On Sunday, Stanford men’s soccer defeated San Francisco 2-0 in their first of three home exhibitions at Cagan Stadium. Redshirt senior forward Shane de Flores (65:07) and freshman midfielder Jude Stone (76:01) both found the back of the net for the Cardinal, to help them pull away after a 0-0 draw at halftime.
Redshirt junior Rowan Schnebly got most of the minutes at goalkeeper, playing the first 46:58 of the match before redshirt freshman Jordan Victor (17:49), redshirt junior Laszlo Bollyky (11:14), and freshman Brayden Montague (13:59) finished out the rest, collectively getting a shutout.
BOX SCORE: Stanford vs. San Francisco-Sunday, August 10th
“It’s so early in the season that there’s so much that I’m sure both teams want to work on and need to work on,” Stanford head coach Jeremy Gunn said after the match. “But taking that away, it was a fantastic game. It was just super exciting to see everybody back on the pitch. It was great to see the freshmen get first minutes and it was all in all, a great game of soccer.”
The first half of the match was chippy as neither team was able to score. Stanford did outshoot San Francisco 7-4 in the first half, but they were tied at corner kicks at 3-3. San Francisco was playing like a team that knew they had beaten Stanford last season, doing a good job of putting some pressure on them.
“I felt San Francisco played well in the early stages,” Gunn said. “In a fairly even first kind of first quarter of the game and then the second quarter of the game, I felt we started to take over and then the second half, I feel we continued to put pressure on them and really pull away.
“And so, after what I felt was a really good start for them, wasn’t terrible for us, but I just felt they had a little bit more goal mouth action than we did. A little bit more possession. But then after the first quarter of the game, felt we just managed to settle down and just slowly turn the screws and slowly become more and more dominant in the game. And so I think the goals came at fair times in the game, really.”
In the second half, Stanford finally pulled away as they were able to outshoot San Francisco 9-2, doing a great job of clamping down their defense. At the 65:07 mark, Shane de Flores found the back of the net on an unassisted goal that was in sort of a scrum in front of the net following a corner kick. That made it 1-0. A bit later on at 76:01, Jude Stone was able to punch one in as a well with a pretty strike from straight out off an assist from fellow freshman Brad Bennett. That made it 2-0, which would end up being the final score.
“Fantastic,” Gunn said of Stone scoring as a freshman. “You know, he’s got a wonderful attitude and he’s somebody that he’s really impressed throughout the preseason like a lot of the team. We expect wonderful things from him in the coming years.”
“Goal was just a corner kick. Zach put in a great ball, in swinging ball, kinda just bounced around a little bit,” de Flores recalled of his goal. “Cleary got a foot on it and was just lucky to be in the right spot at the back post and tap it home to take a lead.”
For Stanford, this was a good exhibition win for them. They got a lot of different players on the field and they were able to get their offense going a bit with two goals. A major key coming into the season for Stanford is to find ways to get more goals. They know they can defend at a high level, but it’s the offense that too often has been unable to kick things up a notch. Two goals isn’t amazing, but if you’re Stanford, a two goals per match average would be a legit bump over the 1.55 they averaged per match last season.
“Yeah, it’s definitely very nice,” de Flores said of scoring multiple goals as a team. “We’ve been working really hard all summer. So it was good to kind of see the practice going onto the field. So, definitely a big step up from last season so we’re hoping to keep the train rolling and then to next game on Tuesday.”
That all being said, it was still nice to get the shutout in the process of getting those two goals. To have all four goalkeepers collectively keep San Francisco scoreless is something that should give Stanford confidence in that unit as the season gets underway.
“Yeah, the four keepers all did a great job,” Gunn said. “You know, we’ll have to look at the video and see what big saves were made. I think Rowan had to make a legit save and then they had a couple of other chances where they didn’t create saves out of the keeper. But no, I think all of them look pretty composed and look pretty confident, and so, again, this is the time of year where we can look at all different people, give everybody a little bit of a look before we have to start picking the team in earnest.”
Up next for Stanford is their second home exhibition against Cal State Bakersfield on Tuesday, August 12th. That will begin at 3:00 PM PT.
“Well, obviously we’re learning so much about everybody,” Gunn said. “But we’ve been working mainly on some defensive things. We saw that we’ve still got a little bit of work to do with that as a team. Although the back four did well, weathering a little bit of pressure. And then still, we haven’t really got started with the attacking side of the ball. And so as our first day out, I thought it was a pretty solid performance, lots of great positives and lots of, lots and lots to work on, having been only together for less than a week.”
“We spent a lot of time doing scrimmages at practice against each other, so that’s good, too, but it’s always nice to put on the jersey and go out against outside competition and kind of work together as a unit and get that feeling for when big games come this season,” de Flores said of the benefit of exhibitions. “So, I thought it was a great game today, a tough battle, and we’re happy with the win.”
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