Kevin Fertile, head coach of the Kamloops Excel reserve men’s soccer team, has a pretty simple strategy for beating Vancouver FC:

Stop Taj Sangara.

Sure, stopping one player might sound easy, but it certainly won’t be when the Excel plays Vancouver in a Pacific Coast Soccer League under-21 men’s Challenge Cup semifinal in Coquitlam on Saturday. The winner of the game will move into Sunday’s final, where it will meet the winner of the other semifinal between the Okanagan Whitecaps and Coquitlam FC.

Sangara has been the best player in the PCSL this season, leading the seven-team league with 18 goals in 12 games. To put that in perspective — three players, including Kamloops’ Justin Wallace, tied for second in scoring with seven goals.

“He’s the best young player I’ve seen in a long time,” said Excel head coach Kevin Fertile. “He’s difficult to mark and our priority will be to try to limit the time and space he has.”

Sangara had goals in 10 of his team’s 12 games. The only times he was held off the scoresheet was in Vancouver’s opener, a 3-0 loss to the Whitecaps in Kelowna on May 15, and its last game, a 4-0 victory over host Victoria United on Sunday.

Sangara had two goals in both meetings between Kamloops and Vancouver — Vancouver won the opener 4-3 at home on June 26, and also beat the Excel 3-2 at Hillside Stadium on July 3.

Vancouver (9-3-0) finished first in the PCSL, while Kamloops (6-6-0) was tied for third with Okanagan, but got the fourth seed on goal differential.

“The league has been very close this year,” Fertile said. “Three-quarters of our games have been one-goal games. We lost both games to Vancouver, but they were close games . . . it should be a good game.”

The pressure of a semifinal is nothing new for the Excel — of the 16 players on its roster, 13 were on the 2009 Excel team that lost a semifinal to eventual-champion Okanagan.

“A lot of these kids have played a year or two at the university,” Fertile said. “They’ve been in provincial cup games before, lots of big games — this isn’t unfamiliar territory for them.”

mhunter@kamloopsnews.ca