Two games in three hours this weekend; should be a good test of where we are at. Of course, it is hard to take anything away from winter soccer because you don’t know what the other teams are doing
Speaking of where we are at…that will be Premier 2, not Premier 1, in the spring. Even though you could make a case we are better than the last team promoted to P1…well, when you play like we did in the Fall Premier 2 is what you get. Sigh.
Anyway, onto the games. Pictures are clickable for video.
Game 4: We tie Rush Northville 1-1; we had beaten them pretty convincingly 2-0 early in the year. We are mixing things up in the back, center back and holding mids, and that change basically cost us the first goal about two or three minutes into the game. We seemed to have the run of play afterwards (by my video, we had eight scoring chances to their three). Matthew spent all of this game, when he played, at attacking center mid, and I thought did what he needed to do there. Missed one big opportunity for a good shot in front of the goal. Only played about half the game…..most of the team is only playing about this much.
(not thrilled with taping inside the 11v11 dome at Wixom; the dome is so dark and those lights cause the camera to lose focus. This picture sucks, but, Matthew has just gathered the ball in on defense near our 18’ and dribbles forward almost to midfield to start the attack)
Game 5: Beat Vardar South 1-0. We had so many kids in different positions for this game it is amazing we won, and frankly, we didn’t deserve to. They seemed to control the play and had the better chances, but, we punched one in with about five minutes to go (after we had started to take the game over five or ten minutes before that). Matthew spent this game playing holding center-mid; he was busy since we were under pressure a lot early and I thought, again, he did well in stopping them and releasing us forward on offense. Matthew is not one of the kids being tried in different roles right now…..
(another crappy picture from the video. Like I said, thought the did a nice job on defense….challenged the ball well and when he wasn’t on the ball did a very nice job of marking a man and taking him out of the play)
Futsal: The only other thing I wanted to mention here is that Matthew has been going to these 2-hour futsal sessions the last few weekends. They are not much more than pick-up soccer; a smaller ball on a basketball court BUT the kids for the most part are older than Matthew and he has found it to be pretty fun. And I think this fun, along with the challenge of having to create in a small space against bigger and faster kids, has been good for him.
