Sondre Norheim crept toward the middle of the box, waiting for Massimo Ferrin’s delivery.

As he’d done against No. 18 North Carolina three days earlier, Norheim jumped above the contesting defenders and earned himself a clean header at goal. 

Ferrin’s ball dropped onto his head, and Norheim redirected it into the bottom left corner of the goal. 

Syracuse pressed the Huskies and forced turnovers consistently the first 53 minutes, and despite disappointing finishing again, Norheim’s header rewarded the Orange for their aggressive high-press. SU’s midfield led to the Orange’s third clean sheet of the season. In the midst of a difficult stretch of conference games, Syracuse (5-3-4, 1-2-2 Atlantic Coast) stepped out of conference and defeated former Big East rival Connecticut (4-8-1, 1-3-0 American), 1-0, on Tuesday night at SU Soccer Stadium. The Orange played their most controlled match of the season, accomplishing head coach Ian McIntyre’s goal of “suffocating” the Huskies from start to finish, he said. 

“I thought from the first minute to the last we were in control of the game,” McIntyre said.

McIntyre was on his team verbally from the sideline throughout the match, especially his starting midfield three of Simon Triantafillou, Julio Fulcar and Amferny Sinclair. Sinclair typically sits at the base of the three-man midfield triangle, leaving Fulcar and Triantafillou to press higher.

SU has sat back and absorbed pressure when they’ve faced some of the nation’s top teams, like then-No. 1 Wake Forest. In a Monday film session, though, McIntyre identified key elements of UConn’s style that the Orange could exploit.

Triantafillou said the Orange knew Huskies goalie Gianluca Catalano couldn’t effectively kick the ball and pressured him with two players to make him use his feet. The Orange noticed UConn’s wingers don’t like to defend, so they pushed wing backs Hilli Goldhar and John-Austin Ricks higher up to attack the Huskies along the sidelines. 

“It’s a lot of running,” Triantafillou said. “You just have to be disciplined and press and if your man gets the ball and turns, you’re going to hear it. We got a lot of pressure on the ball and they didn’t know what to do.”

On Tuesday night, McIntyre shouted “get up the field,” and repeatedly yelled “Simon!” and “Julio!” whenever he felt they weren’t active enough.

When the Orange have stepped out of conference play — a 1-1 tie with Yale, a 2-2 draw with New Hampshire and a 3-2 win over Cornell, among others — they’ve often engaged in back-and-forth games in which both teams generate plenty of offense. But against UConn, Syracuse held the Huskies to one shot in the opening half — a 25-yard strike in traffic that came nowhere near Christian Miesch’s goal. 

The Orange continued to win the ball back in the attacking half as a result of the press and pinned the Huskies in for most of the first frame. It wasn’t until the last seven minutes that UConn finally established any possession in attack. 

“Obviously you can’t do it for the whole 90 minutes,” Triantafillou said. “They didn’t have a lot of chances, and it worked for us. We got chance after chance.”

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SU’s high press generated the first scoring opportunity of the evening when UConn center back Jake Dengler passed the ball across the defensive half straight to Ferrin. Yet the crowd groaned as the touch off Ferrin’s foot was heavy and the Huskies’ keeper was able to dive out and claim the ball.

One long ball UConn attempted was quickly recycled into a chance for Syracuse. Triantafillou played a pass to Ferrin’s feet on the edge of the box, whose curling left-footed shot was saved as it turned toward the bottom corner. 

Syracuse inched closer and closer to the breakthrough goal. When Ricks swung in a free kick delivery feet away from the corner flag, Norheim was again the highest jumper, reaching the ball first and flicking it toward the goal. Dengler chested it off the line and the Huskies were able to survive SU’s early onslaught of pressure. 

When Fulcar played a peel-back ground pass into the charging Noah Singelmann, Singelmann drove his right foot through the ball, but it sliced away from the post and the shot slammed into the blue and orange board feet from the goal. Ricks was later able to win the ball inside the penalty area, but the Orange completed four short passes before losing the chance to get a shot away.

Once the Orange took the lead, McIntyre changed his message from the touchline. Instead of yelling “Massimo (Ferrin), you and Ryan (Raposo) have got to get higher” to his two starting forwards, he urged his midfielders to keep their defensive positions and wait for chances to counter. 

“I’d say at the back end it was really clean,” Triantafillou said. “We kept them at bay the whole time. We were constantly pressuring their net. They only had one or two chances.”

And while the Orange’s chances to counter never really came until Severin Soerlie’s chance on goal in the final minute, they didn’t need any. Sandwiched in between two ACC games against top-20 opponents, one quality moment from Norheim and Ferrin was enough to beat Connecticut. 

“As well as we played and the number of chances we had,” McIntyre said, “some days you’re going to need a set piece goal.”

Published on October 15, 2019 at 9:08 pm

Contact Anthony: amdabbun@syr.edu | @AnthonyDabbundo