Not a lot of pictures here…..I have video, but, there aren’t a lot of Matthew highlights there and I don’t know if I feel like importing pictures out of the video (changed my mind…I grabbed a few).
Game 5: A Friday night game in Novi; walked away with a 3-2 loss. The other team was very motivated and we didn’t seem to be that way. The first game in a long time that Matthew had to leave with a pretty good injury; he had wiped out on his bike earlier this week and tore up his elbow……he went to kick the ball (he went to bicycle-kick it….we’ve asked him to stop trying this until he practices it some more). He attempted it this time and landed on that elbow and came off the field bleeding pretty good.
He did have a very nice pass (and he’s one of the few on the team who are continuing to pass early and often) that led to a goal. His play is still more than a little frustrating though…he seems to have lost a lot of his aggressiveness.
This is Matthew at the start of the moves he makes to get free to pass the ball up for the goal. You can see the ball, and there’s another player from the other team behind him. He’s going to cut through and carry the ball upfield
He’s made it to midfield here; he’s beaten both of these kids (one is being a little grabby trying to slow him down) and soon after he gets clear he shoots the ball diagonally into the middle of the field to his wide open teammate
Game 6: A Saturday night game in Livonia; we won 4-1. Again, Matthew had a nice run down the sideline that led to a great pass that led to a goal, again, he was almost exclusively parked on defense for the entire game and that’s not a strength (the team now has too many small fast guys…and the coach is reluctant, for good reason, to put them on defense. Hope this changes as we move on next year….).
Game 7: Late Sunday afternoon, a 5-2 win. Matthew did get in on offense more in this game….he gets the ball passed to him right in front of the goal, one guy to beat, and he doesn’t even try and beat him, he passes! Now, the guy was open, and it was a good play, but, man, I wish he would focus a little more on himself right now. Had another great chance in front of the goal on a corner kick later and completely whiffed on the ball…..just not a good day on offense.
This is the corner kick where Matthew had his chance; you can see the ball coming in and Matthew charging in as well…
And here you can see the wide open ball that he should have could have buried….but didn’t.
Not really a good day overall now that I type it out. He crashed into the back of another boy’s head in the first half and went off the field with an injury and then complained about the heat and stomach cramps and didn’t come back on much in the second half.
One game left…we win, we win our division. I wonder where that soccer playing kid who seems to be everywhere has gone (and he was that same kid in our OSC games….I was just pulling together the tape of that last game and he was all over the place!) and hope he comes back soon.
