Majumder's Bicycle Kick Takes Down Athol
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – In order to shake off a marking defender that never left his side and always had one hand on his shoulder, Nathan Majumder had to reach deep down into his bag of tricks and go somewhere Bradley Bousquet couldn’t follow him.Athol head coach Dave King knew accounting for Majumder would give his No. 13 Red Raiders their best chance to pull off the upset over No. 4 Mount Greylock. So he pulled his best player back and had him glued to Berkshire County’s premier goal scorer.
Bousquet shadowed, blocked, tugged, pulled and, even at one point early in the second half, ripped Majumder’s captain’s band off his arm. His job was essentially to get the Mounties senior off of his game.
So what did Majumder do in order to shake loose of the pesky defender? He simply left Bousquet behind by scoring one of the most beautiful and highest-degree-of-difficulty goals you’ll ever see on a soccer field. With the game still scoreless late in the first half, Majumder found a deflection off of a free kick from the right wing and ripped a bicycle-kick shot into the back of the net.
Bousquet and the rest of the Athol defense was helpless, the Greylock bench and fans went ballistic and the Mounties were well on their way to earning a 3-0 home win in the first round of the Division 2 Western Mass. soccer tournament. Majumder added an assist and scored on a penalty kick in the second half, advancing Greylock to the quarterfinals, where it will host No. 5 Monson at 6 p.m. on Monday.
“When I passed their coach in line, he said that was their strategy,” Majumder said of the Raiders’ plan to shadow him with Bousquet. “Luckily it didn’t work. I don’t think he stopped talking the whole game, and he was grabbing my shirt the whole game. Obviously, he was trying to get into my head, so I just stopped talking and played my game. I didn’t look at him and just pretended he wasn’t there.
“It was hard with a guy on you the whole game, but I managed to score and we managed to win.”
When Majumder said he managed to score, it could quite be the understatement of the year. With 25 goals entering the game, its no secret the Mounties’ attacker has a nose for the net. But even he admitted he hasn’t scored a goal that pretty before. A foul on the right wing set up a free-kick opportunity for freshman Benni McComish, who drilled a low liner right into the six-yard box. Sophomore Grant Raphael got his head on the ball, flicking it towards the back post where Majumder was waiting.
It was impossible for Bousquet to keep his hands on Majumder on this play, as he fell backwards and bicycle kicked a shot into the top of the net with 12 and half minutes left to play in the first half.
“I’ve tried a couple [bicycle kicks] before,” Majumder said. “I had one that went on frame earlier in the year, but I’ve never scored on one before. It was just in the moment I guess. It was the best option, and I know I’ve done them before in practice and, in general, I’ve tried them in games. I know I can connect on them. [Grant’s deflection] was perfect. It wasn’t just straight. He kind of flicked it up, so it gave me the time to get around on it.”
It’s hard to fault King, who did everything he could to give Athol (8-9-2) its best chance to win. He sacrificed his team’s offensive chances by pulling Bousquet back, he encouraged his players to take extra time on throw-ins to slow down the game and he promoted a physical style of play that resulted in the Red Raiders earning a 9-2 edge in fouls in the first half.
One of those fouls set up Majumder’s bicycle-kick goal, however, and two others nearly cost the visitors earlier in the game. Majumder just missed on a pair of direct kicks from 20-25 yards out, hitting both the right and left posts on each of the opportunities.
“Being a top player in the state, you have to take care of those players,” King said of the extra attention his team focused on Majumder. “We put our best offensive player, who is the most fit and able to be physically strong on the ball, on him for 70 minutes, and I thought Brad did a tremendous job of at least taking him off of his game and eliminating some of those touches.
“Nathan is a special player, and he makes those special goals like the bicycle kick.”
With more attention focused on shutting down the Greylock offense, Athol didn’t establish many chances with just one forward, Randy Favreau, up top for most of the game. The Mounties (15-3-1) outshot the Raiders 8-3 in the first half before the desperation of playing from behind resulted in a 6-6 split in shots after halftime. Still, with veteran players like seniors Jonah Majumder and Keath Machado patrolling the back end, the Greylock defense seemed fully prepared for anything Athol threw at them.
Mounties keeper Sean Houston finished with four saves but only went to the ground once the entire game, collecting a shot off of header from Favreau 15 minutes into the second half.
“They had one up top, so we just figured we could let Keath and Jonah handle him,” Greylock head coach Blair Dils said. “If we could push David [Majetich] and Taylor [Carlough] forward a little bit more to try and put some pressure on their outside backs, who we didn’t find too be strong. But they were quick, so they would get good cover in behind, and they didn’t allow us to get to the end line like we would like to tonight.”
With Bousquet providing Athol with another defender in the middle of the field, the visitors were able to keep it a one-goal game until midway through the second half. Majumder finally caught the Raiders’ defense out of position in the 63rd minute, however, taking a ball in transition and pushing it through three Athol defenders to Ian Brink. The sophomore forward took one clean touch to shake off the last Raiders defender and fired a shot past Athol goalie Garrett Hall (four saves).
“We scored a goal like that earlier in the year,” Dils said. “It was the same kind of thing where [the defenders] jumped up, and he just plays that diagonal ball through and your 1 on 0 with the keeper. Once Brinker got in that spot, we’ve been working on finishing a lot, so I was pretty sure he was going to slip that in.”
“I think that was the first time we became a little unorganized back there,” King said of Brink’s insurance goal. “We didn’t have the awareness of taking care of the field and taking care of the player. That was the first time we had a breakdown.
“I was a little disappointed in that goal but, besides that, I’m very proud of our guys. We executed the game plan, we tried to shorten the game and take a lot of the time off and get to a point where we could convert on a couple.”
Down 2-0, King took Bousquet off of Majumder and pulled him up to the front line for the final 10 minutes of the game. That only allowed Mounties forward more room to operate, leading to a golden opportunity with just over three minutes left in the game. Majumder tipped the ball over his defender and was going in all alone on Hall when he was taken down near the penalty stripe. He was awarded a penalty kick and calmly tucked the ball inside the left post for the final goal of the game.
Dils said he was pleased with the first step in what he hopes is long journey in the Division 2 tournament.
“It would have been nice to get out of the first half up 2-0, but we eventually got it,” he said. “But it’s the playoffs, we’re moving on and we’ll figure out what to do with our next opponent soon.”