Fans of Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon know that, in the end, the prized statuette turns out to be a forgery. After a couple of weeks of hints that a major Maltese international striker was on the way (how many MMISs can there be?), the RailHawks finally have produced a parcel containing said prize.
Meet Etienne Barbara, a 6-foot-1, 27-year-old striker from Pietà, Malta. There are high hopes for him indeed: Martin Rennie, having been tipped to Barbara’s availability, traveled to the Mediterranean island specifically to scout him. In a team press release, Rennie says:
‘I saw his videos and I was real impressed, and I spoke to some people who also told me, This guy is really, really good. I made the decision to go watch him play, and I was blown away by what he did. I’m hoping that will translate to our league, and I believe it will. He’s got pace, power and he can finish and he’s just an all-around player. He’ll add a lot to our squad.’
Barbara will bring a solid record of accomplishment to Cary, with 70 goals since 1999, a period he mostly spent in the Maltese Premier League. Barbara has 30 caps with Malta’s national team, although he is not currently listed on the roster. He also had a short stint with the German fourth-tier semipro side SC Verl, a tenure that apparently ended with his dismissal for disciplinary reasons (the source cited on Barbara’s Wiki page is a German news site, where it appears that further browsing in Deutsch is necessary).
Following the Internet trail of Barbara’s career is fascinating. We realize just how ubiquitous soccer is elsewhere on the planet—where a country as tiny as Malta can have a multi-tiered league system, and, correspondingly, where there can be excellent prospects toiling away that require diligence, pavement-pounding and international connections to locate.
It appears, too, that last summer Barbara merited a close look by English Championship side Sheffield Wednesday when that club was in preseason training in Malta. According to this report, then-coach Brian Laws (now the coach of Burnley) ultimately determined that Barbara, though “definitely a talented player who has trained very hard with us this week,” wasn’t quite good enough to aid in Sheffield Wednesday’s push for the upper echelon of the Championship. (Wednesday is currently in 21st place, one point above the relegation zone.)
This isn’t to suggest that Barbara won’t be a key ingredient for the RailHawks—it’s unlikely that Rennie would have gone to such lengths merely to add a little squad depth—but that this information gives us an idea of where the RailHawks and American D2 soccer fit into the global soccer matrix (somewhere around England’s League One, perhaps).
It’s an encouraging signing for the RailHawks, who needed another striker option. Last year’s team scored 43 goals, third-best in the league, but 21 percent of those goals came in a single game. Returning forwards Sallieu Bundu and Andriy Budnyy had their moments last season, and Matthew Delicâte, on a late-season loan from USL-2 Richmond, provided spark and creativity, but RailHawk attack has lacked a consistently ruthless presence inside the box. Clearly, Rennie hopes Barbara can bring that finishing touch.
Barbara is currently playing for the Maltese side Hibernians, where he will remain until late March.
Daniel Paladini, seen Sept. 18 against the Montreal Impact, will need to be on form this afternoon. (photo by Rich Bostwick)
After the RailHawks lost 1-0 Thursday night at Vancouver, they’re in the unenviable position of needing a two-goal victory margin to move on in the USL-1 playoffs without throwing themselves into the crapshoot of a penalty-kick finish. Kickoff is at 5 p.m. at WakeMed Soccer Park. Tickets here.
Against the Whitecaps on Thursday, the RailHawks attack was notably punchless despite having Matthew Delicâte in the striker role for much of the game. Of the seven shots mustered, only a second-half look from close range by John Cunliffe posed any real danger to Whitecaps keeper Jay Nolly.
However, the RailHawks would likely have shown more pace and threat in the final third if Joseph Kabwe and Gregory Richardson had been selected for the match. Although the USLLive.com commentators speculated that Richardson, a Guyanese international, had encountered visa problems, he did not make the trip (nor did Kabwe, Sallieu Bundu or Amir Lowery).
What’s apparent, then, is that coach Martin Rennie decided to keep some of his best legs in reserve for this afternoon’s return leg. He’ll need all the pace he can put on the field: The RailHawks have only been in one PK tiebreaker this season, and it was a dismal one, the sour finish at the end of Wilmington’s shocking equalizer at the last gasp of extra time in the U.S. Open Cup second round.
Prior to Thursday’s match, I looked at the RailHawks’ record of scoring goals on the road against the six other playoff teams. I discovered that the ’Hawks had been notably unprolific in this regard, notching only four goals in 10 games (although they extracted 10 points from those contests).
Unhappily, the RailHawks would not change this pattern against Vancouver last Thursday.
However, I got an interesting note from Tim Candon, RailHawks blogger and a far more astute observer than I am, in which he argued that I was paying insufficient attention to the quality of the RailHawks’ performances on the road. With his permission, I’m publishing his response here:
I like your deeper look at the RailHawks road record, but I will counter by saying look at more than just the results. Look at the performance, too, because that’s the focus for Martin. If the performance is up to snuff, the result takes care of itself.
Of the road matches against the other USL-1 playoff teams:
1. PORTLAND: The RailHawks got screwed in the first game. Josh Gardner was pulled down in the box in the 2nd minute. Not only was a penalty not awarded, but the ball was cleared off the line as it was about to trickle into the goal. If that call goes the other way, it’s a completely different game. Continue reading »
Mark Schulte and Sallieu Bundu celebrate earlier this season in a game against the Minnesota Thunder (Photo by Rich Bostwick)
We’re coming to the sad realization that the RailHawks’ regular season is drawing to a close. It’s been a real treat to see such a quality team this year. In reflecting on the season in advance of tonight’s regular season finale against the Montreal Impact, we find ourselves thinking about the issue of year-end league honors.
Team honors, selected by the players, will be announced prior to the playoff game Sept. 27—and you can vote, too, for “fan favorite.”
We’re thinking about the league: The USL will recognize a first and second team all-USL-1 lineup, and there should be citations for best goalkeeper, best defender, and most valuable player. A recent speculative press release from the league office, after reviewing the top performers from other squads, acknowledged the difficulty of recognizing the RailHawks, who are unique in their dependence on a revolving lineup of 20+ quality players, rather than four or five aces.
To take the most obvious example: The league leaders in goals scored (Johnny Menyongar of Rochester, Mandjou Keita of Portland, Charles Gbeke of Vancouver) all have 11 goals. The RailHawks’ leading goal scorers, however, have only six (Gregory Richardson and Sallieu Bundu), yet collectively the team is the second in the league in scoring goals, with 41.
However, if one looks at goals-per-game, one RailHawk in particular becomes one of the league’s best scorers. Richardson’s six goals have come in 11 games, a rate that would put him in first place in the league if it were sustained over the season. (Then there’s Joseph Kabwe and his five goals and four assists in 15 games and 806 minutes; production that’s good enough to place him in the the league’s top 20 in points.)
Richardson is probably the RailHawks’ best candidate among the scorers, with Bundu also a strong second-team possibility, but we’d like to make a case for Daniel Paladini for post-season honors. Continue reading »
Edwin Miranda leaves the field under the glare of the Cary law. photo by David Fellerath
WAKEMED SOCCER PARK/ CARY—The 1,597 fans who showed up on the relatively mild evening saw an extraordinary sight: a soccer game with the preposterous score of 9-0.
That’s right. 9-0. The RailHawks’ match against playoff contender Miami FC Blues wasn’t a baseball game, but a soccer game.
But the lopsided result has us reaching for non-soccer comparisons: Perhaps the time the Chicago Bears won the NFL Championship (in pre-Super Bowl days) with a 73-0 win. Or perhaps if one were to go fishing and have fish hit your lure on every single cast.
But if we stick to soccer analogies, the RailHawks’ absolute dominance was reminiscent of some of Barcelona’s games last season, particularly the first half of their return leg against Real Madrid last May. Like Barça, so dominant were the RailHawks that the goal seemed to be a magnetic field for the ball, and on a couple of occasions the RailHawks nearly walked the ball into the back of the net.
Joseph Kabwe led all scorers (there’s a basketball construction) with three goals, while Sallieu Bundu chipped in a late brace. Also scoring: Daniel Paladini, John Cunliffe, Andriy Budnyy and Gregory Richardson. Continue reading »
RailHawks keeper Eric Reed surely didn’t intend for his endorsement of rock-solid—and taciturn—defender Jeremy Tolleson in team blogger Tim Candon’s profile, posted today, to sound backhanded:
“He’s so dependable,” said goalkeeper Eric Reed, who played with Tolleson last year in Cleveland, too. “A lot of teams, because he’s not a physical presence back there like [Mark] Schulte or Brad [Rusin], you don’t think a lot of him. Teams will put forwards directly on him, and Jeremy will handle them no problem. You can count on him 99.999 percent of the time. Very rarely will he ever do something that will hurt you.”
Obviously, if defenders were perfect, they wouldn’t concede any goals. In fact, the RailHawks have given up 13, the second-fewest in the USL-1. For his part, Tolleson has been an unsung hero, fortuitously stepping in after missing the first few weeks of the season due to injury. He made his season debut in the same game that saw the towering Jack Stewart go down with a broken fibula. Tolleson, who played with coach Martin Rennie in Cleveland the last two seasons and with the PDL Cascade Surge before that, was expected to see time at left back, but the Stewart injury moved him to the middle. Candon’s appreciation is here.
Elsewhere in RailHawksiana today, the N&O’s Rachel Ullrich has a nice piece about the RailHawks’ foreign players that performs the useful service of nailing down which players are officially foreign, under USL rules, and which are not. (In the latter category: Sallieu Bundu, Andriy Budnyy, Gavin Glinton, Caleb Patterson-Sewell.) This story, by the way, ran above the fold on the front sports page. Kudos to the N&O for giving Ullrich space this summer. She’ll be missed when her internship ends.
The RailHawks are back in third place after victories by the Charleston Battery and the Portland Timbers. They have three games in hand on Charleston and one on Portland. They travel to Vancouver for a game against the Whitecaps Saturday, Aug. 15, at 10 p.m. EDT. Watch it on USLLive.com.
WAKEMED SOCCER PARK/CARY—One can always gauge the attendance figures by looking at the “kids tunnel” that forms to welcome the referees and players onto the field. Last night there were 40 kids and an official attendance of 2,138. On the bright side there were two pantomime cows, Swoops, and several dozen dogs, as it was “Bark in the Park Night,” a howler of an idea. I am looking forward to explaining this to my students in Brazil. The hilarious bit was that the cows put their hands over their hearts for the national anthem, though I’m not sure they got the anatomy right.
The Austin Aztex are in their first year of USL-1 competition and are having a rough go of it. This young team has lost a number of close games, given up leads late in games, been docked points for ineligible players and been hit by a spate of injuries that have kept them floating at the bottom of the table. The RailHawks, coming off a 4-0 thrashing of Miami and a week of rest, took full advantage of the Texan debutantes. Continue reading »
Just in from the USL home office: Caleb Norkus and Sallieu Bundu have spots on Week 14’s team of the week for their performances in the RailHawks’ 1-0 victory over the Charleston Battery on Saturday.
Among the contributions of Norkus, who started the game at right back: He drew a crucial foul from the Battery’s Randi Patterson, who kicked him in the head. Amazingly, Patterson was sent off, and minutes later, the RailHawks exploited the man-deficit with a goal from Bundu, off an assist from Josh Gardner.
The league’s player of the week was Ricardo Sanchez of the cellar-dwelling Minnesota Thunder, who annihilated the Montreal Impact 3-0. That game also produced the weekend’s most notorious low-light.
This continues an unfortunate trend for Canadian football teams (maybe it’s the universal health care!). Last month, the Vancouver Whitecaps’ Wesley Charles and Charles Gbeke also got into an on-field fracas, this time after the two of them muffed a scoring opportunity. Here’s the video (scroll ahead to 7:35).
Guess who the RailHawks play this Friday night, at home and on national television (Fox Soccer Channel, that is)? The boys from Vancouver. Kickoff is 8 p.m.
Daniel Paladini (left) against the Cleveland City Stars on May 22 (photo courtesy of the Carolina RailHawks)
After two frustrating seasons, fans in WakeMed Soccer Park tonight will be excused for some hard-earned self-congratulation—and considering the woefulness of the opponent, the Cleveland City Stars, who are in 10th place with only two goals scored versus 12 allowed, they should expect to see three more points added to the Carolina RailHawks’ points column.
Amir Lowery, in the air sometime during the game's first 18 minutes, before he was shown a red card for a bad mid-air challenge. (Photo courtesy of the RailHawks)
WAKEMED SOCCER PARK/ CARY—On a night when thunder and lightning knocked out an hour of power and heavy rain unequivocally defined the term fair weather fan for several dozen families who sheepishly made their mini-vanning way home, the Charleston Battery and Carolina RailHawks huffed and banged their way through 90 minutes of football.
Carolina entered the game on top of the USL-1 table and had never lost to their Southern Derby rivals, posting a 7-0 record over the past two seasons. Keeper Caleb Patterson Sewell had not conceded a goal in his RailHawks tenure and Martin Rennie was able to field his strongest side with the exception of Josh Gardner who had picked up the flu in Portland. 4,500+ fans braved the game-time tempest and were rewarded with cool weather and eerie, ominous skies. It looked like a promising night for the home side.
Amir Lowery in the thick of green things in Portland (photo by Craig Mitchelldyer)
USLLIVE/ WEB—Although the RailHawks are now in command of the league table with 10 points in four outings, it’s a bit worrisome that they’ve scored only four goals in four games. Fortunately, an airtight defense, led by the central trio of Mark Schulte, Jack Stewart and Amir Lowery, hasn’t given up a goal since the season opener against Minnesota. Schulte and Lowery, furthermore, have played every minute of the season, with Stewart just a half-hour behind.
Last night, with a perfect nine points in three games, the RailHawks went to Portland for the first of two fixtures against the Portland Timbers. In a hard-fought, foul-heavy contest, the apparently tiring ’Hawks held off their hosts in the second half to escape with a point for the 0-0 draw.
Kyle on "UNC holds off pesky NCCU with big second half, awaits selection committee": Mike Potter does Triangle sports fans a wonderful service by providing a unique perspective of events that may not otherwise receive media coverage. Thanks Mike for all you have done and continue to do in your outstanding career as a journalist and an ambassador for the Triangle.
caniacgirl on "Peters and pipes pickpocket a peck of prickly Penguins": I absolutely love the headline! Games like this one definitely reignite the little bit of playoff hope I have left in me. It should be an interesting few weeks that's for sure.
Greg Nccu Student on "Miller leads NCCU to 11th victory": There are a lot of Rumors on Campus about Joanna Miller leaving NCCU next year. Please Coach Robinson, We need to keep this player from gong to another College.
Last night there were 40 kids and an official attendance of 2,138. On the bright side there were two pantomime cows, Swoops, and several dozen dogs, as it was “Bark in the Park Night,” a howler of an idea. I am looking forward to explaining this to my students in Brazil. The hilarious bit was that the cows put their hands over their hearts for the national anthem, though I’m not sure they got the anatomy right.
