Men's Soccer Gives Up Lead Late, Loses 2-1

New start. New season.

Heading into its Saturday tilt against Yale (2-6-0, 1-0-0 Ivy), the Harvard men’s soccer team (1-6-2, 0-1-0) had emphasized that its nonconference record had no bearing on its future in conference play. The team, which had not lost a game by more than one goal since its first of the season, stressed urgency; senior Kevin Harrington said before the game that “it’s win or go home … at this point.”

But a stout defense faded late for the Crimson, which—after taking a 1-0 lead on a 69th minute sliding strike by senior forward A.J. Agha—gave up two goals in the final three minutes to fall, 2-1, in its first game of conference play.

“We put it all out there on Saturday,” senior Ross Friedman said. “There is a small margin in soccer between winning and losing and we saw that.”

When Agha entered the game in the 64th minute, the score was 0-0. To that point, Harvard had been outshot, 7-2, and earlier had gone through a 40-minute shotless stretch bracketed by a pair of failed Harrington efforts.

Quickly after entering the game, however, Agha kick-started the struggling offense. Three minutes after subbing in, Agha had his first shot blocked by the keeper. Two minutes later, he generated another corner kick.

On the ensuing cross from Friedman, the injury-plagued Agha found the back of the net with his second shot—a sliding redirection that gave the Crimson a 1-0 lead.

“A.J. has been incredible for us,” Friedman said.  “He has always been a great option for us and he has always been a great player and great fighter. He never stops working and we love having A.J. healthy. I know he’s going to put it all out there and so it’s great having him out there.”

The lead could not hold up. After holding Yale scoreless for the next 18 minutes, Bulldog Conner Lachenbruch knocked in a goal after a wild scramble in front of the net to tie up the game. Less than two minutes later, a Harvard red card near the 18-yard box gave Yale a golden free kick opportunity. The Bulldogs converted, with Henos Musie’s kick bounding off the post into the far corner of the goal and providing the final margin of victory.

The loss was the Crimson’s fifth by a single goal in 2013. Friedman said that the team, which has twice let second-half leads slip this season, can take a lot of positives away from the game.

“Two games earlier we were working on finishing the last twenty minutes and we have improved that to the last five minutes,” Friedman said. “Now we just need to work on finishing a game in the last five minutes. It is hard to do that after a loss at Yale but we need to continue to focus on the process.”

In the first half, Harvard struggled to get anything going. The team picked up three quick fouls in the first ten minutes and generated only one shot on goal all half. For the last thirty minutes of the half, the Crimson was limited to one free kick and one corner kick as the offense stalled.

“I thought both teams were kind of getting their feet wet in the first half,” Friedman said. “In the second, everyone settled down and there was a lot more back and forth play. We were really connecting passes and creating opportunities for one another.”

Sophomore Michael Klain said that the team’s loss, while a setback, does not put an insurmountable dent in its Ancient Eight title aspirations. According to the Maryland native, over the course of the year the team has improved significantly in how it deals with losses over the course of the year.

“There’s nothing we can do now to change the outcome of last night; the only outcome we can affect is next Saturday,” Klain said. “Our vision of what we need to do to prepare for each game has gotten clearer, and that has allowed us to take advantage of each opportunity to improve. We have a better idea of what corrections we need to make, and we know better how to make them, so I think we’ll continue to improve every day, and we’ll fight very time we’re on the field, in practice, and in games, because we know our goals are still within reach.”

—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com.