State Cup Game #4 vs PSA

Gail force winds and chilly weather, typical Minnesota day in May.  I looked around my car and was glad to see that I had an extra jacket and my winter coat to put on.  I then scrummaged around my trunk and found my choppers to put on my hands.  

• For those of you not from MN, Choppers are leather mittens that keep sub zero weather from inducing your fingers to turn into icicles and snap off.

 I arrived at the fields for the 10am games and watched Mark's 12's play a great first half against Prior Lake's U13's that saw them advance to the Semi Finals tomorrow to play us.  I also saw EP score a late goal to defeat Rev 2-1 to set up the other semi final vs our White team, who beat Sibley 5-0.

The weather conditions and the condition of the field were going to play a big part in the game today, but I hoped that we would be able to adjust to the elements and finish off group play with a good game.

PSA had the wind the first half and we struggled to get the ball out of our end for the first 8 minutes.  We kept trying to string passes together from our own 18 but we were not switching the fields with our passes so PSA was able to get defenders around the ball and play it back towards our goal.

One possession that we had saw our CM fire a pass back to our central defender, a really hard pass, who was at our PK spot to keep possession and play out.  The pass caught our central defender off guard and her first touch went to a PSA player in the box.  AJ was alert and rushed out to cut off the angle.  Their girl was forced wide by AJ and LK came in behind her to make the tackle.

That was the wake up call we needed.  One minute later we scored a fantastic goal when our defenders played the ball up to Gaffer (Fwd) on the left side of the field 15 yards into our half.  Gaffer turned her defender and dribbled diagonally across the field drawing in PSA's center backs.  Kari (RM) sprinted up the right side as Gaffer dribbled and Gaffer slotted her the ball between the center back and their left defender.  Kari slowed down with her first touch to draw her defender in, then accelerated by her.  As the center defender stepped over to her, Kari faked inside and went around her on the end line.  She kept dribbling down the end line, towards the goal, and played a pass to LK (LD) on the far side of the box.  LK received the ball and played the ball back to Lydia (CM) who was just outside the top of the box.  She took a touch and put the ball in the upper right corner of the goal.

I am not sure, but I think LK was the player who played the first ball to Gaffer and proceeded to make the run all the way into the box from her left defender position.  Jordy, outside mid on that side, was also in the box for the cross.  This goal is the type of devastating full field movement that these girls are capable of producing.

Each time I see this I question if we should play a low pressure defense and let other teams attack us more because we are so good in transition.

The remainder of the first half saw us play marginally better, but it was not the level that I've come to expect from the girls.  Half time score was 1-0.

At half time we talked about passing the ball around more and making PSA chase us instead of always trying to go forward.  The girls took in the advice and the second half was much better as we strung passes together and moved the ball from side to side.

The ball movement led to a handful of chances.  Carly was able to score off a rebound in the box with a left footed volley.  She has been working really hard in training the last two weeks on her finishing and it was nice to see it come through in the goal.

That goal was the 14th goal that we scored in our 4 group games.  We've had 9 different players score.  One of this team's greatest strengths is that so many girls can score goals and we do it in a variety of ways.  

Looking back over our State Cup games I think that, because we are working on scoring goals in a variety of ways and through a variety of players, we have not scored as many goals as we could if we just focussed on one way to score.  I keep reflecting on the fact that in the short term, (this U13 year) that the emphasis on finding different ways to do things might not achieve the same results as if we focussed on a certain style, but I really believe that we will be more dangerous for years to come because we will be able to adapt to any situation and have a number of girls who will be able to step up when we need them.

The game finished 2-0.  The girls were very excited to get out of group play with 4 wins and move onto the semi finals.  I told our girls how important it was that our defenders (Brownie, AJ, Jazzy, Taz, Bella, Becks, and Lydia) kept their focus and kept the clean sheet.  It is important that the girls recognize how large their contribution is to the team's overall performance and style of play.  

During the game Blitz and Kari found some time to dance:

Tomorrow we play the U12's.  We know better than anyone else because of last year, that this will probably be our toughest game in State Cup.  The 12's have a very skilled team and they have an incredible history of digging deep down and fighting to win a lot of high level tournaments.  We will have to finish the chances that we create if we expect to move on to the final.

Midfield and Forward Combinations To Goal

I. Sprint Form With Evan

II. Juggling/Long Balls

III. 6v4 Patterns and Live to Goal

Same exercise as yesterday with one new pattern.  The girls were very poor during this and I got on them during the exercise and demanded that they be sharper.  I understand that the pattern play may not be the most exciting thing against dummy defenders.  But when it comes through in a game, it looks very cool and it works.

As a group, these girls respond to being challenged.  I talked to the girls about demanding the best out of themselves and their teammates.  When things can be better I don't want them to be complacent and say it's ok.  I want them to challenge their teammates to raise their level.  I want them to be fiery and have an intense drive to perform at a high level.

When we switched to the live 6v4, the girls continually improved.  They changed from performing poorly in the beginning to playing some very good soccer.  Players who can fix problems and adapt are the type players we are looking for.

IV. 7v7 Scrimmage

Midfield and Forward Combinations To Goal &Scrimmage vs U16's and Gophers: 5/11

Evan led the training yesterday because I was with the 16's in their second State Cup game.  They won and are in control of their group after their first two games.

Training Today

I. Juggling/Ball Striking With One Touch Back

II. Defending Corner Kicks

A little refresher to make sure we are sharp this weekend.  We have only faced 2 corner kicks in State cup and neither of them made it past our first defender so I wanted to make sure the girls knew their responsibilities in case we have to defend any of these in our semi final game.

III. 6v4 Pattern Play: Midfield and Forward Combinations 

I wanted to really start to build on the movement between our midfielders and forwards today.  I wanted to give the girls lots of repetitions with some different patterns, but I wanted to have defenders involved so they would see the picture that I wanted.  In order to do this I decided to play 6v4 to Goal with the patterns.

Set Up

• 4 Red Defenders and a Goalie
• 6 Blue Attackers (2 Fwds, 4 Mids)

Procedure

• Attackers play through a set pattern.  In this example it is CM-LM-Fwd-LM 
• The defenders allow the pattern to happen but they work hard to make the picture realistic for the attackers.  In this scenario the RD on Red would go out to pressure Blue's LM when she receives the ball and the give and go would be done around her.
• After the pattern is completed (in this case the give and go gets completed and the LM has the ball) we go live to goal with the defenders trying to win the ball.

Make It Competitive

• 1 point for a shot on goal
• 3 point for a goal
• Thinking about it now I should have added a bonus point if the pattern was done well

We went through 3 different patterns.

Go Live With It

To end the exercise the defenders were live from the beginning.  The attackers had to read the defense and pick the correct pattern to use.  

IV. Scrimmage vs U16 Blues and Gophers

For the last 25 minutes of training we scrimmaged the 16 Blues.  The 16's had 3 current Gopher players playing with them today.  The Gophers really raised the level of their play.  AP from the 16's scored a great header goal in the run of play.  The 13's didn't back down from the older girls and Carly took out one of the Gophers on a tackle.  It was definitely a foul but I love to see how hard the girls play.  Jazzy also had a sweet nutmeg in the game. Eckstrom looks amused while surrounded by the 13's

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.

Combination Play and Rainbows Training 5/6

I was not sure if we'd be able to get very much of our training in today as dark clouds continued to creep closer during the 16's 5pm training session.  We were at 6:30 and I had guessed that we might be able to go until 7 before we would get stormed out.  But fortune smiled on us with only a little bit of rain we were able to get through the entire session.

I want to start going back to our combination play and use that while giving the girls some ideas for how we can break down teams that we keep pinned in their end.

I.  Sprint Form Work With Evan

II. Barcelona Double Give & Go's

The girls have seen this on some of the videos that we watch.  It is very hard for the defenders to track the outside mid when she comes into the middle.
We worked on this for at least 30 minutes with a couple of variations including the outside mid playing to the center mid and continues her run to the middle.  The CM plays the forward who lays it off for the outside mid.

III.  Rainbow picture

The ominous clouds that we had seen before and during training had gone by us and created a beautiful double rainbow behind our field.  We stopped to take a picture.  Unfortunately I could only get one of the rainbows in the shot.

IV. 7v7 With Wide Players

Each team provided 2 crossers that could not defend.  You had to play a crosser before going to goal.

V. 7v7 Scrimmage