First game of the season has many hot topics and facts!

Player of the match: Kai, for passing, being a good sport, and helping the team transition for counter-attacks. 

Goal scorer(s): Dylan, Juan?

Funny of the game: one of the defensive players ranked Ethan (our goal keeper) a 99 (which is the best) in a soccer video game and told him to get in the game!

        Going into the game to begin our entire TWO seasons, coach Calum gave us some very good words. “No one here is perfect. We need to remember that through this whole season. We all make mistakes. It is just how our attitude is after those mistakes that counts.” -Coach Calum

Full of butterflies infused with confidence, we ran out onto the field.

1st Half

Jet-lag was the one word to describe this half. We were playing very slow as if we weren’t eager to get the ball. It wasn’t that we didn’t want the ball, it was just that we weren’t getting it. The game started with Amir as striker with Noah attacking middle, Juan as defensive middle, right wing as (N/A), left wing as Landon (unsure), left back as Asher and right back as Adam1. Gavin was center-back along with me (Simon), and amazing goal keeper Ethan. I got it and made a terrible pass to Landon, who nicely recovered. He then crossed the middle and passed to Amir. They played defense like any other team we have played: alright…but we were slow off the ball and made a few mistakes to get them on our half defending. #8, their striker played well, and his turns were dangerous. They got a quick counter-attack with #19 who looked like he could have been 20 years old. He was terrible though, so we won the ball back. This happened much more, but then all of a sudden they dribbled down and crossed it in. It was right above my head, so I lifted my around a foot, and it hit the underside of my forearm. THEY CALLED A HAND BALL! It was not a very good call. Anyhow, they scored off the kick. Ethan made many nice saves throughout the half, and he was unbelievable…even to the other team! They scored another time in pressure because we didn’t get it from their center-mid fielder fast enough. We were 2 down when the whistle was blown.

At halftime, coach said,” We need pressure on that ball. Playing pressure will us goals. We need three goals. In my opinion, a tie is a loss because it shows that we didn’t play better than them, and we are tons better than this team. Lets do this boys.” It was true, and we played better in the second half.

2nd Half

It started with a nice play by Dylan and Juan. They made some give-n-gos and great passes that led to a close goal. We improved our want to win the ball by a tad bit, and we increased speed of the game by nothing. At about 98 degrees on the heat index today, the players everywhere are a bit slow. The game went on, and they had a few drag-aways on our defensive end, finishing with an extremely close off-the-post shot by #8. He played the whole game, and by the end we were both tired (I also played the whole game, and we were next to each other most of it.). They made a couple more counter attacks which took a toll on our defense’s stamina. We were getting slow, when they brought in a player that I don’t remember playing in this game at all. He was in full energy, and he made the game even more difficult because there was only about 10 minutes left. We took a water break, but before that, Juan made a few sweet moves to take the team infront of goal, making us dangerous. He then passed to Dylan and there was a lot of action and confusion, but Dylan came down the field and shot with a small curve off the the left side, and he hit the back-side of the net to give us GOAL ONE! I said,”Goal one of three.” which we wanted to come true, but a water break came, then there was a little more action and confusion, and the final whistle was blown after a big corner kick on their end which amounted to nothing. The game ended a questionsble 1-2 loss. Why I say qeustionable, is because earlier in the second half Juan made a nice steal from the goalie’s hands, and hit it in. They called it offsides because he TECHNICALLY wasn’t onsides. I don’t think that was a good call at all, so in the end we did not tie or win, we lost. It was sad, but we have the whole season to get better.

Thanks for reading,

Simon