Going to Suzhou it’s always a pain in the neck, considering the almost two hours trip back and forth. It would be very frustrating to go there and come back with a defeat. Besides that, this match was kind of important to us considering that if we won, we would be champions of the West League two years in a row even with one match left in the season.
The day started with the bad news that Wonder Alice was sick so she would not be at school today. Five minutes before catching the bus, Greta tells me that she had to be at the strings’ concert. On top of that, Mr. Reimer told me that there was a problem with the busses. I just told him that we cannot lose a match because of that but he was on it and managed to solve the situation brilliantly. We had a very tiny bus but with a great driver. At least he knew how to arrive there and we arrived fairly early (3:30PM).
We started with Bella, Mikayla and Tehillah, Suh-Young (she was great on the practice the day before), Inês, Kyra and Franziska as striker. From Suzhou, the whole team was new and during the warm up, I could notice that their goalie was fairly good. Besides that, they had two tall and strong players, stronger than the French players we faced first match. Beautiful weather to play ball with a nice sun. I even said during my prematch speech that the football Gods were blessing our match with the beautiful weather so would be a great day to be champions.
But we are focused and we want to win. Unfortunately, we were so focused that we forgot to film the first five minutes of the match. Without our camerawoman Lily Briggs, we are nothing. Don’t fool yourselves, in those five minutes we missed a goal! Inês assisted our German Panzer and boom! 1 x 0 SCIS Hongqiao. What made me very happy on this goal was not only Franziska keeping her amazing mark of scoring a goal every match but Inês happiness to assist Franziska. She ran toward us saying “My assist! My assist!” that’s what every coach dreams about; a team that players are worried about doing well their jobs, not only scoring goals.
With 13 minutes, started down pouring. To coach under a weather like that, it’s … wet. I gave my jacket to protect the camera and I was soaking wet.
The kept the full control of the match, pushing forward. Their field is very unique. There is no small box and the goal box is huge. It’s short but very wide and with a very big and dangerous hole on one of the sides. With 22 minutes. Franziska fought for a ball on the right side of attack, passed to Inês who shot a ball full of curve and fooled the goalie. 2 x 0. Inês and Franziska were unstoppable this match! I guess it’s the fact IB Mock Exams were over, they were much lighter to play.
With 5 minutes to end the first half, Hailey (as a striker) shot a ball and the goalie deflected it but Inês was there and she got one of her crazy shots that the ball does a parabola out of the reach of the goalie. It’s her trademark considered she scored a goal like that 4 years ago during ACAMIS finals. So, 3 x 0 Hongqiao and end of the first half. We had one of our hands on the trophy already and all the Amazon Warriors had time on the pitch, showing how strong this team is.
The second half, when you could expect us to slow down and hold the score, Franziska was thinking differently. She kept pressuring and with 3 minutes already shot two or three balls at the goal. There were moments we were with four attackers against three. I was testing Phoebe as the right wing (her position last year) and Hailey as the left with Franziska as striker. While Phoebe was very comfortable on the right, Hailey was suffering to play on the left (it was her first time). Still she manage to get a volley shot that was super cool. But cool was the next goal. With 50 minutes into the match, Hailey deflected a ball, that ended up with Franziska on the center midfield. She passed to Inês and started sprinting to the right of the field. Our Portuguese brain, with one surgically precise pass, assisted Franziska face-to-face with the goalie. Our German Panzer instead of shooting a cannonball, softly touched out of reach, on the ground by the right side of the goalie. 4 x 0 SCIS. This dynamic duo was on fire! It’s the goal of the match. Exactly what we practiced the day before. I’ve watched this goal already 5 times here while writing this post. So proud!
After that, it was time to experiment many things, one of them was Mikayla as midfield and defending Emma and Tehillah. Poor Mikayla was completely lost. I am extremely amazed how solid Mikayla is as the first defender. She antecipates perfectly and is working very well with Tehillah.
If you think that the match was over, well, you forgot to tell our German Panzer. On the last minute, Tehillah deflect the ball from our own goalie box and Franziska got the ball alone on the center midfield. Alone, in the middle of three defenders, she shot, the ball ricocheted from one of them and … GOAL! Hat trick to our German Panzer, the leader of our blitzkrieg on Suzhou’s defensive system. 5 x 0 and end of the match.
So my Amazon Warriors, the Gods wanted you to have 10 days to celebrate our first title of the season. We still have two to conquer and we will have to fight even harder. This season we are even better than the last one, if that’s possible. Congratulations to us all! As for me, I decided to celebrate with a nice Haiku banquet, with enough rolls to feed me for a week!
BELLATORUM INVICTUM! Literally.
Goals: Inês (2), Franziska (3)
Assists: Inês (2), Franziska
MVP of the match: Franziska