The summer 7-on-7 men’s soccer league’s championship seems to be up for grabs given the fact that the top four teams went into the playoffs this week on virtually an even keel, with Tortorella Pools and Maidstone Market tied with 18 points each and with Sag Harbor United and Liga de Gulag with 17 each.
Tortorella wound up as the top seed when the third tie-breaking criterion — goals scored in the season — was taken into account, for Tortorella and Maidstone had tied each other in their two meetings during the regular season, and each team had scored 11 more goals than it had given up during the campaign.
Thus Tortorella and Liga de Gulag, the fourth seed, and the Market and Sag Harbor United, the third, were to have played in Tuesday’s semifinal matchups at East Hampton Village’s Herrick Park. The championship game is to be played there on Tuesday of the coming week at 7 p.m.
Donald Martinez of Sag Harbor United holds commanding leads when it comes to the league’s Player of the Season and Golden Boot awards, attesting, in the first instance, to goals scored and assists, and, in the second, to goals scored. Martinez, going into this week’s action, had 11.
Tortorella’s goalie, Andrew Panza, has, likewise, nailed down the Golden Glove award, though it was Maidstone’s goalkeeper, Carlos Barahona, who turned heads in recent games owing to free kicks he converted from spots well behind the midfield line.
That this has been the league’s most hotly contested season probably goes without saying, an example close at hand being fourth-seeded Liga de Gulag’s 7-4 win over Tortorella at Herrick on Aug. 27. And this with Leslie Czeladko, Tortorella’s manager, having six players ready to be subbed in at any time.
A Liga attack in the opening minutes resulted in a goal by Gustavo Contaro. A minute later, with 18:50 to go in the half, David Rodriguez of Tortorella followed the rebound of an Eddie Lopez shot to tie the score at 1-1, and a 40-yard bullet off the foot of Alberto Zambrano made it 2-1 Tortorella soon after. But Liga de Gulag replied with two more goals before the halftime break, after which it did not look back.
In that night’s opener, Maidstone Market shut out F.C. Tuxpan 3-0. The aforementioned Carlos Barahona put Maidstone on the scoreboard early, looping under Tuxpan’s crossbar a free kick he took from within his own half of the field.
It was 1-0 Maidstone at the halftime break, but early in the second, after Danny Bedoya Salazar had failed to connect with the ball in close, Carlos Rodriguez tapped it into Tuxpan’s nets for a 2-0 Market lead. Several minutes later, Salazar, who had gathered in a long pass played up to him, cashed in for 3-0.
Adolfo Perdomo, a thick-set back, came into the game for Tuxpan midway through the second half, though the three free kicks he took thereafter sailed over Maidstone’s crossbar, the ball winding up near the Ladies Village Improvement Society’s fence.
In a game played on Aug. 20, the Market, despite being short-handed the whole way, with four field players to begin with, and with five during the final 33 minutes, played Tortorella toe to toe, even taking a 2-1 lead, on a goal by Julian Barahona, midway through the second half.
A header by David Rodriguez, who converted a free kick taken by Christian Neira, evened the count at 2-2 with about 10 minutes remaining, but there was to be no scoring after that. Tortorella’s goalie that evening, Alejandro Bolanos, made a great waist-high save of a Carlos Barahona free kick taken from just outside the circle in the final minutes, and in the final one, after John Romero Jr. had been taken down, a free kick by Barahona sailed just over Tortorella’s crossbar.
