{"id":958,"date":"2016-09-25T22:48:22","date_gmt":"2016-09-26T02:48:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsoccer.com\/?p=958"},"modified":"2016-09-25T22:48:22","modified_gmt":"2016-09-26T02:48:22","slug":"sean-okoli-strikes-usl-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/2016\/09\/25\/sean-okoli-strikes-usl-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"Sean Okoli Strikes USL Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Sean Okoli<\/strong> bagged the decisive goal in\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fccincinnati.com\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>FC Cincinnati&#8217;s<\/strong><\/a> 1-0 victory over\u00a0the <strong>Pittsburgh Riverhounds<\/strong> on Saturday night. That\u00a0strike earned\u00a0him the <strong>USL&#8217;s Golden Boot<\/strong> award for 2016. The <strong>American<\/strong> striker of <strong>Nigerian<\/strong> descent scored 16 goals this\u00a0season, enough to claim the USL scoring title by a single goal.<\/p>\n<p>The <strong>Federal Way, Washington<\/strong> native racked up an\u00a0impressive set of offensive stats in the Ohio club&#8217;s first season. He scored in 13 of the team&#8217;s 30 games and led the USL\u00a0in goals, points, shots and shots on goal.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.uslsoccer.com\/stats\/league_instance\/39791?subseason=280291\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">[USL Statistics]<\/a> Okoli, who goes by the nickname &#8220;Ugo&#8221;, started his career with\u00a0the <strong>Seattle Sounders<\/strong> Academy before making appearances in <strong>MLS<\/strong>\u00a0with the Sounders and <strong>New England Revolution<\/strong>. FC Cincinnati acquired the striker in February\u00a0of 2016 prior to the start of their inaugural season.<\/p>\n<p>The 23 year old Okoli has netted four times\u00a0in the past five games and\u00a0is FC Cincinnati&#8217;s offensive difference maker as they head into the playoffs. The upstart Cincinnati club begins\u00a0their playoff run next\u00a0Sunday October 2nd in a matchup with one of the USL&#8217;s oldest and most iconic clubs, the <strong>Charleston Battery<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Okoli beat out\u00a0<strong>LA Galaxy II&#8217;s Jack McBean<\/strong> who finishes the season with\u00a015 goals, but an asterisk is attached to that number. The Galaxy II captain\u00a0led the USL&#8217;s\u00a0goalscoring stats for most of the year following an electric start to the season. He scored those\u00a015 goals in just 17 games. Based on his\u00a0impressive start, McBean\u00a0was called up to the Galaxy first team and after\u00a0making 2 appearances, was loaned\u00a0to <strong>Coventry City<\/strong> in England&#8217;s\u00a0League One.\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.mlssoccer.com\/post\/2016\/08\/08\/report-la-galaxys-jack-mcbean-headed-englands-coventry-city-loan\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">[MLS]<\/a> The loan happened in August and McBean\u00a0hasn&#8217;t played a USL match since July.<\/p>\n<p>Despite this caveat, Okoli&#8217;s achievement is another fine feather in\u00a0FC Cincinnati&#8217;s cap. When combined\u00a0with the club&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsoccer.com\/2016\/09\/18\/fc-cincinnati-claims-third-record-crowd\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">third place Eastern Conference finish<\/a> and\u00a0record setting crowds, it&#8217;s hard to look at FC Cincinnati&#8217;s rookie\u00a0season as anything but a success regardless of what the playoffs hold.<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: Orange and Blue Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sean Okoli bagged the decisive goal in\u00a0FC Cincinnati&#8217;s 1-0 victory over\u00a0the Pittsburgh Riverhounds on Saturday night. That\u00a0strike earned\u00a0him the USL&#8217;s Golden Boot award for 2016. The American striker of Nigerian descent scored 16 goals this\u00a0season, enough to claim the USL scoring title by a single goal. The Federal Way, Washington native racked up an\u00a0impressive set [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1653,"featured_media":1003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,26],"tags":[113,367,372,373,188,61],"class_list":["post-958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-usl","tag-fc-cincinnati","tag-golden-boot","tag-jack-mcbean","tag-la-galaxy-ii","tag-sean-okoli","tag-usl"],"modified_by":"Joe Hojnacki","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1653"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/soccer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}