Too tired to kick, his selfless act sums up Syracuse's unlikely champs: 'A magical bunch of misfits'

Syracuse, N.Y. — Nathan Opoku had nothing left to give.

He had taken the Orange as far as he could. Further than any team in program history.

His legs were numb. He was exhausted.

The sophomore from Ghana had a goal and an assist in back-to-back games, against two of the best teams in the country. He served as the centerpiece of the Syracuse offense for 110 grueling minutes during last Monday’s national championship.

Yet in the most tense moment of the night, when the stakes could not have been higher, the most effective offensive player on the field told his coach he didn’t want to take his planned penalty kick.

He said he believed 10 of his teammates were more likely to score than he was.

“During the season I took two penalties,” Opoku said. “I made them both. But I couldn’t feel my legs. Why not give the opportunity to other teammates who have fresh legs? I’d already helped my team. I trust my teammates. I wasn’t even scared.”

The moment said plenty about Opoku, an All-American forward and the Most Outstanding Offensive Player at the College Cup.

It said everything about a group of players that took wildly disparate paths to band together in Cary, North Carolina, where they won the first national title in 89 seasons of SU men’s soccer.

There was another All-American forward, one of the best players in the country, competing for his fourth college in four years.

There was a midfielder who now owns four national titles and came to Syracuse from the smallest division of junior college.

There was a star goaltender who rebuilt his confidence after losing the starting job at Maryland; a senior captain from Germany stuck by SU despite spending more than 60 days of the pandemic in quarantine.

Another senior captain from Costa Rica hadn’t scored since his freshman season — until he capped his career with the championship-winning kick.

“We’ve got a roster full of guys that are almost like a magical bunch of misfits,” Syracuse coach Ian McIntyre said. “That’s all of us, including the coaching staff, with something to prove, a little bit of an edge and an opportunity, when it comes together, to do something right.”

***

Syracuse had made just one NCAA tournament appearance in its history when McIntyre was hired in 2010.

After collecting five wins over his first two seasons, McIntyre took the program to new heights.

Syracuse climbed to a No. 1 ranking for the first time in 2014. The next year it made its only previous College Cup appearance, a national semifinal shootout loss to Clemson.

In recent years, though, the results started to slip. In the previous five seasons, Syracuse recorded just one winning record and five ACC wins in 41 league games (5-25-11).

The program was producing talented players, including the school’s first two to compete in the World Cup, but those players were leaving earlier than expected for the Major League Soccer draft. The coaching staff struggled to fill in the gaps.

Pandemic restrictions also hit Syracuse harder than many schools. New York’s restrictions were especially severe. The far-flung nature of Syracuse’s roster meant recruiting was more difficult and players spent additional time in quarantine and isolation.

The low point: SU’s roster dropped to 16 players during the pandemic season, going winless in a five-game fall season.

Six of SU’s 11 starters in Monday’s championship game arrived after the program bottomed out. The starting lineup in the title game against Indiana included transfers from Division I, Division III, junior college and the NAIA.

In its last three games last season, the Orange upset No. 6 Clemson and took No. 18 North Carolina into double overtime. Things were coming together. But Syracuse had two major holes to fill: leading scorers DeAndre Kerr and Manel Busquets.

It replaced them with the most dynamic pair of forwards in the country, the engine of an up-and-down style that helped make the Orange’s championship game performance so captivating it drew the eyeballs of basketball fans watching from the JMA Wireless Dome.

Levonte Johnson

Levonte Johnson has attended four different colleges over the past four years.

The Canadian spent two years trying to make it in the English club soccer scene before returning to North America due to paperwork headaches and a desire to be closer to family. Given his professional aspirations, Johnson had let academics slide.

He put his transcript together during years at Eastern Florida State College and Salt Lake Community College, then became an MLS prospect during a season at the University of Seattle, earning an invitation to last year’s MLS Combine.

When his draft situation wasn’t what he hoped for, Johnson decided he wanted to play his final season of college soccer closer to his Ontario home. He missed having his parents in the stands, his mother’s oxtail and the way she braided his hair.

Syracuse’s location and its status as an MLS pipeline made it appealing. The school had scholarship money available for him to join the team last spring.

Johnson, an All-American and one of three finalists for National Player of the Year, had been to the NCAAs with Seattle and knew what a tournament-worthy team looked like.

“My first training session I was like, ‘These guys are really good,’ ” Johnson said of his new teammates in Syracuse. “I thought, ‘Why didn’t they qualify? That’s kind of weird.’ ”

The Orange went unbeaten over its first seven games, including a win against defending Big Ten champion Penn State, then proved it could play with anyone in the country.

Syracuse traveled to No. 1 Clemson, fell behind on an early goal and still wound up controlling the game and earning a 2-1 victory in front of nearly 5,000 people.

Johnson’s assessment was a good one.

Nathan Opoku

Opoku had aspirations of leaving his home in Ghana to turn professional in 2020. Once the pandemic hit, his only option to travel internationally was a student visa.

His father encouraged him to further his education. That meant college soccer.

Academic requirements of the NCAA often create eligibility issues for athletes from Africa, making NAIA schools a frequent landing spot. That was the case with Opoku.

“If he was born in Europe, he’d be playing professionally right now,” said Ray Wells, his first college coach at Lindsey Wilson College in Columbia, Kentucky.

Opoku’s talent wouldn’t go unnoticed for long.

The choice came down to UCLA and Syracuse. The Bruins had sunny weather and another player from Ghana. Opoku picked the team that played Afrobeats music in its locker room and made him feel welcomed.

After his official visit to Syracuse last spring, the Orange’s veteran leaders stayed in touch. Captains Amferny Sinclair and Noah Singelmann regularly texted him, as did Johnson, his eventual partner on the front line.

The message: We can do something special together.

Lorenzo Boselli

Lorenzo Boselli came to Syracuse last spring from the smallest level of junior college, an Italian midfielder spotted by McIntyre on a recruiting trip to Herkimer.

Boselli came to the United States hoping to get an education while playing soccer and hoped to increase his profile at Dallas College-Richland, a powerhouse at the same level of competition as Onondaga Community College that has won five straight national titles.

He caught McIntyre’s eye after participating in his second. The in-state event at Herkimer Community College was a rare opportunity for McIntyre to recruit during the pandemic. Given the restrictions, he said he believes he was one of the only coaches to attend.

Granted an extra year of eligibility because of Covid, Boselli went back to junior college, where players are usually allowed to play two seasons. He won a third national title. Then a spot opened up with the Orange.

Raul Hererra, his coach at Dallas College, calls him “Big Shot Boselli.’ He is one of six starters for Syracuse’s championship team that came from the transfer portal.

“It was an advantage to have guys that had experience,” McIntyre said. “What we found was that in these big moments, the moment wasn’t too big for those guys.”

He scored the first goal of the shootout and, after Monday night’s win over Indiana, Boselli wrapped McIntyre in a hug and told him: “All I do is win national championships.”

Russell Shealy

Russell Shealy was the No. 102 recruit in the country out of high school when he narrowed his list of schools down to Syracuse and Maryland.

He picked Maryland, thanks to a slight preference for the College Park campus.

Shealy redshirted on a team that won the national title in 2018. He felt he delivered a strong performance that spring, positioning himself to become a four-year starter at a powerhouse program.

Shealy was shocked when the Maryland coaching staff brought in a goalkeeper from Germany to compete for the position.

Shaken by the sudden change of plans, he struggled when the coaches rotated who played in games. He performed so poorly he lost the job and his confidence.

On the day Shealy entered his name in the transfer portal, his mom asked him what school he would pick if he could chose any in the country.

“I said Syracuse,” Shealy said. “No kidding, 10 seconds later, Ian’s email popped up wanting to start recruiting me again. It was kind of surreal.”

Shealy arrived at Syracuse in the teeth of the pandemic. His classes were virtual. His interactions with his teammates were limited.

But in a world full of restrictions, Shealy started looking forward to soccer practice again. The game was a joy rather than a stress.

“It became let’s just go enjoy this because this is your favorite part of the day,” Shealy said. “And that led to me practicing really well and then I got a boost of confidence (when the coaching staff decided to start me for the first time).

“In that game I probably played the best game of my college career.”

At the College Cup, on the biggest stage in college soccer, Shealy was named the event’s Most Outstanding Defensive Player, saving a penalty kick that set up the game-winning moment.

Amferny Sinclair

For four years Amferny Sinclair has done whatever he can to help the team. He has rarely gotten credit for it outside his locker room.

He is not the most talented player on the Orange or its most skilled. The better he played, the less anyone heard about him.

A defensive midfielder from Costa Rica, Sinclair’s primary function was to erase the opposition’s offensive star.

Shealy said scouting reports often focused on the challenges the SU defense would face. More often than not, Syracuse walked away thinking the warnings had been overblown.

Eventually, they recognized why.

“That’s because they always had (Sinclair) next to them the whole game,” Shealy said. “We asked him to do a lot of jobs.”

Few of them were glorious.

Sinclair’s work rate and defensive pressure epitomized the breakneck pace Syracuse likes to play at. He was a captain who created an atmosphere where newcomers felt more connected than competitive.

The only other time the Orange went into a penalty kick shootout this season, an ACC tournament game against Virginia, McIntyre had planned to leave the senior captain off the team’s list of 10 shooters.

Sinclair told his coach he wanted to kick that day.

He never got a chance. But he didn’t have to ask again.

“Amferny is not someone you would want from a technical perspective,” McIntyre said. “You would give it to Nate any day of the week and twice on a championship game. But it was written that Amferny was going to step up as our captain and take that.”

When his star player came to him wanting to bow out, McIntyre remembered a lesson learned from his playing days.

Players should trust themselves in big moments, and coaches should listen to their players.

Syracuse and Indiana matched the other through six rounds of PKs.

Johnson stepped forward in the seventh, needing to make his kick to extend the match. He missed badly in his only previous attempt this year.

His shot smacked into the bottom of the crossbar, angling down just a foot inside Indiana’s goal, so close that the Hoosiers briefly rushed forward in celebration.

“I tried to go high,” Johnson said. “Maybe that was too high for some people’s hearts.”

Amid that emotion, Shealy considered the tendencies he’d been taught to search for on shooters. The signs pointed to Indiana’s Maouloune Goumballe shooting right.

Shealy trusted his gut, dove left and smothered the ball with his body.

Then Sinclair stepped to the line with a championship in the balance.

He buried the shot.

He bound their stories together forever.

Contact Chris Carlson anytime: Email | Twitter | 315-382-7932

MORE SYRACUSE SOCCER COVERAGE

Axe: Syracuse men’s soccer dared to dream of being ‘legendary.’ It woke up as NCAA champions

Syracuse men’s soccer wins first national championship, besting Indiana on penalty kicks

Syracuse basketball players watched and celebrated as soccer wins NCAA title: ‘It’s history’

Monmouth who? Watch Dome crowd erupt after Syracuse University soccer team’s title-winning goal

Whoops! Indiana mistakenly celebrates a national title in soccer it didn’t win (video)

©2022 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit syracuse.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.