Burke beats East Boston for boys BCL soccer title

Burke coach Joao Barros doesn’t believe perfection exists, but the Bulldogs defense fit that description against East Boston.

Burke already got a close-up view of the Jets vaunted attack, which produced 90 goals, in a 3-0 September loss, but Wednesday, the Bulldogs held Eastie scoreless for the first time all season to claim a 2-0 victory and the Boston City League title for the first time in over a decade.

“They really beat us up (in the first matchup),” said Barros as the Bulldogs also snapped Eastie’s 14-game winning streak. “From that day on, we just said we were going to work hard every single day. We were going to respect all the teams in the city, but we were going to work hard every single day to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

Burke’s back line of Adelcio Fontes, who was named tournament MVP, Paulo Goncalves, Heleno Moreno and Imauro Pina limited East Boston (16-2) to just two second-half shots and one corner for the entire match.

Lourenco Pereira finished with seven saves, including a key charging stop in the first half and turned away a free kick from Roberto Dubon in the opening minutes of the second half.

“Defensively we couldn’t make mistakes and defensively we didn’t make any mistakes,” Barros said.

Burke (13-5-1) had a lead to protect less than five minutes into the contest when Domingos Tavares knocked in a cross from within close range.

Khalid Abdi, who along with Tavares didn’t play in the first matchup against Eastie, extended the advantage with a bullet of a shot from the top of the box in the 29th minute and the lead was in safe hands.

“We worked very hard for this,” Fontes said.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2qRqGtR