Iona spoiled the Harvard soccer team's season opener, 3-0, Friday. The Gaels scored twice in two minutes late in the second half to put the match away.

In the first game of the Pieter Lehrer era, the Harvard men’s soccer team fell, 3-0, to the Iona Gaels. The Crimson (0-1) struggled to capitalize on opportunities inside the opponent’s box while the Gaels (1-1-1) were on target with nine of their 14 shots.

“I thought the team worked hard,” Lehrer said. “Obviously it isn’t the result we want but they worked hard and had a great attitude from beginning to end. We had nicks and injuries and with Connor being out that hurt us.”

Iona kicked off the scoring with a 10th minute goal when Samuel Adjei snuck behind the Harvard defense on the right side. Ignacio Magnato’s through ball hit Adjei in the foot and the senior two-touched the ball past diving senior goalkeeper Brett Conrad.

For the next seventy minutes, the teams battled while neither side was able to fully connect. The Crimson routinely broke through on the left side of the defense, with freshman midfielder Stephen Yen playing balls into the box that Harvard could not convert into the equalizer.

In the 34th minute, senior midfielder Ross Friedman ran a give-and-go with sophomore Andrew Chang that ended with Friedman taking one of the Crimson’s three shots on goal—a liner from just outside the box that just missed the right corner of the goal.

Lehrer said that the team’s ability to both control the ball and attack the Gael ballhandlers allowed it to control both field position and flow during the game.

“We were getting good pressure on the ball [late in the half],” Lehrer said. “When we were doing that we were really able to prevent them from getting started. When we do that we both impact that starting position from which we attack and the angle from where we stop their attack.”

With counterattacking being a self-admitted theme for the team before the match, Harvard repeatedly sent long balls down the field in an effort to quickly turn defense into offense. Twice in the middle of the second half, in the 57th and 74th minutes, freshman midfielder Mike Klain and Friedman played through balls into the box only to see offsides penalties called.

However, the Crimson fell victim twice to counterattacks from Iona in a two-minute span late in the second half that put the game away. In the 78th minute, Harvard lost track of Gael midfielder Franklin Castellanos, who found midfielder Ignacio Magnato crossing over the middle. Magnato beat a Crimson defender and sent a screamer into the back corner of the net for a 2-0 lead with barely more than 11 minutes to go.

In the 79th minute, Magnato returned the favor—taking a pass up the sidelines and finding a streaking Castellanos on the right side, who beat Conrad in the right corner of the net for the team’s third goal of the match.

On the day, Castellanos and Magnato—two players that Lehrer identified after the game as the players Harvard had to mark—combined for seven shots, five on goal, with two goals and three assists.

“That’s just our body position being off [letting them get behind us],” Lehrer said. “They are facing out and not facing in and leaking that backside. Minus those types of errors, we played well.”

—Check thecrimson.com for updates.

—Staff writer David Freed can be reached at david.freed@thecrimson.com