Toronto Boca Juniors Strike First Blood

Coming into this season, the Toronto Boca Juniors have a chip on their shoulder. Unlike the 2009/2010 campaign in which they won the TFL Season and Playoff Championships in addition to the Ontario Futsal Cup, last season they fell flat; eliminated in the TFL semi-finals and losing the Copa Canada Championship in heart-wrenching fashion. This past weekend however, they came out guns a blazing.

The London Challenge Cup was slated to be the final major tuneup this month for top futsal clubs entering into the Canadian Premier Futsal League and with elite competition from London, Barrie, and Toronto the tournament provided a highly competitive platform for the CPFL club teams to rid of any court rust.

Boca started off the competition strong racking up convincing 6-1 victories over both Barrie Futsal Club and London Athletics before facing the London Shockers, semi-finalists at last year’s Copa Canada. As expected, the encounter between these two was tight throughout but some solid goalkeeping from 22 year-old Joshua Lemos and a strongeffort by forward Rodrigo Quiroga made the difference as Bocas carved out the 3-2 win to clinch first place in the group.

TBJ then faced off against one of their longtime rivals in Real Toronto for the championship. The 1st half featured some deft attacking from both squads which resulted in a flurry of goals that saw the game tied at 4-4 at half. But Boca would blow the game wide open in the 2nd right from the start as Kevin Correa took the reigns by unleashing an astounding 6 goals in the frame as Boca went on to strike first blood this season with a 12-4 win to take the first hardware of the season.

The CPFL kicks off on Saturday January 7th in Mississauga at the Hershey Centre where TBJ.