Friendly - Friday, Feb 16

Our U14 White team is a solid team.  I'm pretty confident that we will have tough battles with them in the U14 Premier League next summer. 

Tonight, both teams were missing a few key players.  I think we had control of most of the game, though the U14s had a few good scoring opportunities.  We got a goal off a great piece of build up play down our right side, culminating with a great cross from Bidi (playing right back) to Jill (playing point), who took a hard shot on a half turn that was too powerful for the U14 GK to handle (though she got two hands to it). 

I had been giving a lot of thought to which team formation suits our players best.  We have a lot of team speed and are a dangerous direct-play team, while also having some real technical players in the center of the field who can take control of a game.  Tonight, we came out and played a 4-1-2-3.  It was a very effective formation for us, giving us the following benefits:

• Solid back four defending shape with the ability to get our wide backs into the attack (which happened a lot)
• Good numbers in the center of midfield
• Good options for flank attacks with wide forwards and supporting wide backs

I realize that some people may call this a 4-3-3, 4-1-4-1, or a 4-5-1.  The 4-1-2-3 helps the girls better understand the roles I want them to play, namely that I want our wide players up front as well as our two forward center midfielders to be very attacking minded.

I will experiment more with this system of play, but like what I see so far.