Locomotive FC Drops Second Straight Match and Copas Tejas Cup

El Paso Locomotive FC dropped their second match in a row on Saturday night losing to San Antonio FC by the score of 1-0. The match also decided the 2022 edition of Copa Tejas, a supporters cup that is an in-season competition between all three Texas USL Championship clubs (El Paso Locomotive FC, San Antonio FC and Rio Grande Valley Torros FC), which with Saturday’s win San Antonio lifted the cup.

The lone goal of the match came in the 47th minute and was put away by Santiago Patino. A play that originated with a long ball sent into the Locos’ goal box that was received by Justin Dhilin who dumped the ball off to Patino who made his run coming in from the left flank, he then proceeded to take a right foot to the ball in between the legs of Locomotive goalkeeper Evan Newton to take the lead.

The play was somewhat controversial as it appeared that Dhilon may have been offside when the long ball was sent into the goal box. There were no good replay angles that could confirm or deny this suspicion and at the end of the day no call was made by the line judge which that is all that matters.

El Paso did a more than formidable job for the rest of the match trying to, at bare minimum, get the equalizer but it was not meant to be as San Antonio went on to pick up their 15th win of the 2022 season handing their Locos eighth loss of the year.

What was said

After the match Luis 'Lucho' Solignac, Yuma and head coach John Hutchinson agreed that the Locos played well in moments of the match. Solignac elaborated and said he felt that the team needs to "want it a bit more", have "more hunger".

Locos center defender Yuma went on to elaborate saying, "When we play, we have to give it our all, every minute. They (San Antonio) beat us today, they had to suffer to do so, only beating 1-0 as it should be when people come and play us in our house. They are the first place team, but did not demonstrate absolute superiority over us."

Hutchinson said, "It was a tough game in which key moments did not go our way tonight. The positive is that we are making the chances (on goal). We made enough chances tonight to get something from the game but didn’t. We need to be more clinical, more ruthless (in the offensive third)."

What’s next

El Paso will host Louisville City FC this coming Saturday. It will be the first time these two clubs face each other. Louisville is one to the biggest franchises in the entire USL Championship in all aspects, it has enjoyed plenty of success on the field and is considered to be one of the exemplary clubs in the entire USL off of it.

Louisville is currently in first place of the eastern conference with 43 points as a result of 13 wins, four draws and only three loses. This past weekend they played to a scoreless draw at home to the Phoenix Rising.

This without a doubt promises to be one of the best regular season matches the Locos play at home all season long.