State Cup Game #3 vs Edina

I was very excited for today's game because our training sessions have been going very well, we are getting used to playing against Minnesota teams from our age group, and if we won today we would pretty much clinch the group title.

We started the game out playing brilliantly.  The Give & Go Skillzy® was on our list of Skillzys® today and we had 6 in the first 30 minutes of the game.  All of the movement led to a bunch of chances.  5 minutes in Bella (CM) chipped the ball through to Gaffer who rounded the goalie and finished into the empty net.

26 minutes in Bella (CM) played the ball into Sonic (FWD) who slotted Gaffer (FWD) through with a one touch pass.  Gaffer hammered the ball off the crossbar but Sonic had followed up the play and headed the ball in for a two goal lead.

It was great for Sonic to score a goal.  She has had a very long comeback from a knee injury that came to light 14 months ago.  It was also great to see our forwards combining with each other.  Blitz and Gaffer combined numerous times in the opening 20 minutes and the goal came from another combination.  The more we can get our forwards to play together, the more dangerous we will be.

3 minutes later we scored a fantastic goal that is up for our goal of the year.  Jordy started the movement with a throw in deep in Edina's half.  She threw the ball into Sonic who cut the ball and played Becks (CM) who was on top of the 18.

 I was certain Becks was going to shoot the ball as she ran up to it, but at the last second she hit a one touch pass to Taz (RD) who had ran up to join the play as the ball went to Becks.  Taz played a one touch Cristiano Ronaldo Cruyff pass to Jordy who one touched the ball into Gaffer who had run into the space that Sonic had left after her pass.  Good dynamic movement from our forwards.  Gaffer took a touch and bent the ball towards the far post for our third goal of the game.

One minute after our goal Edina had a throw in deep in our end.  I made some subs and we tuned out on the throw in leaving an Edina player wide open on the end line.  She received the ball, turned and hit a shot straight at AJ.  At the last second AJ moved out of the way and the ball went into the net for a goal.  AJ told me later that she thought the ball was going to go wide.

I was pretty upset at the fact that we had tuned out and let that goal happen.  When half time came I had a stern talk with Brownie and AJ about communicating more and making sure that mental lapses do not happen.  I also reminded the girls that when you are subbed in, it is your job to have an impact on the game.  If you go in and we get scored on immediately because of a mental lapse you might find yourself back on the bench until you are mentally prepared to play.

Besides that goal, we had played really well.  The combinations were fantastic and our finishing was getting better.  We wanted to keep that up and make sure to end the game early in the second half with another goal.

We got that goal 15 minutes into the 2nd half when Becks sent Gaffer through on a break away.  Edina's keeper made a good first save and pushed the ball out wide.  Gaffer was the first one to the ball, but she was running to the corner.  Instead of cutting the ball, she turned around and hit a one touch shot that floated over the keepers head into the far corner.

We continued to press after we scored and we had multiple chances.  Edina had one chance when we lost the ball in back and their forward picked up the loose ball but hit her shot wide of the target.  Despite all of our chances we had too many shots go straight to Edina's goalie and were not able to score any more goals.  

After the game I was talking to Eric Singer and he had only seen Edina score one and us score one.  He thought that the game had ended in a tie because of how hard the girls were pressing to score another goal.  That was probably the best comment I have heard about the girls.  The fact that they were up 4-1 and were still looked like they were playing as hard as they possibly could.

Along with our End Line Cross, Early Cross, and Give and Go Skillzy's for the game I awarded Taz a Ronaldo Skillzy for her Ronaldo Cruyff pass to help set up the goal and Gaffer a Ronaldo Skillzy for her hat trick.

PSA and St Croix tied on Sunday so we have won our group with one game to go.  We will either play our U12's or Prior Lake's U13's in the semi final next Sunday.