The Tampa Bay Rowdies rallied from a 2-0 deficit to defeat Notts County, 3-2, in their latest leg of their preseason trip to England.
Tampa Bay had fallen behind 2-0 by the half-hour mark, but goals from Danny Mwanga, Darwin Espinal and Junior Burgos ensured the Rowdies would have plenty of positives to take from the match.
“We got 100 percent of what we wanted from the match today,” Rowdies Head Coach Stuart Campbell said. “I wanted to push the guys and they pushed back and gave it their all. We didn’t start the match particularly well, but we kept playing and ended up getting a really positive result out of it.”
Playing just two days after the first match of their preseason tour, the Rowdies fielded an entirely different lineup in the familiar 4-2-3-1 formation deployed by Campbell.
A pair of quickfire goals scored by Notts County in the 27th and 29th minutes saw the Rowdies fall behind 2-0 at the halfway mark.
The goals against served only to wake the Rowdies up, because from then, Tampa Bay was in full control of the match.
“I don’t think we started playing until we were 2-nil down,” Campbell said. “That woke us up. I give huge credit to the guys because they kept going. It would’ve been easy to sit at halftime and feel sorry for themselves, but they didn’t. They went out and they put in a really good performance in the second half.”
“It’s important for the attacking players to score goals, so it was great for them to do that today,” Campbell said. “We had quite a few more opportunities from some of our midfielders. It was good attacking play for us today.”
The Rowdies will be back in action Tuesday when they take on a Stoke City XI at St. George’s Park in the final match of their preseason tour.
