In the waning moments of Saturday’s match against Vancouver, Sanna Nyassi unleashed a thunderous strike past David Ousted that sent the 18,000 faithful at Avaya Stadium into a frenzy.
For Nyassi, he had officially opened his account in an Earthquakes uniform and cemented his name into the club’s rich history of late-game heroics under the lights.
The build-up? Suspenseful. The goal? Magical. The celebration? Sublime.
In goal-scoring lore, his strike checked all of the boxes by itself. But for a finish of that caliber, we wanted to dig deeper and hear from the goal-scorer himself.
It turns out, after talking with him about his memorable tally, there was a lot more behind the goal than we thought.
“It all started when we put pressure on the Whitecaps,” Nyassi said. “They gave it away and we played it to Matias. Matias then played Cordell and Cordell made a great play by beating two guys and taking a shot, but it got deflected.
“Shea took the rebound from Cordell’s shot, but again, it got blocked, so I was waiting there at the top of the box for the rebound. Then I saw the ball bouncing towards me and I told myself that I was going to go one time, because I had a shot that I took toward the end of the first half and it was so bad, so I told myself, ‘Ok, this time, I’m going to get this one right.’ So I hit it as hard as I could with my left foot and it went to the top-left corner.”
The ball had just rippled the net, and for Nyassi, it was celebration time. But even before his wonder goal, the Gambian native had something up his sleeve prior to kickoff, all thanks to a pregame talk with a fellow attacker.
“(Mike) Fucito before the game came to me and said, ‘Sanna, if you score, come to me so we can celebrate together,’” Nyassi said. “As soon as I scored, I ran towards the bench and I thought to myself, ‘Where is Mike?’
“I forgot that the subs were warming up behind the goal so no one was at the bench,” Nyassi laughed. “The plan was to get a chest bump with Mike, but I ran away from him.”
Within seconds, Nyassi was corralled by JJ Koval and Adam Jahn, followed by the likes of Marvell Wynne and Shea Salinas, all congratulating him on his first tally for the club.
“It was great to get my first goal because with that you get your confidence up,” Nyassi said. “I hope to get more goals throughout the season and just help the team win every game.”
