By Chris Judd and Jake Fischer, News Staff
As soon as the Northeastern men’s soccer team arrived back on campus to begin practicing for the 2013 season, it saw five of its players named to the All-Colonial Athletic Association (CAA) preseason teams.
A week prior, head coach Brian Ainscough’s squad was selected to repeat last season’s success as CAA champions in the conference’s preseason poll. Last season’s CAA tournament win, their first ever, advanced them to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2002.
“We’re definitely respected as the team to beat in the conference and we definitely have that target on our back,” senior midfielder and co-captain Dante Marini said. “But, we still weren’t ranked as one of the top teams in the country in the national preseason poll, so we still feel like we have a little bit of a chip on our shoulder and have something to prove.”
The Huskies’ stifling defense from last season, a unit that held its opponents to 0.76 goals per game, will keep most of their defensive players.
Despite losing last year’s starting goalie Oliver Blum, the team will still be depending on its defense in order to repeat last year’s success. Backed by sophomore starting goalkeeper Dylan Faber, the core of the team’s defense in front of the net will be junior captain Simon Cox. Cox, a native of London, England, was named CAA Co-Defensive Player of the Year and was also selected to the All-CAA First Team in 2012.
If the Huskies want their championship aspirations to come to fruition, the offense will also have to rise to the occasion. The Huskies are now in the absence of Don Anding, drafted by the Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer (MLS), who led the Huskies with 14 goals last season. On average, the Huskies scored 1.57 goals per game in 2012, and due to the team’s lack of offensive power, games were often decided in overtime. While that makes for some entertaining soccer, Northeastern took the CAA crown in nail-biting fashion on a game winner from Anding.
Luckily for the Huskies, the top five scorers behind Anding are all returning to Parsons Field. The Huskies’ two offensive captains for the season, Marini and junior forward Donovan Fayd’Herbe de Maudave, will likely be called upon to shoulder the majority of the hole left by Anding.
“It’s hard to replace someone who scored so many goals,” Ainscough said. “Right now, the jury is still out on who will replace him, but we have a lot of goal scorers we are expecting to contribute.”
Aisncough could benefit from the early impressive play and effort from freshman forwards Christian McKenna and Robbie Schallmo. Marini said he’s confident that he and the entire team are up to the challenge of being just as good as, if not better than, last year.
“It would not only be an incredible accomplishment for me to win the conference in both my junior and senior year, but it would be huge for the program overall,” Marini said of the growing positive perception of Northeastern soccer. “I’d be really disappointed if we don’t at least win the conference again.”
The Huskies played their first two regular season games in the John Rennie/Nike Invitational tournament in North Carolina Aug. 30 and Sept. 1. They played to a 1-1 draw against Elon University and lost to Duke University 2-0.
“We played two very good teams that were very demanding,” Ainscough said. “We wanted to see where we measured up with them. We were very happy with the performance, but not with the results.”
Northeastern was able to stay with their opponents in both matches, and faced a tough break when the team had an early goal called back on an offsides in the first half against Duke. Still, their defense continued to pull through as they allowed three goals in the first weekend, two of which came from penalty kicks.
The Huskies play next at 6 p.m. Saturday against Fairfield University for their first home game of the season at Parsons Field.
