Headed to Dayton for the pre-spring season soccer tournament. As I’m sure I’ve said about a thousand times; I’m glad we’re doing this…I think we entered last Fall unprepared and anything to make the team ‘ready’ is a step forward as far as I’m concerned.
We’ll do this post in two parts…..
Game 1: The soccer scheduling gods were not kind….an 8 am start. Start off playing a team called Cincinnati United Warriors. We have to play up an age group, U11, so that we play the 8v8 ‘style’/format of soccer that we play at home. We’re in the lower division of the U11 groupings (because we’re younger.
Turns out we probably should have been in the upper division. We’re up 3-0 at the half, win 6-0. Matthew didn’t look all that great in this game; lots of balls would come to him about chest-high and as opposed to his usual-run-through-the-ball persona he’d miss a lot of them or they would deflect off of him in an awkward direction.
Matthew is the center-back here; we spent some time after the tournament watching the video and talking about where he should be in the ‘diamond’ of midfielders. This picture is our first offensive push of the game, Matthew has stepped up and will control this ball and take the shot….
Another good example of Matthew stepping up as the center back to keep the ball in the zone…in fact, you can really see the offense in the ‘diamond’ shape as he’s about to blast this ball upfield.
You can see the ref here on the left with his hand in the air; he just called a hand ball on the Cinci team. Most times it’s a slow process as your offense moves up field and then you kick it, more of a set piece. Matthew, especially if the team is bunched upfield like these guys are/were, will quickly restart to take advantage….
Game 2: Against GPSA Salvo, a team from Grosse Pointe in Michigan. They are the second U11 team at that club, and I think I’ve said here we have beaten the top U11 team at our club and handily beat the second U11 team. We’re winning 2-1 at the half and it’s a 4-1 final. Matthew is much MUCH better here…..way more active and making multiple runs up field with the ball.
This might be the highlight of the tournament for me; it certainly is the moment we talked about quite a bit since then. I think, as opposed to last fall, that we play and understand offsides now (last fall we played it; I’m not sure we understood it). Here, Matthew and AJ are the defense, and they are lined up on the midfield line (you can’t be offsides on your end, so, GPSA wouldn’t be offsides on any pass to the left of the midfield line here.
But, if you are on the other side of the midfield line, and there is not one defensemen and one goalie between you and the goal at the time of the pass, well, you are offsides and the official will raise the flag either immediately (that’s what they did in the first game) or when you touch the ball (that’s what they did here). This guy is clearly offsides, and will be flagged when he touches the ball. #22 then turns and yells back at the refs “I’m not offisides!”….earning him a yellow card and a seat on his bench with his coach.
Love, LOVE, when Matthew does this; he’s driving the ball forward and looking for someone to pass it to
Completely lucky on the weather; in the 50’s and a little cloudy in the morning, high 60’s with some patches of sunlight!
