Ottawa Italia stun Lynx

Ottawa St. Anthony Italia, the recently crowned Ontario amateur champions, have defied all odds yet again to defeat the Toronto Lynx 2-0 in the Open Canada Cup Final, and in an exciting Sunday of regular season action, Serbian White Eagles won the International Division while Toronto Supra Portuguese and Windsor Border Stars clinched the two remaining playoff berths.

Ottawa Italia took the long way around to the final, defeating Laval Dynamites, London City, Windsor Border Stars and Brampton Stallions before meeting the USL Division 1 Lynx in the final at Esther Shiner Stadium in North York, a game postponed from the Labour Day weekend in London due to heavy rains.

Striker Abraham Osman was the hero for the Capital City team in the shock result, scoring two second half goals at 62 and 81 minutes. Ottawa Italia now has one remaining goal in 2006, to win the Canadian championship in October for a clean sweep of the three major competitions it has undertaken to win outside of the Ottawa Carleton Soccer League.

In regular season CSL action on Sunday, Serbian White Eagles scored a well deserved 3-0 victory over Toronto Croatia to win the International Conference in the inaugural year for the Eagles and for the international division which started the 2006 campaign with five teams and is expected to add two or three in 2007.

 Windsor Border Stars defeated North York Astros, 2-0, and Toronto Supra Portuguese blitzed Caribbean Selects 9-0 to complete the eight teams entering the playoffs at the beginning of October. Border Stars and Supra Portuguese join Serbian White Eagles, Toronto Croatia, Italia Shooters, Oakville Blue Devils, Brampton Stallions and Laval Dynamites in the playoffs.

Eliminated from the playoffs are St. Catharines Wolves, North York Astros, London City and Caribbean Selects.

CSL leading goalscorer, Gabriel Pop, added two more goals to his credit in the Serbian 3-0 win at Lamport Stadium, lifting his tally to 23 so far this season following a pair also on Friday night in the 4-0 defeat of London City. Pop scored at 80 and 85 minutes after Dragan Radovic opened the scoring for the Serbian team at 55 minutes. Two players, Robert Fran of Toronto Croatia and Milan Janosevic of Serbian White Eagles were each shown a red in the first half, both for violent conduct.

Italia Shooters and Brampton Stallions, two teams having clinched playoff berths before Sunday’s games, fought to a 1-1 tie at The Soccer Centre in Vaughan and in the second game at Esther Shiner Stadium, the important goals to put Windsor into the playoffs were scored by Ablaye Abbulla at 23 minutes and Tino Scicluna at 80 minutes.

There are three games remaining in the CSL regular season schedule and the playoffs get underway the weekend of October 1, with the championship game set for Monday, October 9.