English lesson: Cards top Spartans

By Greg Gulas

sports @vindy.com

BOARDMAN

Tanor English scored a goal in each half and Jad Saleh recorded his fourth shutout of the season as the Canfield Cardinals defeated the Boardman Spartans, 2-0 in All-American Conference, Red Division action Thursday at Spartan Stadium.

With the win, Canfield (6-3-1, 4-1-0) sweeps the series from the Spartans for the second time in three years, having defeated Boardman on Sept. 1 at home, 7-0.

English’s first goal of the game, off a penalty kick, came at 13:47 of the opening half and gave Canfield the goal advantage.

“I put it to the left because my left foot is better than my right,” English said. “I was then able to bury it in the bottom left-hand corner of the net.”

The score remained 1-0 heading to the half with Canfield outshooting the Spartans, 10-2 in the opening session.

“We’re a young team after graduating 12 seniors off of last year’s squad,” Cardinals head coach Phil Simone added. “We have just three seniors this year and we’re coming together a little bit more each time that we play.”

English then added an insurance marker with 10:20 remaining in the game.

“R.J. Thomas put a nice ball in across the box and I slipped it past their goalie,” English said.

The Cardinals moved to 4-0-1 in their last five games, outscoring opponents 20-4 with Saleh recording three of his four shutouts and allowing just one goal in their other win.

“Jad was a field player, mostly midfield, and he came to us before the season to volunteer to be our goalie,” Simone stated. “He’s done a great job all season long and each and every game he just gets better and better.”

Both Simone and Saleh called English a player who works hard and never lets up when he is on the field.

“Tanor puts his body on the line for us the entire game. He works hard in both practice and in a game and you saw the results of that hard work tonight,” Saleh said.

Simone said English’s effort is never questioned.

“He [English] always gives 110 percent every time,” he said. “He’s a hard-nosed player who never quits.”

The Spartans (0-7-1) fell for the fourth time at home and while their offense has produced just nine goals to date, their effort has been there all season long according to head coach Eric Simione.

“We have a young, inexperienced roster that has gotten off to a rocky start thus far. We’ve had our share of injuries and play a hard schedule, but those aren’t excuses,” Simione said. “It takes time to fix a lineup when players are missing, it’s just not something you can do overnight. The positive we can take away from tonight’s game is that we’re young and building for the future.”

Simione is looking forward to the Spartans’ upcoming second half schedule.

“We were able to try some different lineups and we’ll need the next few games in order to make adjustments,” Simione added. “This is a close knit unit that sticks together and I was really proud of our overall effort. To borrow a line from Bob Seger’s song ‘Little Victories,’ day by day, minute by minute, little victories.”

Canfield improved to 4-1 on the road, outshooting the Spartans by a 15-5 margin on the night.