Saxons suffer first loss, 1-0 to Palatine
By Dan Santaromita

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For years teams facing Palatine dread hearing “Pirates throw” over the stadium speakers.

The Pirates are perennially deadly on long throws and set pieces and Tuesday against Schaumburg they proved that is yet again true this year. Palatine scored the match’s only goal via a pair of touches after a throw in and kept a clean sheet to knock off the defending Mid Suburban League West champs in a match up of undefeated teams.

Palatine (5-0-1, 2-0 MSL) bossed the first half of the game and created several throws, corners and free kicks to put the pressure on the Saxons (1-1-1, 1-1). A 23rd minute corner nearly resulted in the opening score, but Schaumburg’s Phil Minecci was well positioned and blocked it off the line.

Finally, in the 32nd minute, the Pirates converted. Sophomore Gavin Folotico launched a throw into the penalty box from the right sideline and Jeremy Velinski’s flick header put the ball onto the path of Cesar Valdez for the goal.

Palatine displayed the work rate it takes to win a tough MSL match while Schaumburg coach Hamid Mehreioskouei lamented the slow start of his Saxons.

“Guys were asleep in the first half and you can’t do that in this league,” Mehreioskouei said. “There were so many problems in the first half that we couldn’t adjust to anything. It just had to do with, hey, we need you to play before we can actually start to coach. The first 15-20 minutes we didn’t say a word. We let them figure the game out and then things started to go our way just because they started working hard.”

Palatine coach Willie Filian described the match as a typical MSL game and agreed that work rate is essential in that type of match.

“You have to come out hard because if a team gets ahead of you everybody knows how to defend, everybody is organized at the back so it’s difficult to get back in,” Filian said.

The Saxons picked up the play in the second half and created a nervous last portion of the game for Palatine.

Carlos Sarasti smacked a header against the crossbar in the 58th minute and five minutes later a free kick just outside the area forced a nice save from Pirates’ keeper Kyle Leber (9 saves). In the final minutes the Saxons thought they earned a penalty kick, but instead the ref showed a yellow card for diving.

“We got unlucky on a couple plays, but you don’t deserve luck when you show up like that,” Mehreioskouei said.

Filian complimented his team’s defending of set pieces, which proved big late. He makes sure his team spends time on set pieces in every training session and it shows on both ends.

“We understand that three-quarters of the goals scored, especially in our kind of game, are going to be off of set pieces,” Filian said. “One thing our guys did really well was we defended well in our own box. Yeah, we scored off of a set piece and were dangerous on them, but they had their share of throws, corner kicks and free kicks, but we defended those.”

The Pirates picked up its fourth consecutive shutout, fresh off a win as hosts in the Hogan Soccer Tournament over the weekend.

Palatine’s success at the back starts with junior Kyle Clancy.

“We got Kyle in the back, he’s a great help,” Valdez said. “He organizes the back really well. They work hard every day in practice and in the games.”

The three-man back line of Clancy, Ulises Alcaraz and Matt Fleischhauer kept Schaumburg’s chances to a minimum. Their experience and chemistry has lead to a strong Palatine defense in the early part of the season.

“We have lots of confidence between the three of us and Brennan (Harding) coming off the bench,” Clancy said. “Then lots of experience, too, because me, Matt and Ulises we all played and started last year so I think that plays a big key.

“In the second half, even though we got dominated in the possession aspect of it we played good team defense and Leber came up big in the net. Then the last five minutes all of our forwards were putting in the work up top so we got a bit of a break in the back.”

Leber made big saves late, but his counterpart, Schaumburg junior Dan O’Connell, also had some nice plays among his eight saves. The highlight was stopping a clear breakaway to keep the score at 1-0 in the second half.

“You see we get breakaways, we don’t score off of them, we get open looks,” Filian bemoaned. “It’s just hard for us to score, I don’t know what it is.”

Palatine will look to stay atop the MSL West with a Thursday trip to Prospect while Schaumburg tries to rebound against Hoffman Estates.