3/14 St Cloud Friendlies Game #2 vs U14 Blue

The good part about having games video taped is that it is really cool to watch the game again.  The bad part is that it takes a lot of time to go back through and put everything together.  So with that in mind I am just getting to post our game against the 14 Blues from St Cloud now.

After our game against Mequon, Cook, Young Kim, and I all had dinner and talked about the games from the day.  Cook thought that we showed a lot of skill on the ball, but we needed to be more direct and get the ball forward quicker.  I told him that I didn't disagree with him, but that at this age I'd rather have kids who are showing skill on the ball every time they get it than have kids who play one and two touch soccer.  I believe it is a lot easier to teach girls when to pass as they get older than it is to teach them when/how to beat players.

In our game against Mequon, recap here, we spent the entire first half showing skill in our end and did not get anywhere.  The second half was a little better, but not much.  For the rest of the weekend I decided to have us focus on finding our forwards as quickly as possible so we could move up field faster.  I told our forwards that I didn't want them to take off on their own, unless they had an odd man rush, but to hold the ball up so we could attack as a team.

We also switched from our 4-3-3 into a 4-4-2.  The reason I had gone with the 4-3-3 originally was because it is much harder to pass the ball when you don't have wingers.  It requires a lot of movement.  I was happy with how much we moved off the ball against Mequon and felt that now we could play with outside mids while still keeping our movement up.

Switching to a 4-4-2 will really help us to exploit our 1v1 and 2v2 skill out on the wing, so this formation will really play to our strengths.

Today's game against the 14's was the game that I was looking forward to the most for this weekend.  They are a really good team and they challenge us.  Plus, we play our best against good teams.  Because we have the video highlights I'm going to save some time and not recap the game, but finding our forwards earlier really seemed to work for us producing 3 goals from our front runners.

For best viewing be sure to click on the full screen button:)

First Half Highlights 

U13 Blue vs U14 Blue 1st Half Highlights from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

2nd Half Highlights

U13 Blue vs U14 Blue 2nd Half Highlights from Andy Kaasa on Vimeo.

Comments

[Jenna R.]

This was a fun game, thanks for showing some of our highlights too.s