Wolves fall to Toronto FC
A slow start came back to haunt the St. Catharines Club Roma Wolves Friday night.
The Wolves permitted two early goals — including one in the first three minutes of the game — as they dropped a 3-2 decision to Toronto FC 3 in League1 Ontario Men’s Premier Division action at Club Roma.
Roma midfielder Christian Piccolotto said slow starts have been a problem at times for the Wolves and this time it caught up with them.
“It makes a big difference,” the 18-year-old Hamilton resident said. “We’ve been coming out flat the last few games but we have to start off stronger and come out of the gate like we did in the last 20 minutes of the first half and play with that intensity for the full 90 minutes.”
Piccolotto, who played for Wolves coach Davide Massafra at Empire Niagara, said the Wolves were forced to make a few adjustments on the fly after falling behind early.
“We try to adjust and make as many changes as possible to fix up what went wrong on the goals and stuff,” he said. “We also have to come out and be more aggressive because we have to come back from two goals down.
“It changes up the game plan.”
The Wolves battled back later in the first half and finally got on the board when Piccolotto scored about 30 minutes in.
“It’s always a bonus when you score goals but my role is to really dictate the play and hold for the back line and be the link-up man in the middle,” he said.
Toronto increased their lead to 3-1 about halfway through the second half but the Wolves quickly answered less than five minutes later when Michael Solomon scored to narrow the gap to 3-2.
Wolves director of operations Carmine Provenzano was proud of the way the Wolves battled back.
“We wanted the boys to execute the game play better,” he said. “We started the game play maybe a little bit tentative and we paid for it.
“We took the game plan and were moving forward with it and trying to execute it. We had some results — we had better chances than they did.”
The Wolves, now 2-2 in regular season play, are off to a very respectable start for an expansion franchise.
“It’s a learning curve with the team,” Provenzano said. “It’s buying into a system and I think every game we get better. We tend to start slow for some reason but I think the boys are coming around and hopefully we see some benefits in the next couple of games.”
The Wolves are back in action Sunday in Markham. They return home Friday, Aug. 20 to play London.
Roma ramblings: There was another solid turnout with an estimated 600 fans in attendance . . . Former Roma star Carlos Arghittu was in attendance and pitched in by drawing the 50/50 winning number . . . There were at least a half dozen yellow cards handed out as things got chippy in the second half.
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