Cup Finalist Trophy
Shirts: Efforts to get our snazzy new uniforms in time for the tournament were unsuccessful; Plan B was to use the tried and true reversible soccer shirts that everyone has. Those shirts are heavy, and it was going to be hot, so, Friday night, the other coach carpe-diem’d it and purchased some t-shirts and attempted to tie-dye them maroon. And he wore his Sunday and it looked pretty good, dark red on white. The problem with all of the other shirts was that he washed them Friday night (so they wouldn’t bleed when the kids started sweating in them), and, despite trying everything to not have them bleed, they did, and thus, you have maroon-purple swirls on pink shirts with some yellow and orange spots. The shirts that had more tie-dye than others actually looked halfway decent (Matthew’s is this way, if you want to go back to his final goal and look at the video, the back of his shirt is mostly tie-dye dark). But, we were the only pink team out there……
Matthew: Had a good four games….mostly positioned in the front, either forward or midfield, and did a nice job fighting forward and passing as necessary. Was in on defense in the last game….didn’t go quite as well, like many on our team, ended up out of position a fair bit and that wasn’t so good. I noticed he’d get possession on defense and dribble up to midfield, and, instead of carrying forward with the ball and trusting a midfielder to drop back to take his spot on defense, he would punt the ball to space and drop back, which is good for defense but ended that offensive run for the team. That last game was good….gives us a lot to work on.
His last goal was right after the team had discussed looking for the pass in front of the goal…..if you’ve seen the tape, he very clearly declined to pass the ball to his open friend and took the shot. What isn’t very clear on first view is that he definitely looked at his buddy, and made the goalie start to move that way, and then he chose to bury it. Coach Terry quizzed him on this after the goal and was very happy by this move.
Christopher: As I think I mentioned here, Christopher’s two days at the tryouts weren’t the best. He did ok, but, I realize now that those tryouts put a premium on speedy, darting players and someone like the big guy is just never going to show up as A+ in that situation.
As I don’t think I’ve mentioned here, one of the best things about this year is that I’m not the primary coach. My friend Terry is coaching, and he’s played soccer all of his life and still plays and is an AWESOME coach. It’s actually worked out well, I think Terry hates the paperwork part of it, and I don’t mind doing it, so, he’s happy that I’m doing it and I’m happy to help him at practice and let him lead the way.
I was very curious where Terry would have Christopher play and what he would have Christopher do. And how Christopher would do….he’s been at best ok at practice….a lot of clean misses on kicks and trips and falls as he’s tried to make the body do what his brain wants to do.
First game, Christopher has two goals, and is probably the best example of what we’re going to get from Christopher this year. He could have had five goals, just either couldn’t connect or get his body to move nimbly enough to get in position (there was two times during the weekend that the ball was between him and the goalie, and they were both running for it, and Christopher would pull up and let the goalie get it….Terry said “he is so nice to those goalies!”).
What Christopher lacks in nifty nimbleness he certainly makes up for in big bulky blockiness. This is a good thing when he has possession of the ball and turns with it…..Terry’s been teaching the kids to use their body to shield the ball from the other player and Christopher’s always been good at this and has the natural advantage that there’s more of him to get around…..he’ll be deadly when he gets more control after practice to keep the ball closer to him. He’s a good stopper on defense; he’s again taken Terry’s guidance to heart and is falling back and ‘jockey-ing’ until the guy makes a mistake and then pouncing on it…..Suzanne commented that he didn’t seem as aggressive on defense and this is exactly why, he’s doing what coach tells him.
Four last things
- In distinct contrast to what I thought after the tryouts, Terry relied on big Christopher a lot, for free kicks, corners, and on defense. He definitely got his fair share (or more) of playing time.
- Especially in that last game, if not for the goalie (80%) and Christopher (20%) it would have been a lot worse then it was. Many balls bouncing off of Christopher out of bounds or away from the net.
- Late Saturday night Christopher asked us who won the 2nd half of the 2nd game…he thought it was just 1-0…..tried to explain to him that, no, you don’t keeps score by half, it’s the total at the end of the game. Christopher said, no, Coach Terry told us at the half “it’s a brand new game, 0-0”…..glad he’s listening and taking things to heart!
- Heard on the sideline by Suzanne after three kids on the other team declined to come after Christophe as he was getting ready to come forward dribbling towards them “…would you want to go after him???” Our team, I think, would be called small, and Christopher’s a head taller than everyone else.
I told Suzanne this weekend, I always have a smile watching him play. And unlike Matthew (who sometimes thinks that doing well is the be all and end all of the game), he’s happy-go-lucky about it…always smiling, a shrug of his shoulders when something goofy happens (like when he mis-kicks the ball and it sails 20 yard away from where he was aiming it) and moves on.
