Played inside on Saturday for the third game of the league season, this time against the B team for one of the two best clubs in Michigan….should be a good game.
(I took pictures and did the Suzanne-thing….pictures of everyone but the boy! This is the best of the measly two pictures I took of him. No video, the video camera has gone belly-up and it seems like we will have to stick with the replacement we bought on Saturday night).
A strange game to describe…we played really well at times and then played awful at times…and didn’t seem to handle adversity very well at times. Could have been 2-1 to close the first half if we had converted on a penalty kick but we hit it off the crossbar and up and over.
Matthew played center-mid and I don’t think he had a very good game at all. The first goal was completely on him; he had just entered the game and made a very poor pass that the other team promptly picked up and 2 quick passes later it was 1-0 Wolves. Ended up playing some attacking center-mid late in the game (this is the first time this year in that position) and moved and played well but never had a real chance on goal.
Dislike that we played inside…it was 70 degrees and sunny outside so of course it was stifling hot inside. I don’t think Matthew has ever played a game in here during the regular season on any team and had a lot of success.
Coach Stu Says (it is more than amusing to me that I have to edit Coach Stu’s updates for grammar and English-to-American translations):
| 1ST HALF SUMMARY: |
| Started off like a dream. Used the ball well; swinging it from left to right and used all the players around them. We created good goal scoring opportunities but just did not convert them. Some players were doing a good job communicating and the angles of support we were giving off the ball were good. Then we got caught in possession playing an ill-advised pass off balance and they broke in behind the midfield and left our goalkeeper with no chance. They then scored another and as we continued to make silly costly mistakes! We played a few good passes with our wide players to combine to get to goal and created a penalty from this! Unfortunately we missed this and panic set in! We rushed everything and did not try to change the pace of the game or slow things down when there wasn’t a run available. |
| 2ND HALF SUMMARY: |
| The second half was a very open game and although we had tons of chances everything we tried to do was too quick. There was no real build-up play’ just winning the ball back and instantly trying to counter attack. We were very reliant on our speed to score and this made it easier for the opposition to contain us! Too often we played balls to space or tried to beat two players instead of knocking the ball backwards and then forwards again to draw defenders in or even attempting to switch the play. |
| OVERALL: |
| This was probably the only game this season that I wanted to win given the coach we played. I told the boys I loved the work rate and commitment during the game. However they just must simply play better soccer. This has been a few weeks in a row where we have not been playing the level of soccer that we want and relying too much on athletic ability. I hoped that when we played better teams we would just step it up and play with more purpose, which we did for a little while. But we can’t change our style of play that early in a game if we concede; there is just too much time left in a game to panic. Don’t get me wrong I don’t care how we score (all goals are worth the same) and there is a time and a place for simply beating a player 1v1, however we have to have more arrows for our bow and try to play a better brand of soccer. There are very few times that a coach has this much natural talent at this age and I must make sure that I nurture the boys the right way and put performance over results at this age in the league. |
| Goalkeeper: Good game. Made several good saves. Still want you to be more vocal at commanding the ball and not play within your self so much. |
| Defenders: Made some good challenges and for the most part kept the game in front of them. Didn’t play the ball well enough out the back or demand the ball back to them enough. |
| Midfielders: Didn’t get on the ball and change the pace of the game enough. Everything was very fast and this played into the opposition’s hands. |
| Forwards: Too direct with not enough quality in the final third. |
