This Friday set exactly the middle of the season, our 6th match and also the first time we faced WISS since they are new in the league. Before the match per se, I received the information from WISS about the strength of our team asking for a form of mercy rule. It’s understandable the concern considering that originally they were supposed to be in D2 but there is not enough teams for that division. The problem that I have with this is the fact it was not stated in the beginning of the season. It was just stated after we won our first match by 8 x 0. I always tell my players to follow the rules to the letter and this goes exactly against it. Besides that, if you have Louise in your team, be ready because she will make sure that rules are enforced. I am getting tired that in every single match I am  the evil one calling rules. Ball size, match length, substitutions and etc. I am pickier than you can imagine. I want our team to be impeccable. You can ask Inês how unhappy I was when she forgot her socks and played with blue socks. My philosophy with the football team is to teach the athletes not only on how to play the game but also life skills; responsibility, competitiveness and adaptation and I try my best to use those skills in the season.

WISS has a beautiful campus with many fields. We played on a grass field which is great but it was patchy and the grass a bit tall, which slows down the game tremendously, which by the end is bad for our fast team. What annoyed me the most was the size of the goal. It was absurdly small. By the rules, item 10.1 “goal size is 8 feet high and 24 feet (8 yards) in width”. There is no way this goal has 2+ meters high or 7 meters across. Mikayla could almost touch both bars when spreading open her arms and giving one step to only to the side. I am aware that the goal size is proportional to the size of the field but the goal we played is almost the size of the goals we have on the sidelines. Just as a reference, I measured our goals here and they have 2 meters high and 5.2 meter across. With a goal so small, no matter how good we are, makes much harder to score.

The match itself. WISS is not as weak as we were led to believe. They may not have a top team but they know the basics. They know how to pass and to position and in my opinion they are not the weakest team in the league. Besides that some of the players were former Rego players and they had played with Marta. This actually was an issue that I will address later. We started with Mikayla, Kathy and Greta defending; Louise center midfield, Inês right, Phoebe left and Marta as striker. We started the game very slow. There was no flow in our plays even if we kept most of the time the ball in our attacking half. With 5 minutes WISS showed they were physical by pushing Inês to the ground. Our first goal came from our first passing situation. Suh-Young stole the ball right after a goal kick, passed to the middle to Louise that brilliantly passed to our Cristiana Ronalda. Inês just had the trouble to push the ball inside the goal. 1x 0 . Around the 15th minute, already with Sinead on Inês position at the right wing, we had a corner kick which Louise took it. She crossed to Marta to was not able to trap but Suh-Young was close enough to push it inside the goal. 2 x 0.

Mikayla touched the ball first time around the 18th minute when one of their players passed by Katy and almost shot but Mikayla was faster than her. Right after that, around the 18th minute their player #10 if I am not mistaken got Louise’s ankle from behind, receiving the yellow card. It was the first yellow card from the whole season. As a matter of a fact, throughout the whole match they were “biting” ankles, specially Marta’s. Maybe because some of them played with Marta, they imagined that this would stop her and by stopping her, would slow our team down. Was just Marta touching the ball, two players were on her. It annoyed her tremendously which is the utter mistake you want to do. This motivates her even more to give it all with no mercy at all. Around the 25th minute, WISS defenders deflected a ball, Marta trapped, passed to  Suh-Young, once more very opportunistic, shot at goal. 3 x 0.

Second half (both halves unfortunately were only 30 minutes, not 35 as the rules asks) Maddi was in as defender and Hailey was right wing. As a matter of a fact, Hailey passed a beautiful ball that Inês got so surprised that shot the ball all the way back to Portugal. Inês blamed on the wind, which was actually against the shot. 🙂 To make it up for that, at the 12th minute Inês had a throw in where she was able to throw all the way inside the goal box, it bounced in front of Marta but Hailey did not miss the opportunity, goal! 4 x 0 SCIS.

The 5th goal for me was one the best. Marta pressured a defender, stole the ball, passed to her right where Hailey was. She pushed forward, waited the goalie to come out and passed to Inês, who was alone, in front of the goal. Amazing teamwork! SCIS 5 x 0. After this is a succession of shots from Marta at the goal. If the goal was the correct size, Marta would had scored at least a couple of goals. One shot was so powerful that all the audience was wowing. Do not worry, MartaMessi, there are some days that the ball will simply not go in, no matter how many times we shoot.

The most dangerous moment we suffered was a long shot that hit our crossbar but Mikayla, our 8th grader goalie was there to save the day and recovered, saving it. After that, Marta kept shooting, WISS defending until the match ended.

It was a odd match. We won, did not suffer that much pressure but we all felt something was not right. I enjoyed seeing Greta starting and seeing Maddi being solid defending. Both knows how to position themselves in the field. Greta just needs to time better when she advances towards the ball and Maddi needs to be a bit faster recovering.

We still have 6 matches to go and even though we won our past 6 matches, if we lose a single one of the upcoming matches, we can lose the league. We still did not play against the German school and they are the current SISAC Tournament champions. YCIS have a very solid team. It’s important to remember that last year we also beat them at YCIS and they killed us playing at our home. We are on the right track. Next week, two more matches, against French school at French school and WISS at home.

Goals: Inês (2), Suh-Young (2), Hailey
Assists: Marta, Louise, Hailey
MVP of the match: Inês