Vancouver FC suffered their first at-home loss of the season on Sunday, June 23, a 4-0 defeat at the hands of the Halifax Wanderers.
It was the first win of the season for Halifax, who snapped a nine-game winless streak at Willoughby Community Park.
Wanderers Ryan Telfer opened the scoring with a deft breakaway finish on a Clément Bayiha pass in the 9th minute, before completing his brace with a curled finish into the top corner in the 18th minute.
Then, on the other side of half time, the Wanderers Dan Nimick confirmed the win with a header in the 77th minute to make it 3-0, before he then further cemented the victory with a penalty goal in the 90th minute.
VFC defender Rocco Romeo called it “humbling”, and head coach Afshin Ghotbi called it “unacceptable”.
“I said it in a warm up, and I think a couple of guys echoed it, as well, we were just flat,” Romeo said. “I’m not too sure if it was our preparation in the week, or if it was our mentality coming into the game since they were the last place team and we took that for granted of it with us being undefeated at home and maybe we carried that arrogance into this game.”
“I think now this can be a good thing for our humility, we knew what could’ve happened if we would’ve won which is to jump back into second place, but now we face a very pivotal moment right now in the season, as we got humbled.”
Going into the game, Ghotbi cautioned his players that Halifax came pretty close in their last three games.
"You look at how close they were to winning, they were out-playing opponents and creating chances,” Ghotbi said. “But they were losing or drawing games because of mental errors and individual mistakes, and because they’d lost belief. And those are the worst teams to play, so coming into this game. we knew that they’d be one of the hardest teams to play right now, because they just couldn’t wait to get a result, and they were going to do everything they could to get it.”
Next for VFC, a short road trip, as they’ll take the ferry over to Vancouver Island to face rivals Pacific FC in the Salish Sea Derby at Starlight Stadium on Thursday, June 27 at 7:30 p.m.
Romeo is predicting a better outcome.
“We’re a resilient group,” Romeo said. “It’s unfortunate that we couldn’t bounce back in today’s match, but there’s no better opportunity to do so than in a derby.”
