Premier League Game #4 vs Wayzata

Wow.  Hot day.  The girls were wilting walking from the parking lot to the field.

Up against Wayzata for the third time is as many weeks.  This was our tie breaker with Wayzata beating us in PKs to take the NSC Cup Championship over Memorial Day Weekend up in Blaine and the Bangu girls winning 2-0 in Woodbury in our first meeting in the Premier League.  Today was sure to be a battle.

This game was a rescheduled match as we were supposed to meet the week of June 25 when we would either be in, or just coming back from Regionals in Iowa.  Wayzata was accommodating enough to the reschedule, but with both teams’ schedules relatively booked for the next month, we decided that today would work best.  The girls had ODP training at 5:30PM today and there was some hesitation from the parent group about scheduling a game in conflict with the ODP session.  However, the way I saw it was that as we were imposing on Wayzata to reschedule their home game we would work with whatever worked for them.  The game was going to be played at 7PM, but Wayzata was able to push it up to a 4PM start when I informed them about the ODP training.

The teams are fairly well matched, with us having the technical and, IMO, the tactical edge and Wayzata having the size and aggressiveness edge.

My goal for today was to have the girls focus on the aspects we had been covering in our last couple training sessions; keeping our twin strikers linked and working together with our midfielders looking to be unpredictable on their forward passes, sometimes looking over the top, sometimes looking for feet, always keyed into the 2^nd runner.  I mentioned to the girls prior to the game of these goals for today, encouraging them to try and forget about the end game result in favor of working on our overall team development.  Tough to do, I understand, but again, as I’ve mentioned before, if people focus on pure results, we set the girls up for possible failure when a win is not in the cards for the day.  If we can rather shift the focus on trying to succeed in other things that we can control, the girls are winners no matter what the scoreboard says after the match.  A bit cliché, but important for this age group.

During our warm up, I gave the girls a visual reminder about the possibilities going forward by illustrating the different passing options and movement with two forwards and four midfielders while the others watched.  I hoped this visual reminder would refresh the girls’ memories a bit about our last two training sessions.

The game started out well for us.  We came out and knocked the ball around a bit, were fairly solid in the back, and sprung our forwards for some good chances at goal.

Ripper (RF) was involved in our two best chances midway through the first half.  The first came when she chased down a ball played over the top of the Wayzata defense and headed to goal 1v1 against the keeper.  Wayzata’s fast defenders recovered enough to apply pressure and this, combined with an aggressive play off her line by the Wayzata GK helped see Ripper pull the shot just wide of the left post.

A few minutes later, another ball was played through to Ripper.  The Wayzata defender made the mistake of raising her hand and looking at the linesman appealing for offsides AND stopping playing in anticipation of the call.  The flag stayed down and Ripper was off again, this time to the right side of the goal.  This time, instead of going to goal she hesitated a bit then played a great little diagonal slot pass to Millie (LF) who was cutting to goal.  I heard the Wayzata coaches appeal for offsides but again the flag stayed down.  I couldn’t tell if Millie was on or off, but in the end it didn’t matter as her first time shot from about 6 yards out hit the GK square in her hands.

The half ended 0-0 with hot and tired girls on both sides of the field.

At halftime, I addressed a few key points.

1. If our forwards are not making a play at a ball coming at one of the Wayzata defenders, they need to believe that the defender will miss it and our forwards may be off to the races.  Too many times our forwards were caught standing as long balls were played forward, only to be surprised and too slow to react once the balls were missed or misplayed by the opposing defenders.  I want our forwards to work hard and challenge every loose ball as even though they have a very slight chance of getting to the ball first, their pressure, or threat of pressure on an opposing defender may be enough to result in a forced or rushed clearance.  Either one means an increased chance that the defender will not be able to get a clean foot or header on the ball or will not be as accurate as when clearing a ball with zero pressure.
2. We need to continue to work on being proactive on the flanks.  Many times our central mids would look to change fields and a dangerous ball to the corners would be on.  However, our wide mids tend to be reactive instead of proactive.  Proactive would mean that they anticipate the ball coming their way, realize that the central mids 1) are changing fields, and 2) have time and space to play a long ball, and move to make the pass.  I want the run to make the pass, as opposed to the mid playing the ball then our wide mids running after it.
3. We had a couple breakdowns in the back due to lack of communication.  This is something I need to address prior to Regionals.

We continued to play fairly well in the second half.  We created a few dangerous chances that we just couldn’t capitalize on due to a breakdown in the last pass (isn’t it always on the last pass!).

Ten minutes from time we lost the ball in midfield.  Macky (CM) was battling for it and tripped over the ball.  Sophie (LD) started giggling at Macky’s flailing attempts to right herself and wasn’t able to pressure the Wayzata midfielder enough.  Macky got up and Sophie arrived only to both be split by some nifty skill by the Wayzata midfielder.  She started up field, beat Hannah (CD) and headed to goal.  Scratch (CD) came over quick as lightning to deny the shot, giving up a corner on our right side.  The corner kick was whipped in and headed clear by Maddie (LM).  She followed her header up the field as a Wayzata defender rushed to keep the ball alive in the danger area.  The Wayzata defender crossed/shot the ball from about 30 yards out into the far post side netting. Stuart, Tony’s (Wayzata’s Head Coach) would later dub this as a “crot” when we were chatting at the end of the game.  Regardless, they all count when they go in and we were down 1-0.

I thought about it for a second, then made the decision to press for the equalizer.  I motioned to Ripper on the bench and told her that we were going to pull Becs (RD) and go to 3 in the back. Ripper was going to go in up top as a third forward.

As I was busy explaining to Ripper for the third time who she was going in for and what formation we were going to move towards, frustrated that we had already missed one opportunity to make the sub due to Ripper’s confusion, the girls on the field surged forward from the throw in and were awarded with a corner kick of their own on the right side.

I can’t remember who took the kick (Jilly I think), but it wasn’t a good one.  Instead of falling into the danger area, it swung out to the top of the box.  We managed to keep it alive and send it back into the danger area, but it was then half cleared back to the top of the box.  Becs was sitting at the 18 and hammered a volley into the far post.  It was a great goal.  Isn’t that just the way it goes.  If Ripper had understood my instructions on the first go round, Becs wouldn’t have even been in the game at that point.  This is a funny game.

Game ended 1-1 in a hard fought battle.  I was a little disappointed in the result as I feel we are a better team, but Wayzata is a classy team all the way around, coach, manager, and players (to the extent that I know the players) and we will likely have many battles down the road.

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Up next we train Monday at Holy Angels, then see Woodbury on Tuesday it what will surly be another tough test.