Three weeks into it and much like my fantasy football team, we’re 0-3 but unlike my fantasy football team, this one has some hope and promise.
The game was in a neighboring town, the day was beautiful and clear and we looked good in our road whites. I decided on a couple of lineup changes, mostly to try to mix things up with the hope that we could get some scoring going..
I flip-flopped my center-mid and left-forward for two reasons.
1- The girl who has been playing center-mid is by far our best finisher and she’s the only one who can dribble through the traffic jam that most of these teams create by keeping 3 girls back in the box..
2- The girl who has been playing left-forward is impossible to corral, she’s up and down the field and plays from side-line to side-line. She’s got the most stamina on the team
I kept basically everything the same, although I did put one girl back in the starting lineup who I’ve had a tough time finding a spot for. She’s tall and moves but when I put her in goal early on, she struggled, I’ve had her in defense and she also struggled. She’s a very sweet girl but has lapses of concentration, so I thought I wanted to put her in a spot where she’s in the action more often, so moved her to center-left.
The results of the game were still the same (2-1 loss) but the game felt differently. Obviously a part of this is the competition, maybe the girls we played this week weren’t as good as the ones we played last week, but you can tell that a big part was the way we played.
The game started off on a bad note as they intercepted a pass within the first 45 seconds and took it to the house. It was pretty demoralizing but it was right after the start and our defense was playing a bit too far up (we started the first half with the ball), so we were looking to push.
They scored another one about 5 minutes later, so early on it felt like we had dug ourselves right back into a similar hole as last week. But then the girls bunkered down and started playing ‘our’ game. We spent a solid hour on throw-ins, corners and goalie kicks as last week we just kept gift-wrapping it into the defense and the results were immediate. We turned the field on it’s side and had the ball in their half more than half of the game. We kept the pressure on and it felt that unlike last week, we spent a lot of time in their half. We had a few very nice opportunities including one play by the left-forward (the one who had been playing center-mid), where she split two defenders, came across the penalty box and just missed it far right with about 2 minutes left in the half We had another opportunity where our mid-right hesitated for a second when she had a nice view and pushed it right but she came back in almost the same spot to score her first goal a few minutes later. She’s a hard worker and it was great to see her come through, especially after having tensed up in the same situation a few minutes earlier.
We kept the pressure on and had them pinner in the back ¼ of the field when time expired.
Our goalies played great, the girl who has really taken to the position had a bunch of nice saves, she did give up two but they were both pretty hard (she also realized about half way through the half that she wasn’t wearing her glasses, so who knows if that would have made a difference) the second goalie played great, too. She’s not a great on the ball player in open-space and doesn’t have great speed, so this seems like a good spot for her too. She has good instincts and her older brother has been working with her, so I’m excited to see her play there again.
Our defense was very good again, I have one top defender who isn’t afraid to mix it up, my only fear for her is that I don’t want to pigeon-hole her. She’s getting tons of action and is on the field virtually the entire game and loves the position but sometimes I wonder if keeping her back there is doing her own development a disservice.
The midfielders played well overall, especially the sort of spacy girl, she had a great game. Keeping her in the action was a great call because she’s got energy and will, she just needs to stay focused and defensively there are lulls.
The girl who I moved to mid-center had her worst game, there is a lot more responsibility there but that was OK. She’s talented and has a lot of energy and can move. I’m still not sure where her most natural position is but she’s got it.
One thing that was odd was that the field we played on was MUCH bigger than our normal field. The other team’s coach warned me before the game.. Not sure how that happened but it was at least 20 yards longer an probably 20 yards wider too. Our girls were gassed..
One other funny thing happened, late in the game, down 2-1, I decided to go for it with about 5 minutes to go. I subbed out my weakest four girls and went with the power lineup, hoping to capitalize. The problem was that one of the girls who I subbed out, didn’t actually come out of the game, so in actuality we were going 9-8 for about 5 minutes. I tried to sub her out without causing a commotion but with the huge field there were so many less throw-ins, so the ball never stopped…
She wasn’t helping our team much at that point as she was dead tired but it would have been sort of odd, had we scored because there was certainly something wrong.
I actually though about having my two defenders come up and play offense there and wish I had thought of it..
Overall, a very well-played game even if the results weren’t perfect.. Our biggest issue is putting the ball on goal. We can get down the field a bit but we just don’t shoot enough I figure that at this age, it’s probably a sheer volume play.. you put the ball on net 10 times per game and some of them are bound to go in. It seems that as aggressive as they play for the equivalent of 90 yards, that when we get close they all get nervous. Also, many of them are very uncomfortable shooting when they aren’t perfectly placed in front of the ball, so they reposition and that is enough time for any defense to react..
The best thing was that the girls weren’t demoralized by this, a few of them actually asked if we won..
The parents seem pleased with me, which is also nice.
TLDR: we lost 2-1 but played much better
