On Friday, Stanford men’s soccer had a 0-0 draw against San Francisco in their first of three home exhibitions before regular season play begins. It was a beautiful day at Cagan Stadium with the Cardinal faithful out in attendance to watch the unofficial dawning of the ACC era.
READ: Breaking down the 2024 Stanford Men’s Soccer schedule
San Francisco outshot Stanford in the match 7-6, but the Cardinal’s stout defense prevented the Dons from finding the net. Much like last season, the defense was the headliner for the Cardinal as their offense didn’t develop as crisply as they would have liked. It took the Cardinal a solid half to really settle in offensively before they were able to really put consistent pressure on the Dons and draw up some corner kicks and scoring chances with consistency.
That said, Stanford head coach Jeremy Gunn was pleased with the effort of his team and seemed confident that what we saw from his team was nothing close to the finished product that we’ll see. The same he felt being the case for San Francisco. This match was more about going out and enjoying some quality competition. He felt like his guys played hard and made the most of the match in that sense.
“It’s awesome for the team to put the jersey on and get out there and compete,” Gunn said. “Obviously, it’s extremely early. We’ve only been going for a couple of days and we trained through the game. And so, it’s certainly nowhere near the final product. But lots of good positives from the game and also lots of fresh faces getting their first minutes and really getting a good run out and so it was fantastic for us to see all of the players play today.”
While exhibitions are sometimes called a “friendly”, this match was anything but friendly as both teams played physical and hard. Yellow cards were drawn on both sides and neither team held back in their aggression. That made for a fairly entertaining match even though neither team scored.
“As far as the soccer went, I thought it was two very very good teams,” Gunn said. “And just a bit of a stalemate, really. I think neither team really got flowing and going. And those are things that quite certain that both teams will continue to grow and play more and more as they go through the season…It’s very good defending by both teams.
“And so neither team was really getting exposed, but then I think it’s just as far as the attacking, passing, and movement, it’s just not quite clicking yet and it’s not quite fluent yet and so if you think when you start off a preseason, there’s a good chance it’s gonna be a little bit easier to defend than to attack at the beginning because defending really you know, it’s about organization and discipline whereas the attacking you really need to start building the relationships and the timing. But I’m quite happy with how the boys worked. I think they’ve been going through a really tough strong few days and then we’ll be excited to get more minutes under our belt on Sunday.”
In the first half, Stanford played their starters with redshirt sophomore Rowan Schnebly playing goalkeeper. In the second half, Stanford put in some reserves with freshman Jordan Victor and redshirt freshman Laszlo Bollyky each getting a shot at playing goalkeeper while Schnebly and the first team rested. One fresh face who seemed to shine in the second half for Stanford was freshman midfielder Alex Chow. He attempted multiple corner kicks and looks like someone who down the line will be trusted in big moments. It’ll be interesting to see how he progresses over the course of the season and in the final two exhibitions.
“Rowan is the returning starting keeper and then both Laszlo and Jordan have been doing fantastic,” Gunn said of the goalkeeper rotation. “And again, in this first scrimmage, the main idea was to get to see people truly getting a chance to play. In season, that’s not gonna happen always. And so it was very much just to get basically everybody in the program who is healthy to play today and so that was exciting for them to get that opportunity. So, nothing else between the lines other than we’re getting the returning keeper getting some minutes and then the two people that are fighting behind him getting minutes as well.”
Overall, the exhibition went well for Stanford even though it was a 0-0 draw. Nobody got injured and much of the team got the taste of competition, which is what you want to see in exhibitions like this.
“We scheduled one less game in the season because we now have a conference tournament that reduces our regular season by two weeks,” Gunn said of scheduling the extra exhibitions. “And so we had the extra games spare. As a coach you’d always want to be coaching more training sessions, but I just look at it and say even though it’s super early the players want to put their jersey on and play, so let’s give them that opportunity to prove themselves and I thought it was a great day to see people play today.”
Touching quickly on this being the first season for Stanford in the ACC, Gunn made it clear that he wishes the Pac-12 didn’t split up. He loved the quality of soccer they faced in that league and feels like soccer on the West Coast can hold its own against the best of the best. That said, given the circumstances of conference realignment, it does sound like Gunn is thrilled they landed in the ACC knowing the level of competition that is in that league.
“I think we have great soccer on the West Coast and somebody that doesn’t want to damage all of the world’s resources, I would rather us travel shorter distances purely for that reason,” Gunn said. “I think the Pac-12 was an incredible conference and as a soccer coach, I would have happily continued in that conference. So while I wouldn’t have voted for all of the conference realignment, once it happened, we’ve landed in an incredible spot. Our players want to play against the best in the nation and for a number of years, the Pac-12 and the ACC have had some of the best soccer in the nation and so the fact that we moved is what it is and the fact where we’ve moved to it’s really exciting. Can’t wait to play in so many really tough competitive games.”
Up next for Stanford is a home exhibition against Sacramento State on Sunday. That will begin at 4:00 PM PT.
Note: Stanford women’s soccer had a road exhibition at San Jose State on Friday night, winning by a final score of 4-0. Andrea Kitahata, Freya Spiekerkoetter, Charlotte Kohler, and Shae Harvey each scored for the Cardinal. Haley Craig got the start at goalkeeper with Alyssa Savig and Kaiya Jota coming in for relief. Click here for a breakdown of Stanford women’s soccer’s 2024 schedule.
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