The newly formed Atlanta team, Ella Eri, defeated San Francisco in their home state of California to take the trophy home. Despite injuries and ejections, Ella Eri managed to defeat everyone that stood in its way. They went 6-0 in the tournament.
They beat Alexandria 2-0 in the quarter-finals and beat Iowa 3-1 in the semi-finals. And the final game was a game Atlanta was fired up to face. They played the San Francisco Dalac, the team that defeated Ella Eri in the semi-finals in 2019 in Minnesota. But this time, they were facing San Francisco on its home turf.
“We were ready for them,” Coach Desalle said. “In 2019…it was our first year. But we were still good. We beat the toughest team in the tournament (Dallas).” Atlanta was trailing 3-0 at halftime. But they soared back in the second half to shock Dallas with 5 goals, showing who was the best team in the south. And by 2022, as they got even better, they were on their way to showing who the best team in the country is. They trained for two straight months before the tournament.
Leading up to the final game, Atlanta was short-manned. In the semi-finals against Iowa, Awet, the assistant captain, got injured and was out for the rest of the tournament. Then Efrem, who got a yellow card in the quarter-finals against Alexandria, got another yellow card against Iowa.
But Atlanta’s defense managed to deny Iowa any goals. “Most of our defensive players are in their teens,” Ambes said, the team captain. “We were probably the youngest team in the tournament.”
And with two goals from Landry and Haftam, Atlanta came out with a 3-1 victory. Then, it was onto the finals against hometown San Francisco. “It was payback time,” Dasalle said. But they would have to do it without Efrem who was now disqualified with the two yellow cards.
When the championship game started it was a cool 61 degrees in the Bay, giving San Francisco a possible advantage with Atlanta accustomed to playing in the heat.
Or maybe not. By halftime, the two teams exchanged goals. San Francisco scored first, building some momentum against the ailing Atlantans. But with 10 min left in the first half, a pass from Landry to Betwel to Desalle resulted in a goal to tie the game up – giving Atlanta a much-needed goal to regain some of that momentum going into the second half.
The biggest hurdle now was fatigue, with 45 min to go and the same 11 men. And on the other side of the field, San Francisco had 15 men, as well as the home crowd cheering for them.
Atlanta had to re-group and re-energize. “We knew what we came to do,” Ambes said. “And we’re used to playing on the road.”
And just like against Iowa, Atlanta’s young defense managed to leave San Francisco scoreless in the second half. Betwel scored for Atlanta to take a 2-1 lead. Then Desalle scored a free-kick to make it 3-1, a deficit San Francisco couldn’t crawl out of with just five minutes left in regulation.
In only its second year in the tournament, Atlanta’s Ella Eri has quickly shown its presence in the tournament, playing through adversity and still going undefeated. And the young team is still hungry, as Ambes says “we are coming back next year to win it again.”
