In a game that was deficient in offensive it came down to the team with the fewest mistakes and two mistakes cost the Albert Lea boys soccer team.

The Tigers (1-1) were burned by two plays in a 2-0 loss to Northfield (1-2) at Hammer Field Tuesday night, but those plays resulted in goals for the Raiders.

“Both teams made mistakes,” Albert Lea head coach Elia Romano said. “But since we played in our defensive third most of the game the mistakes hurt us more than they hurt them.”

At the 23rd minute mark in the first half Albert Lea defender Adam Kermes pushed a Northfield attacker off the ball from just inside the 18-yard box. Kermes was sprinting back into position and came into challenge for the ball with too much momentum. The hit warranted a penalty kick and Caleb Yurek converted to give the Raiders a 1-0 lead.

Then with 20 seconds left in the first half Northfield sent a ball into the 18-yard box and the Tigers failed to clear the ball properly. The ball fell to the feet of Raiders player Nick Young who stuffed the ball into the net from six yards out to give Northfield a 2-0 lead at half.

The goal before half couldn’t have come at a worse time for the Tigers. The team had just put together a strong offensive output before the goal. Albert Lea’s best chance of scoring came just minutes prior, but an offsides call negated a goal.

“It would have been a lot easier going in 1-0 at half,” Tigers forward Adam Clark said. “We went into the second half believing we could come back.”

The Tigers would have a tough time finding their offense the rest of the night.

Felipe Ambriz hit a blistering in-swinger from 35 yards out to the upper left hand corner of the goal, but the shot was just wide. Albert Lea had one other chance in the 32nd minute off a free kick was sent into the box was left at the feet of Alik Smed and Oscar Hernandez but neither could get a touch on the ball to score.

“We had a couple of shots,” Clark said. “We just have to finish. We couldn’t get it done tonight.”

The lack of an offensive attack was troubling for Romano.

“I think the key for this team is to be a little less casual with the ball,” Romano said. “We need to support the ball quickly and all 11 players need to make better decisions with the ball.”

The offense lacked a clear direction of what the team wanted to do with the ball and players failed to get in a position to receive a pass to continue to move up the field. Indecision over the ball ensued as did the turnovers.

“Any decent team is going to close us down if we’re not thinking a step or two ahead,” Romano said. “We couldn’t hold the ball through the middle third of the field and we were just turning the ball over more often than not.”

Kermes felt the team would have benefitted from spreading the field.

“We just needed to spread it out more and then cross it in,” Kermes said. “We were playing in the middle too much and that’s easy to defend for them.”

The Tigers were only able to put eight shots on the night, but Northfield was not much better with 14 for the game.

Albert Lea plays Tuesday against Austin at home.