Culture shock
And why not?
The country that produced Pele, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Rivaldo, Kaka, and countless others, also has the most successful national team in the history of the International Federation of Association Football's (FIFA) World Cup tournament, with five championships to its credit.
Good soccer is a way of life in Brazil.
Living his life in the heart of Ohio's Amish Country for the 2011 school year, the one whose teammates call him Fernando found the back of the net with only 12 seconds remaining in the Knights' Tuesday, August 30 match at Mansfield Madison, as West Holmes sophomore J.R. Yoder hit junior midfielder Fernando Floriano with a crossing pass and watched the Brazilian teen blast it past Rams goalkeeper Nick Nadler in the waning moments, for his first goal on American soil.
Unfortunately for Fioritto and the Knights, Floriano's nifty one-touch was the only score they could muster on the grass and soil at Madison, as West Holmes fell to the Rams 5-1 to drop to 0-3-1 on the season and 0-2 against Ohio Cardinal Conference (OCC) opponents.
"These past four games have just been a lack of heart and effort on our part," said Fioritto, after watching his team follow up a 5-0 season-opening loss at Clear Fork – in which they were outshot 29-5 – with a 5-3 loss to Dover and a 3-3 tie at Northwestern, traveling to Madison one night later and falling behind 3-0 at halftime, before surrendering two more goals in the second period. "Our decision making on the field is horrible. We are not doing the simple things right and the other teams are making us pay for our mistakes."
The Knights have paid on the field by being outshot 91-51 and outscored 18-7, prompting Fioritto to say, "I might have to rethink that," when talking about his preseason defensive goal of allowing 25 or fewer goals…for the entire season.
After getting blanked at Clear Fork, on Tuesday, August 23, West Holmes scored its first goal of the year 22 minutes into its first home game, four nights later against Dover, as Knights' senior midfielder, and 2010 leading scorer, Andrew Vaccariello took a pass from fellow-senior mid, Collin Galbraith, outside the left side of the penalty box, dribbling to within 12 yards before ripping a shot past Tornadoes goalie Matt Pleshinger and giving the Knights their first lead, at 1-0.
But Marco Morales responded for Dover by toe-poking a ball over West Holmes senior keeper Marshall Overholt, to tie the game three minutes later, and the Tornadoes went up 2-1 in the 28th minute when Patrick Weber squibbed a free kick from outside the right corner of the penalty box, which found its way between Overholt's legs and into the back of the net.
"We struck pretty quick, but as is always the case, I think our guys loosened up a little bit and didn't keep pressuring the ball," explained Fioritto after watching Dover continue its scoring onslaught by adding two more goals during the first 10 minutes of the second half – the first coming on a ball Felipe Bravo volleyed past Overholt from 20 yards out, and the second coming when Charlie Deeds controlled a bouncing pass from Patrick Weber inside the box and slipped it into the net. "After a goal the next five minutes are the key, and within five minutes they put about five goals in."
Dover's fifth goal came in the 58th minute, giving the Tornadoes a 5-1 lead, when Bravo scored from inside the penalty box on a ball played in by Adam Edwards, as Fioritto further explained, "I felt like we controlled about 55 or 60 minutes of the game but they were able to put five goals in the other 20-25 minutes, and that was the biggest difference."
But while West Holmes controlled most of the game, the game itself started to get a little out of control in the second-half following a first-half incident in which Knights senior wing Tyler Brown went nose-to-nose with a Dover defender after a little shove from both players on the Knights offensive end of the field.
"It only went downhill from there," said Fioritto as he described what appeared to be a retaliatory act, midway through the second half. "There was an extremely hard foul right in front of the Dover bench and Tyler went flying about five feet through the air and came down hard on his arm."
Brown's arm would be in a splint the next day, while fellow-senior winger Sloan Le was sporting a black eye after getting taken down inside the penalty box and punched during the 65th minute, allowing Vaccariello to score the Knights final goal on a penalty kick, following Chase Campbell's score three minutes earlier, when the freshman outraced Pleshinger to a ball sent forward by Galbraith, knocking it past the charging keeper and into the goal.
"They [the referees] didn't make a call," explained Fioritto, who clearly saw the punch delivered against Le. "Typically if you award a penalty kick there's got to be some kind of card dished out. It was a very emotional and tense game and whenever you have 22 16-18-year-old boys out there competing for something it's going to get out of control if something isn't done.
"I was extremely proud of my players for keeping their heads and not getting too far out of control. The second half is when we actually started playing our hardest. The kids had enough of being pushed around and to their credit they kept playing hard. That is the kind of passion and intensity we have to play with every single night. If we're able to play the way we played the last 25 minutes against Dover it's going to be a good year and we're going to make it extremely tough for some teams to beat us."
And so, when Northwestern forward C.J. Jurenec flew down the sideline, past the entire right side of the Knights defense, and sent a ball past Overholt one-on-one in the 75th minute of West Holmes' next game, two nights later in West Salem, it didn't beat the Knights, but forced a 3-3 tie instead.
"Considering they outplayed us for about 65 minutes of the game, I'm pleased with the tie," said Fioritto, who watched the Huskies go up 2-0 in the first half when Matt Williams played a through ball to Troy Veigl, sprinting past the Knights defense and burying one past Overholt in the 20th minute, before Williams converted a penalty kick nine minutes later when Overholt tackled a Northwestern attacker inside the box.
The Huskies 2-0 lead held up until the 61st minute when the Knights put together 11 minutes of decent soccer to take the lead, as Le controlled a bouncing ball in the box off of a corner kick and pounded it past Northwestern keeper Zac Grey, while Galbraith converted a penalty kick and scored again during the 72nd minute when he headed a perfect crossing pass from Le into the back of the net.
"Credit to Northwestern," said Fioritto, after watching Jurenec tie the game with only five minutes left to play. "They played lights out. They were running around us and doing everything right. Frankly, Northwestern deserved to win the game, but we were lucky enough to play for a tie.
"We just come out flat, and it's very embarrassing the way we come out sometimes. We can't do that every single game. You're not going to win very many that way."
As they proved the following night at Madison, nearly getting shutout for the second time in four games, were it not for Floriano's goal at the very end.
The Brazilian exchange student may be a little confused by the sight of Amish buggies making their way around town, and he may not understand a lot of the things about his life inside the rural setting of Holmes County at this point.
But, like Fioritto and company, he may also not quite understand what's going on on the soccer pitch right now either.
Because good soccer is a way of life in Brazil.
Published: August 30, 2011
