After beginning the season with a torrid 10-1 stretch that saw them ranked No. 1 in the nation for three consecutive weeks, Pitt Men’s Soccer sputtered to a 4-5 record across their last nine games, suffering an unceremonious exit from the ACC Tournament in their first game played before rebounding to reach the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament, where they would see their season come to a halt — at home to unseeded but resilient Vermont Catamounts.
That 4-5 skid began with a 1-0 loss to Cal, who stole a first half lead on an ugly misplay. The Panthers’ maintained their advantage with grinding defensive play, clogging the last 20 yards of the pitch with nine or ten defenders at a time, hampering the Panthers’ ability to respond.
In fact, five of Pitt’s six losses took a similar trajectory, the lone exception being the aggressive attack they faced against High Point.
Three of their losses even included a fluky goal from the opposing side.
While the Golden Bears might receive credit for setting the template, Penn solved the Panthers first, winning 1-0 back on September 1, by clogging the final third of the field and outlasting Pitt’s attack.
That stone wall left the Panthers, who had played less than 48 hours earlier at Penn State, visibly gassed with more than ten minutes left to play.
It’s not as though the Panthers couldn’t play from behind: they won three games in which their opponent scored first. In fact, any time Pitt managed to put a goal on the board turned out to be a winning strategy, as each of their six losses came via shutout.
Pitt Couldn’t Solve Teams that ‘Parked the Bus’
Rather, that clogging defensive play, by packing the box with all of its field players behind the ball (also known in many circles as ‘Parking the Bus’), a strategy opposing teams could sell out for once they’d claimed the lead, proved extremely challenging for the Panthers to crack.
Moments after Pitt’s season ended, veteran Head Coach Jay Vidovich described how that strategy worked to perfection for Vermont.
“When you put 11 players inside the 18, it’s very difficult to break down,” Vidovich said.
“We didn’t execute on it as well as we would like, but their keeper came up big several times, they had some great blocks. It’s the nature of our game. It will punish you very severely.”
It doesn’t take a soccer genius to realize that more opposing players between the ball and the net makes it more difficult to score, but the Panthers’ freewheeling play style did little to help their chances in these scenarios.
That’s not to say that Pitt’s fluid attack — one that allowed players like right-back Casper Svendby to notch three goals and 10 points on the season — was a net negative for the team.
The bitter irony is that their style undoubtedly helped the Panthers when it worked, but also came back to bite them when the bounces weren’t going their way. Pitt scored more than their fair share of highlight reel goals in 2024, cycling the perimeter with pinpoint passes, waiting for a gap to open in the defense and provide a perfect chance to strike.
All to often when the Panthers trailed in 2024, they didn’t create enough chaos and pressure to find equalizing goals.
In the end, it was their uncanny patience that did them in, as a lanes and spaces they so expertly thrive in never materialized in the Vermont Catamounts’ green and gold wall… at least, no lane wide enough that goalkeeper Niklas Herceg couldn’t plug it.
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