The second of the three 4v4 tournaments Matthew will play in this summer was Saturday down in Mason. A hot, humid day, with a light drizzle around 1 pm to just make it even more hot and unpleasant after lunch.
Unlike the Holt tournament, this event seemed to struggle to have enough teams to make competitive divisions. We (a U10 team) were placed in the ‘younger bracket’, U9-10-11’s…..
No control over team name (I’m not organizing or coaching and happy for that), so, we’re the ‘Fire Breathing Nimrods”. I *am* coaching and somewhat organizing the next 4v4 tourney….*that* team has a good concept! Anyway…
Game 1: Play the biggest and oldest of the teams in the grouping….and win 5-3. Matthew scored a goal, he ‘handed’ the ball pretty obviously and then put it in the net but they didn’t call it so oh well. Two of the goals we gave up were when we tracked back inside our ‘arc’ and touched the ball….and the other team was awarded a goal.
Game 2: Against a group of U9s, who, we later learn, all play for the other travel team in town. Boys, I think, see smaller kids and let up, and are down 4-3 at halftime.
After the half the boys get their act together and score 4 goals and give up none as we cruise to the 7-4 win. Part of the problem in the first half is we played some very shaky defense….turns out, of the 5 kids on the team only one has any interest in playing defense…..Matthew. He wasn’t back there at all in the first half, and spent almost all of the 2nd half in there.
What really impressed me (and I gushed to Suzanne over the phone about) was that he was stopping them, grabbing the ball, and dribbling forward until they swarmed him and smoothly passed off to his teammates for absurdly easy goals. He did this about three times and I’m just amazed how confident he looks with the ball coming out of his own end.
This is the end of the a play where he dribbled straight up the center of the field after blocking a shot on our goal….there’s another guy from the other team just to left of this picture; it’s a 2 on 1. He plays the ball and Matthew, Matthew just slides the ball over to Henry and it’s an easy goal.
Game 3: The first of the single-elimination games….we’re first in our group and face the 2nd team from the other group. They are a group of U9s (I think) who play rec soccer and were just overmatched. We buried them, 8-1.
on defense again to start…heading upfield
this is in the 2nd half when the game is over, again, he’s breaking upfield
and left this guy in the dust….
Game 4: The final…against the team we played in Game 1. We are winning 3-0 at halftime. Each of the other four kids probably came off the field twice during the first half for subs…..Matthew played defense, and was a rock, the entire half.
Dad yells out to Matthew multiple times that he needs to move up when his team is attacking and not leave huge amounts of space between him and the course of play. Matthew, after about third time says I know, and then within the next twenty seconds clears a ball, not intentionally (I think!) right at me!. Suzanne and the other parents, and even Matthew joke that that’s what I get for chirping at him.
Second half they score on a sweet shot from the corner to make it 3-1. They score again on a goal that could have been averted if Matthew had been listening to his Dad…they kicked the ball in and Matthew was way back, and hadn’t moved up, and if he had even moved up a little he would have gotten to the ball first. But, he didn’t, they did, and they drove it by him to make it 3-2.
I’m more than a little perturbed by this. Matthew and I have had long talks Saturday and Sunday about being an offensive-minded defenseman (last year’s bad habits crept in when he decided that hanging back was best….)
Hang on as the other team pours it on to win 3-2.
Champions! For those scoring home, only two of the players who played in Holt played here as well.
Postscript: On our way to soccer practice Friday night Matthew spent about five minutes telling me about the art of corner kicks. You have to set the ball up on the grass just right…you need to look for a good spot so you can get under it….the strategy of his approach was layered and detailed.
He then went out to practice and in the scrimmage took every corner kick his team had; he dropped every one of them right in the middle where his teammates had glorious opportunities to score. He, inadvertently, put the last one of the tip of the top crossbar and it bounced out where one of his teammates could have easily headed it in, but ,the kid ‘handed’ it and that was that.
Anyway, I captured this series of photos below that shows Matthew taking a corner kick…..and I put them here because it really shows that even on a smaller field with a smaller goal he has the skill now to drop the ball where he wants too consistently.
Over the kids in front of the goal…..
and dropping right in front of the goal at his teammates feet. I think we pushed this one just wide though….
