NSR Cup Game #1 vs Chicago Kickers

Final: Bangu 3 Chicago Kickers 0

Finally we had a great day to play soccer. The weather was perfect. 70 degrees and sunny, it couldn't get any better. Quite a change from last weekends rain soaked fields. I left the hotel early so I could go watch the other two teams in our group the Rockford Sirens and Eclipse Select. As I looked at my map I remembered that the maps the tournament gives us would be better if 3rd graders did them. Most tournament maps say that they are not to scale, but these maps are ridiculous. One inch can mean either 1 mile or 15 miles. We are at the check in hotel and it is 30 minutes to the fields.

The Sirens vs Eclipse game was controlled by the Sirens. They have a very, very good sweeper and some fast wingers who are able to cross the ball in with great accuracy. They scored 2 great goals in the first half from this. We will have to watch their wingers and be facing up field to deal with the crosses as they come into our box.

After the first half of the Sirens game I went to help Mark with our U11 Blue team. They played a pretty good team from Nebraska who had a very good center mid. They prevailed in the end 4-0. Good start to the tournament for us. Then our U11 White team played a Sirens team and they ended up winning 4-1. A very good start to the tournament for us. After having the U12’s watch parts of these games we left to go to our field and get ready for our game against the kickers.

We are starting to change our mentality in warm ups with this team. In the past we have allowed them to mess around a bit and their focus would come in and out resulting in some good warm ups and some very sub par warm ups. Starting today I stressed that the second we say that we are going to get ready to play there is a switch in their heads that turns on and blocks everything out that has nothing to do with how we are going to play. There is only talk about how we are going to play in the formation that we are starting in and how we are going to adapt. The girls talk a lot about the “Ifs.” “If this happens we need to do this to react to this.” “If we can do this we will be successful.” It seemed to work well and our warm up was pretty sharp with no distractions.

We were going to start out in a 4-4-2 and hopefully get our defenders working well enough so we could switch to a 4-3-3. The idea was to give our defenders a little extra help by having 4 midfielders until I was satisfied with our defenders being able to shift quickly and fill the right gaps. I wanted to be able to get to 3 forwards because we have done a lot of work on using a 3 forward system and I love the chances that playing with 3 forwards creates for us on quick counter attacks. But even though we were only starting with two forwards I feel that we have two very good forwards, Maddie B and Jordy, who can cause tons of problems all by themselves, so I figured we would still be able to create chances with two forwards.

3 minutes into the game problems were created for the Kickers by Maddie B racing down the field with the ball, on the verge of being out of control with her legs moving at such a speed that it looks like her head and upper body are struggling to keep up with the speed of her legs. As she flew down the wing she crossed the ball into Jordy who got a quick touch and a shot that was blocked. But the rebound came right to Gaffer and she slotted the ball into the net for a 1-0 lead.

Great warm up= Great start.

Eight minutes later Maddie B zipped down to the endline where she stopped the ball and continued three yards out of bounds. The defender who was chasing her picked up the ball and looked to clear it. But just as she was about to kick it, Maddie B had come back onto the field and partially blocked the clearance and it went straight to Gaffer. Gaffer took a great first touch, looked up and laced the ball into the far upper corner for her second goal in 8 minutes.

We spent the rest of the first half trying to get our outside backs used to getting up the field when the ball is on their side of the field. We want them to act as outside midfielders and get forward every chance they can when the ball is on their side of the field. As this happens we want our other 3 defenders to be shifting over to cover for her and play as if we only have 3 defenders. While we haven’t grasped the concept of how and when to go forward with our outside backs, the other 3 defenders were doing a great job of getting over to cover for her.

The only chance that Chicago had was on a corner kick that they laced to the near post and Kari who was on the post jumped up and headed the ball clear. Great play by Kari.

At half time we talked about switching to our 4-3-3 and how important it was that our defenders shift quickly because we don’t have outside mids in this formation. We also stressed the importance that our 3 center mids need to always be aware of where each other are so we can keep balanced.

The points that we covered from the first half were:

-Communication. We were doing a decent job of talking, but it was too quiet. People were giving good information, but a lot of the team was unable to hear them.

-Facing up field on defense as much as possible. Beat your girl to where she wants to get to so you don’t end up chasing her to our goal.

-Continue to win the ball with hard tackles.

The second half began pretty well for us in our new formation. Our 3 center mids: Maddie V, Bella, and LK did a good job of making sure that one of them was always central. We were able to keep the ball in their end for most of the half with the pressure that our forwards were putting on their defenders. The couple of times that they actually did get the ball down to our half we were able to counter with great pace. In the 12^th minute Ricky won the ball in our half and played a great ball down the line to our center forward Jordy, who had made a great diagonal run to the line when she saw that Ricky was going to win the ball. Proactive running. Jordy blew by their last defender and went in on a breakaway and she shot high, going for the upper corner. The goalie made a great save on it, but Mack, our far forward, had worked hard to join up with Jordy on her break away and her long run was rewarded when she volleyed the rebound into the back of the net for a 3-0 lead.

We were able to keep Chicago away from our net and in the end we only gave up 2 shots and 2 corners for the entire game. A great defensive effort led by our goalie AJ who organized our defense and kept all the girls properly marked up.

Up next for the girls, shopping. They told me that this was a very important shopping weekend since school starts up on Tuesday. I reminded them that they were only 11 and 12 years old but that just drew some looks that informed me that it doesn’t matter how old a girl is. Clothes are important.

We have Eclipse tomorrow morning and Sirens tomorrow night. Good start, hopefully we’ll keep it going.