pulled a defender away from Tekiela, whose flicked effort from close was deflected just up and over the bar. His pace, too, created separation from defenders in attacking positions and helped widen the attack. Seeking defensive reinforcement, Indy made a flurry of substitutions around the hour mark. Alternately, in a positive move, One Knox brought on Angelo Kelly for McLeod; Haugli fell back to center-back while Kelly pressed farther forward.
Five minutes later, Rosamilia found Ritchie making an overlapping run into acres of space on the left, but his cross was cleared over the endline for a corner. Nothing came from that, but Indy’s players continued to hunker down and park the bus with their backs to the now vociferous crowd. On its one memorable foray forward, the away side was unlucky not to earn an advantage when, in the 76th minute, play was called back for a foul as a looping header simultaneously looked to have sprung an attacker in on goal. As the subsequent free kick amounted to nothing but a reciprocal foul, One Knox once again took over possession of the ball.
Working it to the right, from where the majority of the serious threats emanated all game, the ball wound up at the feet of Babacar Diene, who had just come on for an exhausted Zarokostas, who had been a workhorse since the opening kick. Shimmying and dropping his shoulder, Diene fired an early low cross into the box that Charles-Cook got a couple of fingers on but was only able to parry toward the back stick. Perhaps anticipating the deflection, Rosamilia dropped off his defender and had enough time and space on either side of him to comfortably slot in a shot. But with the keeper prone, the young winger couldn’t keep his composure and skied his effort well over the bar.
Seemingly frustrated after a series of corners that followed during which strategic time-wasting was evident, Skelton was booked for dissent in the 80th minute. The ref incurred further abuse from the home fans when he called for a foul on Diene, whose kit was being grabbed as he tried to round a defender. Then, after Skelton crucially blocked a low shot destined for the bottom corner from a cutback in the 86th minute, play transitioned to the other end. Again attempting to get onto a through ball, Diene was clipped by a defender and sent tumbling into the keeper, which prompted a lengthy delay. Sensing another ploy at running out the clock and more injustice, the fans were irate and grew even more incensed when Skelton was given his marching orders on a fairly innocuous professional foul as extra time beckoned.
Down a goal and a man yet still pressing for an equalizer, One Knox earned a free kick in the third of five additional minutes when Kelly just managed to keep a weighted pass from going over the endline on the right flank and nutmeg his defender, who dragged him down for a yellow. Encouraged by the opportunity and energized at the sight of Lewis making his way into the opposition box in front of them, the raucous supporters wrapped around the bowl of the home end sarcastically applauded the card but continued to amplify their volume. Rather than seeking assistance from a teammate, however, Tekiela directed a lashed left-footed effort on frame, nearly embarrassing the diminutive Charles-Cook, who barely recovered in time to tip it over his goal. Lewis remained up for the succeeding corner, but Caputo’s loping inswinger evaded a clinical touch.
Ultimately, time would expire before Knoxville could mount another attack, and players from both sides, having expended everything in their reserves, collapsed on the pitch following the final whistle. Despite the agonizing conclusion to the match and another unfortunate result, it was overall another good showing for the club against higher-tier opposition. It left One Knox third in Group 3 of the Jägermeister Cup standings, with ground to make up but also with a clear path in which to do it. The next group match will be Saturday, June 28 away at Forward Madison FC, which will look to atone for its May 9 League One loss at Covenant Health Park. Leading up to that matchup, Knoxville will travel to Mount Vernon, New York, for a June 7 league tilt against Westchester SC before returning home for another league game June 13 against the Richmond Kickers.
