Holiday Recap

I was afraid i would get in a position were i would forget to update or not find time to update and forget about some of the things i wanted to write so i will do my best on this recap. We had a very eventful time of the year i call winter break. Typically this time is a few days before, during and after Christmas to allow the boys some time off. This year i planned out to have the boys participate in two holiday tournaments the first being the NSC Holiday Classic and the second being the Soccer Blast Holiday Blast. Both were good opportunities to play some competitive games during a time when they are hard to come by.

We played our age group for the NSC tournament because we wanted to try and have success as we have been struggling in our league. Our tournament bracket did not feature any really strong teams so I was quite confident going in to the tournament. I was hoping we would match up with one of the teams that played in the fall harvest fest finals, i have been wanting to test the boys against the other top teams in the state. We ended up winning the tournament even though we did not play that well in the final game. We really worked on movement off the ball and how to find space with those movements. We talked a lot about moving to receive a pass but also moving to create space for a team mate. The discussions really paid off as we played some very attractive soccer, especially in the bracket games. We lacked the form we had in the pervious games when we played in the final, never less the team we played never really threatened us and a 4-1 score line was the result. Pleased that we played some really nice soccer for 3 out of the 4 games but we must improve and be able to play great soccer at anytime.

The second tournament at the Soccer Blast was a different story. The U11/U12 age group is put together for this tournament so i was expecting us to play mostly U12 teams. When the schedule was released I was proved right as we played two U12 teams and one U11 team. the game i was looking forward to the most was the U11 game because it was against Minneapolis United who won the fall harvest fest. We would finally get our chance to test against one of the best. Our first two games were a struggle as we played two of the top U12 teams from our Saturday morning league. We did well and held our own but in the end could not find a way to win. I am glad we get to play against U12's on a regular basis as it only helps us, this especially shows when we play teams of our age. The game against MU was a good one, a good test for us. We were able to win 4-1 and controlled most of the game and really set the tone. MU had a few good players but the team never really looked uncomfortable while we played them.

Our last event of the winter break was a scrimmage against the U11 Dakota Rev team. I feel like this team is in the top ten in the state so i thought this would be another good stepping stone for us. We started out a little flat, even with my consistent reminder on how we should set the tone in the first 5 minutes and look to make a statement. A small error in judgement led to a early Dakota Rev goal that was against the run of play. The goal actually turned out to be the worst thing they could have done as we fully woke up and took over play completely. The game finished up quite heavily in our favor. My favorite thing about this team is that we can put anybody pretty much any where and still play well. I believe this has a lot to do with the way we play in training, futsal, and indoor league games as we try and give each player the opportunity to play almost all the positions.  It was evident late in the game as we began to move players around a lot more just to kind of see what would happen.