Brave SC 4–1 Brooke House FC
For an hour, nothing. Then the floodgates — and the heavens — opened.
Kaique Silva started in goal with Youssef Moumban injured and no goalkeeper on the bench, which made every one of his touches worth watching. Omar Ocampos made his debut and took a free kick from forty yards inside the first half hour.
Brooke House joined this league in 2024 and have always played conservatively against us. They defended deep, kept numbers behind the ball, and for sixty minutes it worked.
Caue Ramos came in on six goals in eight games, with braces in back-to-back matches, and had one of the most frustrating nights of his season — clean through and denied, then denied again on the rebound, three saves in a single sequence. Victor Lopes nearly scored the goal of the year with an overhead kick that did not quite connect.
Goalless at the break.
Then the 61st minute.
An out-swinging corner, and Victor Lopes rose at the far post, headed it down into the ground and bounced it into the left corner. A difficult header to save and a well-taken one. He had defended superbly all night — the commentary called it "great singular defending" more than once — and then went up and won the match's first goal.
Brooke House equalised in under four minutes, a clean look from the edge of the box that took a deflection past Da Silva.
1–1, and we had led for ninety seconds.
What followed took less than fifteen minutes.
Troy Martinez restored the lead, cutting inside and getting a shot away that deflected and flew in off his head. His second in a week — he had scored the final goal against Inter Gainesville on Wednesday. He took a yellow card for the celebration and will have thought it worth it.
And on the touchline, assistant coach Yago Lopes was first to him. Yago coached Troy in our UPSL side — the club's second-tier squad — before he reached the first team. That is what the second team is for, and this is what it looks like when it works.
Gustavo Oliveira finished it. On as a late substitute, he beat one defender, then another, kept the ball alive when a clearance looked certain, and scored from a tight angle that should not have been possible.
"Olivera would not be denied. Every attempt to rebuff the attack failed. From a seemingly impossible angle, strikes across the goal and in."
4–1.
Five goals in less than fifteen minutes, after forty-five without one.
Brooke House's season ends here. We go top of the Southeast outright.
Also on the field tonight: a player who scored 33 goals in his senior season at this school, was among the top scorers in the state, and made his first appearance for the top team in the 2024 U.S. Open Cup. Two years of college soccer at Otero in Colorado later, he is back out there.
