Manalapan Beats Marlboro With Two First-Half Goals

Playing without five starters, Marlboro High School boys soccer (1-3-1) fell at home to Manalapan High School (3-3) 2-0 today. Manalapan scored two first half goals, and that proved to be enough.

Afterwards Marlboro head coach Dave Santos said that a good second half could not make up for a poor first half.

“I thought we played well the last 20 minutes but by then it was too little too late,” Santos said. “We couldn’t put things together. They pressured and we struggled early.”

The initial part of this game was fairly even, with both teams having a couple chances. But it was not until approximately the 26th minute when Manalapan finally connected.

Playing in front of their own very loud and boisterous student section, Josh Rappoport scored on a header from a feed by Ryan Nascimento to make it 1-0 Manalapan.

Approximately 10 minutes later, Marco Fernandez connected with the net for the second and final score of the game. This time the assist went to Josh Rogers.

Marlboro dominated most of the play late in the second half but could not get one across, and ultimately suffered their third loss of the year.

Manalapan head coach John Natoli was pleased with the performance.

“I thought our guys were pretty patient defensively and [liked] how our line of defense [was] pretty well mapped out and countered pretty well. When we got our chances we took advantage of them.”

Of the five starters the Mustangs were forced were play without three were due to injury, one to a red card, and one to a suspension. They also played without two bench players due to injury. But Santos did not blame the loss on being undermanned.

“I’m not going to say we’re undermanned. We had 11 strong guys out there. They just played better than we did and they worked a little harder," he said.

Santos did say that getting fully healthy would be nice, as Marlboro continues on a busy stretch of games. They next game is Friday at Freehold Township.