Wednesday night was the last game of the OSC soccer season; a make-up game on the road against East Lansing. Last time out we had lost to this outfit 3-1….hoping for better results.
Game was supposed to start at 5:45…to try and get done before it was too dark. To get the whole picture for this game you need to know a few things
1) the field in East Lansing runs east-west
2) the sun is very low in the west and was going to be a problem for the kid in goal in the east
and
3) the winds were out of the west-southwest, and they were strong, and I’d bet the gusts were up to 30-40 mph…..if the goals hadn’t been anchored down I’m sure they would have tipped over.
The ref wouldn’t start the game at 5:45; too windy (there’s apparently a test where the ball has to sit still for a minute or something….that ball had no chance of staying in the same place). The ref agreed to wait until 6 pm and at that point, the winds had died down some and we were able to start.
So, of course, we lose the coin toss and our goalie is going to be looking into the sun in the first half AND have the other team coming at him with the benefit of the big wind.
Strategy: I had made the decision to switch our ‘shape’ on the field in this last game….we normally play 1-2-2 (forward-midfield-defense) and I’ve found that this shape tends to make the kids abdicate their responsibilities “there’s another person back on defense, I won’t go back” or “one midfield went back to help on defense, I don’t need to”. At times (especially when we were behind in games) I’d switch to a 2-2-1…..this shape generates more offense and if the midfield and defense decide they aren’t going to play defense we’re doomed. It’s taken awhile, but I’ve figured out that we’re more successful in the 2-2-1, the back three pay more attention and we don’t have as many dumb mistakes. We score more, we give up fewer goals.
So, I had decided no matter what to play 2-2-1 the entire game tonight…..I didn’t care if we gave up 5 goals, I wanted to see how it worked the whole game.
Losing the sun and the wind (especially the wind) ended those plans; told the boys we would play 2-2-1 in the 2nd half but in the first half I wanted defense first….they would get no goals with the wind at their backs. I have one kid who has tinted sports glasses and he’s one of our normal goalies….I wasn’t going to use him in goal today, but, the sun made that decision for me.
Boys were really goofy before the game; first the winds, second the possible cancellation. Have a quick second to tell them to FOCUS and away we go.
First Half: The boys play some awesome defense; EL doesn’t really have many real chances and we get quite a few breakaway chances. And Matthew does something on one of these breakaways that I’m going to have to describe in depth (and I won’t do it justice) and get him to show this on some video soon.
(Edit: I taped him this afternoon. The video is here.)
Matthew has been practicing this ‘move’…I don’t think this ‘move’ has a ‘name’; it’s been amazing to watch him practice this move because he’s become very good at it. Neither of his brothers could be bothered to practice and practice to get the mastery of anything sports related like Matthew has with this move….he’s put in the time and it has paid off. The move is two parts….he’s dribbling the ball forward and he stops pushing it forward as he does a cross-over with his feet over it. As the ball slows he is still moving forward at the same speed; at the last moment he takes the back heel of his other foot and kicks the ball straight forward to himself and keeps going forward. The effect is that it looks like he’s messed up dribbling the ball…that sucks the defender in, and then he passes the ball forward to himself and moves on out of the break.
So, there are about 10 minutes gone in the first half and we’ve had a two-on-one or another breakaway chance and then we get another…the ball is passed up to Matthew and he’s breaking in towards the goal, just one defender in front of him. The defender comes out AND MATTHEW DOES THIS MOVE, does it right, and it’s just him and the goalie and he puts it away for the first goal of the match.
One of the other Dad’s jumps up, comes over to me, pats me on the back and says “Did you see that? that’ll be on Sportscenter!”…don’t know about that, but, it was pretty cool.
We hold the fort for the rest of the half and take that lead into halftime. Get the wind in the second half…woo hoo!
Second Half: Switch over to our 2-2-1…tell the person who is on defense that he’s under the gun…no mistakes. Tell the midfielders they have to get back. Away we go.
We score again (on a rebound of a penalty kick). We score again (on a rebound). It’s 3-0 and we are dominating the game…our goalie touches the ball maybe twice in the 2nd half.
At the end of the game I have Christopher up front as forward….he gets the ball a couple of different times (and has one pretty good chance for a goal that is deflected) and you can hear the EL coach yelling, yelling loud “Ref, that 30, he’s pushing! He’s pushing!!!!”. Christopher may not have the moves that his little brother has, but, he is good at one thing, and he’s very good at that…if he has the ball he will put his body between the ball and the other player and you aren’t going to get the ball at that point. He did that, and the EL coach didn’t like it, and you can hear him yelling clearly from the other side of the field “Ref, He’s doing it again, 30, 30, 30!!!!”….
The kids next to me on the bench ask me what Christopher is doing wrong….I tell them he’s doing nothing wrong, or the ref, who has been alerted by the EL coach to this, would have called it by now. Told the kids “If I was losing 3-0 and my team couldn’t get the ball out of my own end I’d be yelling at anything and everything too….”
Final 3-0.
