Soccer goes winless for season

Normally a 13-3 season would be something to celebrate, but for the University at Albany men’s soccer team it was the zero in front of those numbers that made their season a disappointment.

   Saturday was the Great Danes’ (0-13-3, AE 0-6-1) last chance to win a game, and despite two goals in the final ten minutes of the game, the team was once again unable to seal the win in extra time.

   The loss was especially tough for the two senior forwards Joe Hogan and Claudio Dantas who won’t be able to help next year’s team fix the program, but Hogan says that this season doesn’t make his time at UAlbany any worse.

   “I could look at it that way, but I got so much out of this program, being here,” he said. “I got out of it 15 times more than what I put into it, so no, I don’t have any regrets like that.”
   Coach Johan Aarnio, who led the team to a 12-4-2 record in 2008 including a loss in the semifinals of the American East Tournament, said that the team won’t dwell on this season but rather use it for next year.

   “We’re going to use it as momentum because this was a season no one has experienced – myself or the players – in that we deserved to win many of the games that we didn’t,” Aarnio said. “And we had great efforts. We had to do it with an all-new roster. We had to do it with nine new players in nine unnatural positions this year.”

   He believes the inexperience at those positions is what hurt them the most.

   “What we had in mind was a little bit different,” he said. “We ended up playing mid fielders as defenders and forwards as mid fielders. It goes on and on. I think what we need to do is the depth back and take some of the spirit we had at the beginning of the season and grow on it next year. It’s good that we’re having players coming back, but you need depth. We didn’t have depth this year.”

   Junior mid fielder Milos Jankovic thinks that luck was another large factor in the team’s winless season that saw them lose four and tie three in seven overtime attempts this season. Aarnio agrees.

   “We didn’t have things go our way,” Aarnio said. “I mean we had the worst of the worst. This is a game where you outplay an opponent, and you don’t win. There’s no other sport like that. That can only happen in soccer. It happened to us.”

   Hogan said that the worst part was how their positive mind set prior to the season didn’t prove true.

   “We had a lot of expectations this year, and we thought we had all the tools to win,” he said. “It’s really, really frustrating, but you can’t dwell on this season.”

   Jankovic does find some positives to take out of such a negative season, and believes the program will turn things around in 2010.

   “We can definitely take [a lot out of] our hard work in practice, preseason; we had a really good preseason,” the co-team captain said. “We just need to keep going. I can promise you we’re going to be in the America East [tournament next year].”