Malden Shutout by Somerville

It was a case of deja vu all over again for the Malden High School boys soccer team on Wednesday as the Golden Tornadoes lost to host Somerville in a 4-0 shutout for the second time this season. 

The loss dropped the Golden Tornadoes to 4-6 overall while the Highlanders improved to 4-3-3. 

"We came out of the gate slow and didn't really start playing until there was 10 minutes to go in the first half," said Malden head coach Jeremiah Smith. "It was a pretty good second half, but the result is the same as the last one."

Somerville jumped out to an early lead at the 34:30 mark when Murilo Zaneete scored on a well-placed header off of a corner kick by Kevin Montiel. 

It wasn't long before the Highlanders struck again, this time at the 28:30 mark on a goal by Richard Rodriguez off yet another spot-on corner kick . 

Just six minutes later, Somerville took a commanding 3-0 lead when Homero Morais broke through a crowd of defenders just outside the penalty box and sent a perfectly-placed shot just out of reach of Malden goalie Zula Bougdaev. 

Malden began to turn things around toward the end of the first half and continued to pressure Somerville through much of the second half, but the Highlander defense, led by senior captain Toby Moynihan, remained staunch, as did goalie Bruno Souza, who came away with several key blocks, including a stop in one-on-one situation midway through the second half. 

"There was a good chunk of the game there that we controlled and it was just the inability to finish and that's kind of plagued our whole season," said Smith. "We had some shots on net and had the goalie out of position a couple of times, but just couldn't put it in the back of the net."

The Golden Tornadoes will face another league foe on Friday when they host first-place Medford at 4 p.m. With just one day to prepare, Smith said he's hoping to see more consistency from his team. 

"If we could have started the game at the same pace and tempo that we played the middle of the game, I think it would have been a different result," said Smith. "We have to be more consistent."