Juventus draws with Guatemala in international football
Good evening, I’m James Adderley and you’ve guessed it right, it’s another portion of Sports Monday. And we take you out to yesterday’s CONCACAF Cup Winners cup showdown at the People’s Stadium where national champion Juventus played host to Municipal of Guatemala.
The 2 combatants enter the arena and fans gleam a bit of professional respect between the opposing goalkeepers. One of the two Brazilian inputs Carlos Da Silva struts his move to give his new club Juventus an early lead but falls short. The Guatemalans respond with an aerial assault that begins high and finishes even higher to squander a golden opportunity. In first half, play offense is scarce to come by until a center from Allan Flowers forces the Guatemalan goalie to make a big time save. Off the corner kick Flowers sneaks pass the defense for a header but good defensive work by the keeper forces him to the ground. In the final minutes of the half, Allan Flowers finds the Brazilian Da Silva who should have completed this opportunity but these are the breaks and at the half it’s a scoreless CONCACAF ball game.
So we go to second half action and the ballgame changes. Marcelino Tun vents his frustration after loosing the ball, which leads to this pushing match that the referee quickly diffuses. Meanwhile Da Silva beats his man once, twice and then fails to make the right hook-up to make it count. Downfield the Guatemalans attack off a spotkick, Belize comes up with solid defense. Dean Flowers then gets this chance to fire but he can’t get his body around to make a meaningful launch.
In the late moments of the ball game it’s Municipal with the momentum and Juventus does dodge a bullet on this press. This spotkick from Camilo Bonilla: Charlie Slusher mishandles and almost gets burned for it, but the operative word here is almost. When the long whistle comes it brings a 0-0 score for Juventus and Municipal in the first game of CONCACAF Cup Winners Cup Tournament. The return match is set for Wednesday night in Guatemala.
Q: “Are you satisfied with this performance from Juventus?”
Charlie Slusher, Goalkeeper, Juventus
“Oh yes, we’re very satisfied because coming into this game we were scared because a lot of the players that we were counting on, our defense, our forwards couldn’t play today. We were working out with these guys and about Thursday or Friday we started to put different men in the lineup for Sunday. So we were already scared of what might happen. You know, with the new guys if they would not understand the system and so on. So I’m thankful of the results today.”
Q: “In the last ten minutes of the ballgame you came up with the biggest save. Tell us about it.”
Charlie Slusher
“What happened is probably I just made up for an error that I made by rebounding a ball off my body and thanks to God I was there to recover. Our team is in condition; I feel very good. I think our whole team is in top condition and I think that was one of the reasons why we were playing so comfortable today.”
Q: “On the twenty third you have a return match with this club. What’s your feeling going into Guatemala?”
Charlie Slusher
“Well hopefully, I think our team will be much stronger because by then we will get the international past of the other players and I think we will do much better than what we did today.
Meanwhile folks a couple of events coming up very shortly: on the twelfth of September the B.T.L. Mr. Belize Bodybuilding Championship. And of course this weekend brings up the National Softball Tournament – the best softball teams from around the nation and of course in closing we gotta mention a word from the eighteenth Central American and Caribbean Games where things have not gone so well for us. We have not picked up a medal as yet and in basketball we’ve fallen to Venezuela, we’ve been beaten by Panama and we were edged by two points by the Dominican Republic. Our only win came against Mexico. We’ll keep you posted.
That’s it. Jah over all. I’m James Adderley.
