It was a bright sunny day in North Vancouver as the first placed Seymour FC faced Wanderers FC. Despite their presupposed underdog status, coach Farhang seemed confident that his team had the tools to cause an upset against the league leaders.
This was despite the fact that Wanderers were missing their star goalkeeper due to an illness, and had to rely on their second choice, David Palffy to step up to the occasion. Other missing players included the likes of Sepehr Haghighat and Igor Madureira, who are still out with an injury.
In the 7th minute of the game, a dangerous 30 yard cross from Sepehr Heydarian found the back of the net to everyone's surprise, including the goalscorer himself. Although it can be argued that the Seymour goalie could have done better to keep the ball out of the net, the early goal was a massive morale boost for Wanderers nevertheless.
A mere 4 minutes later, Igor Vuckovic picked up his first yellow card of the season after bringing down a Seymour player who looked to dribble past him and go through on goal. Igor was lucky that Soroush was nearby and provided some plausible cover, otherwise the color of the card could have been far more devastating for Wanderers.
It should be said that after this early yellow card, the referee seemed to have forgotton about the cards in his pocket, as he never booked a Seymour player for the rest of the game, despite their continuous cynical and at times, reckless fouls.
For the rest of the first half, Wanderers did well to manage the game, shut out their opponents, and prevent them from ever creating a dangerous chance. In the second half, Seymour tried to push their attacking efforts even more, as they desperately searched for an equalizer. They did manage to create an extremely dangerous chance in the 55th minute, as after a scramble on the edge of the box, the ball fell to a Seymour player through on goal, only for him to have a shocking miss, as he put the ball 10 yards to the right of the goal.
Despite the continued efforts from Seymour, Wanderers kept their cool and managed the game with confidence, which eventually resulted in another moment of triumph in the 68th minute. This time, Sina played a ball to Sepehr Heydarian on the left side, only for Sepehr to cause lightning to strike twice, as he miraculously found the back of the net directly from a lobbed ball once more. Sepehr's effort most likely intended to be a cross for Lucca, who was roaming free in the box, but that said, he had no complaints to see the ball directly find the back of the net.
With 2 goals up, Wanderers saw out the remaining 20 minutes in order to pick up an impressive win against the league leaders. In the final minutes of the match, Sina picked up an extremely harsh yellow card for preventing the opponent goalie from launching a fast counter-attack after picking up the ball. Given the fact that the referee seemed to have either lost or forgot about his yellow card for the countless Seymour fouls throughout the game, it was peculiar that he rushed to book Sina, despite the fact that he never made contact with the opponent goalkeeper, and that he has every right to get closer to any opponent player in open play in order to provide a defensive block. This was Sina's 2nd yellow card of the season, which means that he has to be careful in future games, as a 3rd yellow card would mean a one match suspension for the player.
All in all, Wanderers caused an impressive upset and picked up 3 important points in order to cumulate a tally of 7 points from 4 games. With 3 games to go, Wanderers are now in a very good position to achieve a top 3 finish in the league, and perhaps even push for more.
Upwards and onwards, Wanderers!!
