PACIFIC FC 3 - VANCOUVER FC 0
This B.C. derby is personal for Pacific FC striker Dario Zanatta.
“I grew up here [on the Island] and there’s always a little extra in it,” said the former Canada Under-20 and Scottish Premiership player.
“Whenever we played Surrey or Burnaby teams in youth, you always felt they looked down on us, because Vancouver is bigger than Victoria. This derby means a lot for myself and the other [PFC] players from the Island.”
Zanatta unleashed all that latent fury on Vancouver FC by scoring twice in the 3-0 Canadian Premier League victory at Starlight Stadium on Saturday. The other goal came from Moses Dyer, with his second goal in as many games to show why he has earned 11 caps for the New Zealand national team after representing the nation in the 2017 FIFA U-20 World Cup.
The scoring outburst comes on the heels of the 3-0 PFC victory over the HFX Wanderers at Starlight Stadium last weekend. The two-game winning run, and combined six goals, comes after a five-game PFC scoreless drought that stretched to Aug. 2 and a 10-game winless streak across all competitions.
“It shows you how football can change,” said Zanatta.
“I haven’t been as good as I want to be, and two weeks ago was sitting on zero goals on the season, and now I feel alive in the box and a whole new player.”
Zanatta has three of those six PFC goals over the last two games, Dyer two and Romanian import Andrei Tircoveanu one. Dyer was again Zanatta’s muse. Dyer was pulled down in the box last weekend against HFX with Zanatta scoring the ensuing goal from the penalty spot. Zanatta opened the scoring on Saturday against VFC at seven minutes by knocking home a Dyer rebound. Dyer headed home a corner kick just before the half. A lengthy free kick by Tircoveanu in the second half handcuffed VFC goalkeeper and former PFC ’keeper’ Callum Irving, and Zanatta slid through the sleeping VFC defence to knock in his second rebound goal of the game.
There are no forward lines in soccer as in hockey, but the Zanatta-Dyer-Tircoveanu combination has suddenly turned into a potent one for the Tridents.
“They are three mature players with different dynamics and are finding the right chemistry at the right time for us,” said PFC head coach James Merriman.
The result vaulted the Tridents back into the playoff race. PFC and VFC are tied for the fifth and final playoff berth. VFC holds the tiebreaker but PFC has a game in hand with six remaining to five for VFC.
The result ended a Tridents losing streak in the derby. After losing the first two games against their cross-strait rivals upon entering the league last year, VFC had recorded five consecutive victories against PFC, including winning the first three games this season, before Saturday.
“Five in a row had to end sometime. And sometimes it doesn’t end pretty,” said VFC head coach Afshin Ghotbi.
“Pacific played almost a perfect game and had us chasing the game,” added Ghotbi, former head coach of the Iranian national team, who was on the coaching staff at three World Cups with the U.S. in 1998 and South Korea in 2002 and 2006.
The three PFC players missing last week on national team duties returned on Saturday. All three started in their CONCACAF Nations League games, midfielder Marco Dominguez for Guatemala, and forward Reon Moore and midfielder Steffen Yeates for Trinidad and Tobago.
PFC now travel to play HFX in Halifax on Wednesday.
