1st Game Vs. Sting

09/10/2023

You win some, you learn some, today we learned.

player of the match: Ethan, for saving A LOT OF GOALS.

goal scorer(s): N/A

funny of the game: Noah dosen't have his jersey, so coach drew his number on a shirt of his!

This team could PASS. They could handle it well, and just played smoothly. Not trying to rub this in, but the team was also a year younger than us.

Coach at the begginning of the gane said," As we said yesterday, we need pressure on that ball, and to play pressure, our defensive end needs to play higher up." He was all the way correct.

1st Half

The game started with a nice play by them. This was to be expected because this league has some really great teams, this being the better league. thankfully this was one of the more skilled and higher on the ranking teams, so that was a pretty nice comfort to us. They grabbed a quick goal in the first few minutes, but at a water break, coach said," We played very nicely. you are always asking in trainin, 'why do we have to do fitness?' the answer that I have told you many times is just for this reason. This team can control the ball. We can't control that. What we can control is being aggresive and staying with it. The fitness is for these games when the team can control the ball very good." We went back out, and made a nice impact on the field.

They scored again, but the play was obviously off-sides. Everyone even the other team was admitting that it was off-sides. They scored another time, again off-sides. It was a nice cross from a counter-attack on our end, passed to #13 "the foul maniac" as we were calling him. He was extremely aggresive and threw Ian down with his hand, without a single whistle. Then theymade another illegal play by passing it behind our whole defensive line, and sadly they were so close that it was immpossible for Ethan to make one of his miracle saves. Ethan has been a great addition to the team, and has proved to be as skilled as he seemed in practice. He had many GREAT saves throughout the half.
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At halftime,coach said," Usually I don't congratulate you all when you come in at halftime going 3-0 . down, but there was a lot of good stuff there." I did not play well, but I wanted to improve and I think 1 did a little bit along with most of the team. We were determined to win our small battles out in the
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2nd Half

The second was as expected: fun but hard. They were ready for another hard battle, but we did play well. I have a feeling we could have played slightly better, but we played more together this time.

Dylan made a nice move to the left side to give us a nice slip-in, almost for a goal! It went through the goalie's legs, but he recovered, and got it right before it went in. Mateo then came in again and made some nice moves to keep us up in their half. They were really good at hitting the spots we were weakest at, such as give-n-gos around the defenders, then crossing it in. I couldn't decide if i should press as a center-back or wait for the cross. We had a few nice highlights, such as a beautiful kick from Ethan to Landon which amounted to a close goal. Then the goalie made a not-so-great punt to give it back to us after a close foul made by Dylan. There were many fouls made by the other team, including one to Landon that looked miserable. They scored twice later in the second half, giving a growing lead to their victory of 0-7. Most of the goals they made (5-7, to be exact) were way offsides, and if it were my league, I would not have counted the goals that were offsides, but we can't complain, they played well, and to a certain extent...we did too!

After the game, coach Calum said," You boys know that when you need a little kick, I will give one to you when you lose. But this may be the only time this season that you lost pretty badly, and I will congratulate you. You boys had a lot of positives during this, and it gives me courage that this season can be a good one. Good effort today."

Thanks for reading,

Simon