Premier League Game #1 vs Eden Prairie

Beautiful day to kick off the 2007 MYSA summer Premier League season yesterday.  It finally feels like summer!

As mentioned in previous posts, I knew that we had our hands full for our first league game against a talented Eden Prairie team.  They are one of the top 2 U14 teams here in MN, always playing our BTFC U14G Blue team tight. 

I've seen EP play a few times already this year.  They were a very good attacking team last year with 3 or 4 strong forwards, and added a few key defending players this year, namely a central defender, Ally, who we passed up at our Bangu tryouts last fall... bad decision on our part I think as she would have helped our Blue team.  EP is athletic and well coached, though I think this year we'll have an edge on overall technical ability thanks in large part to the continued focus on this technique over the years.

The 6:00PM game was scheduled to be played at Miller Park in Eden Prairie.  Nice complex.  Suffice it to say that at 5PM, the game was shaping up to be a bit of a disaster.  I had received 5 different phone calls about traffic issues and girls were definitely going to be late.  One of the phone calls cam from Bidi who was in a car with 4 or 5 of our players who lived in Woodbury.  There was an accident on I494 in Inver Grove Heights and the the minivan had been forced to take an alternate route.

As I was getting off the phone with Bidi, it occurred to me to make sure that Maddog (in the car from Woodbury) had the passes and game line up sheets with her.  Maddog's mom, Wendy, is our team manager extraordinaire who has volunteered her time to help me since the fall of 2004.  I called the car back and asked Maddog if she had the passes.  She said no, and my heart skipped a beat.  She informed me though that her mom was coming to the game straight from work in Minneapolis, and all was good again. 

On a hunch, I called Wendy to make sure she had the passes with her, and her heart must have skipped a beat.  As it turned out, with all the stuff going on this month with the West Des Moines event, travel with her U11 daughter Mackenzie to Ohio, and State Cup, she completely blanked about the game and the passes were still in Woodbury.  It was 5:15PM.

Wendy called her husband David and he was able to get on the road fairly quickly.  But he was in Woodbury, had to pick up his U11 daughter from training, then try and make the 30+ mile trek in I494 rush hour traffic.  We're dead.

According to Google Maps, the trip was about 38 miles.  This didn't account for the time it took to get ready to leave the house, swing by and grab Mackenzie from practice, then get back on the highway.

I had already known that Jilly and Blondie were going to be arriving just at game time due to track commitments.  Add in a few other girls and a carload of girls car pooling from Woodbury stuck in traffic, and we had a grand total of 5 girls there at our scheduled 5:15PM meeting time. 

At 5:30PM we finally had enough girls on site to play and started to make our way over to the sidelines.  I spoke with Hisham and Tina (EP coach and manager) letting them know about the pass situation.  Hisham assured me that he would speak to the ref and help sort things out so that we could possible play and get checked in at half time.  Nice gesture on his part that was greatly appreciated. 

5:40PM we eventually started warming up.  Hisham came over and said that he spoke with the one ref who was already on site and the ref said it would not be a problem to delay the game until the passes got there.

5:50 the head ref showed up.  Though we were still missing one AR, the head ref came over and warned me that he would only wait until 6:15PM.  He would not wait longer than that as he had another game to officiate that night.  If the passes were not on site by that time, we were to forfeit the game.

6:00PM came and went and we were informed that David was at I494 and Penn Ave.  We had no chance of him getting to the park in fifteen minutes.

6:10PM the ref called for captains, making ready to start the game (if our passes were there) or pack up his things and find some air conditioning.  I told the captains to walk to midfield very slowly and ask the ref a lot of questions about the rules of soccer. 

6:18PM, minivan tires were heard squealing in the parking lot.  I don't think the car came to a complete stop and Mackenzie hopped out (or maybe was pushed out) and ran over to the field with our passes.  Well done, SuperDave!

With all the pre-game chaos, we came out really flat.  EP dominated the first 15 minutes of the game though were unable to break through our defense to score.  We started to settle in a bit midway through the half and finally looked to create unpanicked attacks up the field. 

We played a 4-4-2, trying to build off the success that we saw against Wayzata in the second half of our first State Cup game using this formation, while also trying to contend with EP's midfield dominance that we've experienced in past meetings.

First half ended 0-0 though I could feel the match shifting to our favor.  At halftime we talked about a few key points; wanting to do a better job in the second half of keeping the field more compact, battling hard for every 50/50 ball, not allowing their players to play long ball or win air balls unchallenged, and trying to press our apparent advantage in the game of getting balls wide and looking to serve in crosses and/or win corner kicks. 

We discussed tracking central player when they made diagonal runs to the corners as EP tore us apart early on with this tactic.  Our central players either had to stick with their marks, or they had to communicate and pass on their marks to other players. 

Lastly, I reminded the girls that I wasn't focused on results in our Premier league play.  Our focus at the moment was State Cup.  I wanted the girls to be confident and composed on the ball, encouraging them to get into their Futsal mentality as the girls played some of their best soccer indoors in the Futsal environment this past winter.  Relaxed, confident, creative, and enthusiastic - playing for the love of the game. 

We came out on fire in the second half. 

Six minutes in we were awarded a free kick about 30 yards from goal.  I encouraged Nash to get a strike on goal, and she proceeded to lazer a shot off the underside of the crossbar.  The ball bounced straight down close to the goal line then up into the air about 20 feet.  Lily was in a good position but just didn't get enough on the header attempt and the EP GK was able to recover and smother the ball.  From the ensuing GK punt, EP countered up the field.  One of their forward dribbled around at the top of our box, beat our marking defender who was left without enough cover by supporting players, and hit a great shot past a diving Mudd (GK).  That's what I love about this game.  A great chance for us at one end turns into a goal at the other end within a matter of seconds.

To our girls credit, not many heads went down after this.  We took the kick off, knocked the ball back and around through midfield a bit, and found Scratch (right mid) on a long ball.  Scratch beat a player and served in an early diagonal cross that the EP right defender misplayed.  Mille (one of our forwards) had drifted to the far post area, settled the ball with a great touch, and side-footed a ball past the onrushing EP GK into the right side of the goal.  It was a great build up and a classy and composed finish by our little U11 player. 

I'd say EP had at least two or three other good chances to score in the second half.  One was sent wide and Mudd made terrific saves on the other two.  No lie, we probably created 7 or 8 quality chances - many off crosses and corner kicks, a few with decent build up and 1v1s and breakaways.  I don't think I was the only one watching who thought we deserved to win the game based on our second half performance.

Regardless, it was a fun, competitive game for both teams, and a very good start to the league play season for us. 

Game Notes

• We are settling in to the 4-4-2 formation very well.  Our forwards are dynamic and are better able to grasp the lateral movement that is needed when playing with 2 up front.  Our defending midfield play with the added 4th midfielder is much better than we saw with our 3-man system (as could be expected) and our ability to switch the ball through midfield is improved as we are now not asking our outside backs to understand the concept of releasing up field on the changes.
• We are slowly getting our outside mids used to getting up the field more to supply width in the attack, but need to do a better job of having our outside backs communicate and push the outside mids up.
• We need better communication from our central defending players and GK.
• We struggled to pick up central mids and attackers who made diagonal runs to the corners.  EP did this very well and threw us off balance in the first half.  We need work on this, but it was a good learning experience for us to see how effective this movement can be when used properly.
• With the 4-4-2, I need to work with the wide mids getting wide early when our wide backs have the ball.  If they are too slow getting wide and the ball is played, the wide mids receive the ball running towards the sidelines and can't see the field.  Also, no movement out wide blocks passing channels into our forwards.
• Our ball striking is really, really good overall.  This was clearly apparent in the game as we have 8 or 9 girls who can strike a long ball well.  EP may have had 2 or 3 players who could do this consistently.  This was a testament to the work many of these girls have done regarding ball striking in our small group sessions at Acceleration MN over the years, as well as to our constant focus on proper technique at the younger age groups.
• Due to good technique and more mature muscular development, our crosses are now going too far more times than not.  I need to work with the girls about measuring the distance better on these services.
• Our team's overall heading ability is very good, thanks in large part to technical development and the Full90 Headgear. 
• It's nice to interact with opposing coaches who see what this game is really about.  At no time at all did Hisham bring up the thought of a forfeit.  He and his staff were very accommodating and did what they could have to try and avoid the replay/forfeit.  No matter what clubs people are with, it's good to remember that this game is about the kids and about their enjoyment and interest in competition.

We saw EP last year twice.  Our first meeting last May in State Cup (we played up to the U13 age group as U12s) was a completely one sided affair.  We had a good chance to score in the first few minutes then hit the post on a half chance in the second half, but other than that we were never in the game.  They only ended up beating us 1-0 but the score was in no way indicative of the game flow.

Our second battle with them came in the U13 State Tournament final in early August.  We matched up much better against them in this game, managed to score a great goal and have one or two more solid chances, but ended up losing 2-1.  We were still outclassed a bit but gave a good accounting of ourselves to finish out the summer season.

I think we have continued to close the gap on teams like this.  This year, we are not so outmatched athletically, thanks to team personnel changes last fall as well as to the muscular development catching up.  I think we have closed any technical gap with EP, and may even have the edge now from an overall team perspective.  This is taking nothing away from EP as they are a solid team and have also improved since last year.  Our next game is sure to be a battle as well with either team capable of scoring 3 or 4 goals on the other.

Up Next in League Play

Coon Rapids - Thur, May 17