Headed to Bloomfield for the first of back-to-back games against the early leaders in our league.
Right after kickoff….Matthew racing to track down the ball
Matthew started off the game at center-midfield…..and I thought he did ok, not great here. I think Matthew has played too much defense, so, when he moves up, he tends to drift back to play defense when the team needs him to press forward and create some goals. Coach Alex has said that he wants Matthew to shoot more….number of shots in this game from Matthew? Zero
Love this picture…the yin and yang of soccer…same pose trying to get the ball where they want it to go….
First half ends and we are losing 3-1…..one goal, to me, is on the goalie, who has been playing well but is giving up entirely too many rebounds, and they score off of one. One goal, to me, is on Matthew, who misses(!) the ball and lets the guy right by him for an open shot, and one goal is just good soccer by the other team
Entirely too much of this in this game…..swing and a miss. He missed this ball, missed the one I described above, and mishandled another ball in the 2nd half that led to a breakaway and another goal against us.
The big event in this game happened late in the 2nd half….and there is no good picture to lead into it. I’ve talked here how Matthew has been sliding into the ball more….to the continued encouragement of his coach. And I’ve gone back and looked at the video I have of the game…..his first slide tackle of the game he was whistled for a foul when he got into the guys legs, but, everyone after that looked to me to be “all ball” and no foul was called.
Late in the 2nd half, Matthew commits his last slide tackle of the game, he comes in from behind and to the side and, confirmed by the video, cleanly takes the ball away from the other guy. But, the boy trips over Matthew, goes down, hits head first, and needs help because he’s hurt.
The kids take a knee while the other coach comes out….and the referee comes over to talk with Matthew. Matthew leaves the game right after that (the coach had been planning to sub him)….he walks off, and immediately we can see Coach Alex and Matthew talking…and talking…and talking…game goes on and they are still talking.
So, question Matthew about what happened. The ref’s talk went something like this
“95% of your slide tackles are illegal; if you do it again this game I’ll give you a yellow card”
So Matthew goes to the bench and is a little upset by this statement, and Coach Alex noticed and asked him, and, well, thus the long conversation. Coach Alex was pretty clear, if Matthew’s slide tackles were ‘bad’ the ref should have called it way before now and Coach Alex will tell Matthew what to do and not to do, not the ref.
Incoming!
Outgoing!
We lost 6-3…..we had made the score 3-2 but Matthew’s second ‘whiff’ led to the fourth goal for the other team….and we only scored the third goal on the last play of the game.
Rematch Saturday morning……I still believe we can compete with all of these teams, but, the clear difference to me is that for this team, it’s game 11, and for us, it’s game 4.
I have some decent Matthew video….I’ll post it one of these days….
