Battery fall 2-1 on road to North Carolina

CARY, N.C. – The Charleston Battery were dealt a 2-1 road defeat against North Carolina FC at WakeMed Soccer Park in the Battery’s first away match of the season. The hosts scored twice through the opening half-hour of play, with the second tally being an own goal inadvertently knocked in by Graham Smith. Cal Jennings converted from the penalty spot just before halftime, but the Battery were unable to find an equalizer in the second half.

The match kicked off with intensity, as both sides looked to establish early control.

Goalkeeper Luis Zamudio was called into action in the 11th minute, stepping off his line to claim a dangerous long throw from NCFC. Zamudio made another big stop in the 16th minute, rushing out to deflect a chip attempt by Ezra Armstrong.

North Carolina managed to take a 1-0 lead in the 24th minute via Evan Conway.

The hosts doubled their lead in the 33rd minute when Graham Smith’s attempt to head away a cross went toward the goal and Zamudio was unable to stop the own goal.

Despite the deficit, Charleston pressed for a goal in the latter stages of the half.

The Battery’s persistence paid off in the 5th minute of stoppage time, when Arturo Rodriguez’s shot drew a handball by Paco Craig inside the box.

Cal Jennings stepped up to the spot and calmly slotted the penalty into the bottom left corner, clipping the post on the way in to cut the score to 2-1.

The goal was Jennings’ third in three games for the Battery.

North Carolina took the 2-1 lead into the break but Jennings’ late tally gave the Battery momentum to work with going into the second stanza. Charleston held just over 61% possession in the first half.

Charleston came out of the break looking to level the score and applied heavy pressure to North Carolina’s back line. The Battery held 68% possession in the first 15 minutes of the half and Juan David Torres nearly scored the equalizer in the 60th minute with a free-kick that was on target.

The pace of the match began to slow as the hosts settled in again and withstood Charleston’s advances. Zamudio was tested in the 83rd minute by Mickey Maldonado and came up with the save.

Charleston aimed to make a final push for a second goal with attacking-minded substitutions made with Zeke Soto, Josh Drack and Jackson Conway entering the fray. However, North Carolina were able to hold on for the 2-1 win.

The result snapped an eight-game undefeated run the Battery had over North Carolina.

North Carolina’s win gives them a leg up in the Southern Derby, which remains undecided until after the second regular season match. Charleston will host NCFC on July 6 at Patriots Point with a chance to tip the series in their favor and lift the Southern Derby trophy for a second consecutive year.

Head Coach Ben Pirmann and defender Nathan Dossantos discussed the match after the final whistle, with key quotes to follow.

Coach Pirmann on his immediate assessment of the match…

Disappointing overall, didn’t deserve to win the game. Fair credit to North Carolina. This is a very tough league and I’m not sure what it was. I got to look at some things. I think about the big picture, we played a very, very good first 20, 22 minutes or so, I thought we were doing well. I know we had a couple of guys injured, but that’s no excuse, they had the same. Everybody has injuries. Once it went down 1-0, we were hanging on the rest of the first half. Second half, we went for it and we were pushing and going for the tie and all that, and that’s great, but just not a good enough performance on the day. I don’t think we had a single good strong performance.

At the end of the day, I thought we had two good weeks of training after a really great match against Rhode Island, and then we were nowhere near it for 25 minutes at the end of the first half tonight. So, like I said, fair credit to North Carolina. They deserve that. You know, it’s not a big, huge, massive deal. But at the end of the day, when you’ve played three games and not played well enough in two of them, it’s a bit tough, but we’ll always get better, we’ll move forward and just keep improving to keep representing this club the best we can and get as many points as possible.

Coach Pirmann on what to learn from tonight…

Our energy and selflessness have to be better. That’s what pains me because it’s why we’ve been good. It’s why anybody’s good. It doesn’t matter if you want to be a nice possession team, you want to be vertical, you want to press, you want to transition. You have to play with energy, and you have to play with selflessness. We’ve got the ability to compete and beat anybody we would like to, but we have to execute it. We’re playing really, really good teams. We played Louisville, we played Rhode Island, we played North Carolina.

We’re playing Tampa Bay [next], who have been one of the best clubs over the last four or five years. We’ll be ready, we just need to make sure we play with a little bit more selflessness and a little bit more energy. And, I don’t think it’s work ethic, I think it’s being smart about how we go about it and making sure we go above and beyond to put our best foot forward.

Dossantos on his overall reaction to the game…

It’s always tough in this league, to come and get a win on the road, to come and get a result. But tonight, we were just lacking energy, first and foremost. We started well, but we kind of lost that momentum in the first half and obviously with those goals in the first half, we just didn’t recover from there. We didn’t react how we wanted to.

Dossantos on the message within the squad going into the second half…

I think at that point, there’s still a lot of time. We know that, and we’re lucky enough to get a goal just before the end of the first half, which I think should have given us a big boost going into halftime. I think we felt that we could come out in the second half and get something out of it, but I don’t think the reaction was there in that last 45 minutes.

Dossantos on turning the page to next Saturday’s game…

We just got to put it behind us. We have a big game next week against Tampa Bay, back at home, which is a nice advantage, but we just have to play better overall and that’s every individual and do our best to get three points on Saturday.

Charleston’s next match will be at home against the Tampa Bay Rowdies on Sat., April 5. Tickets for the rematch of last year’s Eastern Conference Semifinal are on sale now via SeatGeek.com, the club’s exclusive digital ticketing provider.