FC Motown made a good impression in the club’s first-ever Lamar Hunt US Open Cup game. The amateur team from Morristown, NJ defeated New Jersey Copa FC 2-1 in extra time away from home. Looking at the scoreboard you might think that the encounter was heavily contested, however, FC Motown dominated the entire game from start to finish en route to the Second Round.
From the start of the game, FC Motown found their rhythm and began attacking NJ Copa from the flanks with dangerous crosses. Even though FC Motown had more possession and looked more likely to score, NJ Copa was able to get on the scoreboard first. Ryan Campbell was able to put the ball past the goalkeeper after receiving a beautiful pass from Kevin Veliz in the 25th minute.
Despite going down a goal, FC Motown was not discouraged and continued to press forward. Their hard work paid off in the 39th minute when Dritan Sela headed the ball past the keeper after he saved a shot from Rodrigo Santiago.
After the half, FC Motown continued to dominate possession and created numerous opportunities, but they weren’t able to convert any. NJ Copa was relying heavily on counterattacks to try to seal their ticket for the next round. At the end of the 90 minutes neither team was able to take the lead and the game went into extra time.
In the first half of extra time, more of the same took place on the field. FC Motown were pressing harder to take the lead, as NJ Copa waited for the perfect counterattack to take the victory. The first 15 minutes went by without anyone scoring. Then in the second half of extra time as some were already beginning to think about a penalty shootout. FC Motown’s Samuel Gehman scored a beautiful free kick goal in the 108th minute. After going down 2-1 NJ Copa pressed forward to try to tie the game, but in the end they were unable to take the game to a penalty shootout.
On May 17, FC Motown will face USL side Rochester Rhinos in the second round of the US Open Cup. After the game FC Motown head coach Sacir Hot said that while dominating such an important game is an amazing feeling it is also “scary because we have tendencies of dominating a lot of games and just getting one counter attack and conceding a goal.”
With an Amateur Cup game on the 13th and the US Open Cup returning on the 17th, Coach Hot says he’ll make good use of his roster rotation to make sure the team is ready for the second round.
The game-winning goalscorer Samuel Gehman says that his goal when he came on the field was to “to push the game as much as possible to get our team back into it, its nice that I scored, but the most important thing is that we won.”
Gehman hopes the same when FC Motown will play the role of underdog when they take on the Rochester Rhinos, a team with a rich history in the tournament, next week.