Forty-one year old veteran striker Bo Vuckovic proved the hero on Wednesday night with an 85th minute game winner to give the Vermont Voltage a 2-1 win over the visiting Western Mass Pioneers in front of a reported 740 at Collins-Perley Sports Complex in St. Albans, VT.<\/p>\n
Despite the win, the Voltage (3-10-2, 11 points) remain tied for last on the USL PDL Northeast Division, while the third-place Pioneers (6-4-5, 23 points) saw their playoff hopes come to an end with the loss. The result guaranteed the first-place Ottawa Fury (9-3-2, 29 points) and second-place GPS Portland Phoenix (9-4-1, 28 points) would claim the Northeast Division\u2019s two playoff spots in the Eastern Conference playoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a great game on a great night with a great crowd,\u201d said Vuckovic, Vermont\u2019s owner\/general manager\/director of marketing\/striker, in a club release.<\/p>\n
Despite the Voltage being outshot 8 to 2 in the first half, the home side would score the lone goal through Stefan Antonijevic. Antonijevic headed in a cross from Vuckovic to put Vermont in front, 1-0, going into the break.<\/p>\n
Ryan Malone would equalize for the Pioneers in the 73rd minute, giving the club some hope of coming back to grab the win they needed to keep their playoff hopes alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Pioneers came hard in the 2nd half which we knew they would because they are in 3rd place in the league and looking for a spot in playoffs,\u201d said Vuckovic. \u201cThey would put pressure on us and push us back but we would fight back.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the Voltage, and not the favored Pioneers, who would emerge victorious, however. Vuckovic, a Franklin Pierce University product and 1996 MLS Inaugural Player Draft third round pick (25th overall) by the New England Revolution, would score the winner in the 85th minute with a strike from outside of the box into the upper right corner of the net. It was Vuckovic\u2019s third goal of the season.<\/p>\n
Vermont goalkeeper Ryan Brooks-Newton made four saves in the win.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe crowd and fans were excited and we deserved the victory,\u201d said Vuckovic. \u201cOver all it was a great night for soccer, for St.Albans and the Voltage sports club. The guys played hard and deserved this victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Vermont concludes their season against Connecticut FC Azul on Saturday, July 14th at Collins-Perley Sports Complex at 7 p.m. Western Mass travels to first-place Ottawa on July 14th at 7 p.m. in both clubs final game of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Vuckovic scores late winner as Vermont ends Western Mass playoff hopes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[84,90,91],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13631"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13631"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13633,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13631\/revisions\/13633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}