Today my team played by music. It was a marvellous presentation. Ok, their team still in formation (mostly 8th and 9th graders) but I did not want to tell their coach that our goalie is a 9th grader and in certain moments of the match the majority of our team on the field were 9 and 10 graders.
Anyway, let’s talk about the match. Second trip (first was Dragons Cup), second time the bus driver gets lost. Please. GPS! Phoebe saved us this time. If I ever lose a match because were arrived late somewhere, I will die. The start lineup today:. Mikayla as goalie then defending Greta and Tehillah. My midfield were the old people: Kyra on the left, Inês center, Suh-Young right and Franziska as a striker. We had to play with bibs because they were also with the red jersey. Their coach brought something up interesting; in the rules says that the home team plays with the bright colours. Her uniform is red or blue and for her, the red is the brightest color. Our uniforms are white and red so whenever playing away, we use the red one. Anyway, since Emma and Greta hadn’t got their customised jersey, it was ok to wear the bibs.
Be ready to read a loooooooooong post. The score was kind of…elastic. It took a little while to start but with 7 minutes and a half, Kyra crossed a ball to Franziska in the box, she kind of trapped/passed the ball to Suh-Young and our Killer Asian struck a ground shot towards the left side of the goal. 1 x 0.
SSIS was ready to defend but at the same time they gave us a lot of space, which is lethal to a team who likes to pass the ball so much. Their striker was not even in our half of the field. I have to say though we were playing in a 11 aside field, which helps A LOT our way of playing. On the minute 13:16 Franziska cross to Kyra on the left and our Glass Head had all the time in the world to trap, prepare her lethal left foot and… goal! 2 x 0.
17th minute, Franziska fights for a ball on the left, dribbles one midfielder and shoots a torpedo but the goalie deflects it. Hailey, in the box, tries to shoot but a defender once more gets in the way. The ball ends up on the right foot of our Inês Ronaldo; with a ground shot, scores our third go. 3 x 0.
Right after that goal, SSIS scared us with their center midfield (#14). She dribbled Hailey, Greta, fought for the ball and won against Tehillah and ended up face to face with Mikayla but… shot out of bounds. Lucky us. Anyway, 1 minute later, we scored one more goal. Franziska, from the right, gave a beautiful pass to inês in the middle and our Portuguese did not waste the chance, a high shot on the upper left corner. 4 x 0.
On the 23rd minute, SSIS started to surround our goal box but we, if you allow me to use a basketball term, “boxed them out” with Phoebe, Emma and Alva. They did not have a chance of shooting at our goal. With a fast counter-attack, we pushed them back into their defensive system and they did not leave until the end of the first half.
27th minute a beautiful play between Hailey and Inês. After a throw in by Inês, Hailey back heeled to Inês that shoots a high ball that hits the connection between the right pole and the cross bar. Alva was there but she did not had the chance to trap or push the ball inside. It was soooo close! But don’t get sad. One minute later, Inês with a pass finds Hailey inside the box. Our happy American spins and shoots. 5 x 0 on the score. After that the referee asked us to slow down. I knew when he said that, he would shorten the match and that’s exactly what happened, first half ended with 30 minutes.
If the first half was easy for us, the second half became a matter of trying to help everybody to score a goal. With less than a minute, Alva had to shoot twice to score her first goal in the season. Congrats, super happy Alva! 6 x 0.
But our happy Swedish was impossible today. She got a ball from the left, passed to Franziska in the middle. Our delicate German Panzer passed a sugared pass to Inês, that just waited Alva to sprint from the left and voilá! Alva’s second goal and 7 x 0 for us. Ibrahimović would not had done better.
Our 8th goal belongs to our striker. Kyra fought and stole a ball in our defensive left side, pushed forward and passed to Franziska in the middle. They left our German Panzer alone to take her time to trap, spin and rotate. This is lethal. Powerful shot on the right side of the goalie.
After that I started to test players in different positions. I placed Greta as left wing, Hailey as Striker, Alva as right wing. Greta almost scored on a rebound of the goalie after a shot from Alva. Don’t feel sad. 10 minutes into the second half, another Barcelona-like tiki-taka passing. Inês passes to Hailey while Alva is sprinting towards the box. Happy Gribble passes to Happy Alva and she makes Hongqiao happy. Alva’s hat trick and SCIS 9 x 0.
After the goal, Alva came off to give the right wing to Alice and teach me some Swedish command words to help giving instructions to Alice (snabbare, skjut) but my very unique pronunciation did not help at all. Anyway, besides Alice on the right, Tehillah was striker and Kyra went back to her 9th grade position; left defender. Did not take too long to Inês to find Tehillah alone in the small box. The first goal of the season of our Unbreakable Dutch! 10 x 0. SSIS was not even trying anymore. I asked the team to pass more and more.
Then finally at the 24th minute of the second half our Wonder Alice scores her first goal in the season. Franziska passes a high ball to the edge of the box, Alice fights for it and ends up alone, face-to-face with the goalie and without any mercy, shoots. 11 x 0 for us.
We had the incredible number of 36 shots at goal. More incredible than this was after SSIS put the ball in the middle, Tehillah simply stole it, dribbled 4 players from SSIS, dribbled the even the referee and scored a goal that Snjeider and van Persie would be extremely proud! Wow!
Seems that Alice envied Tehillah and decided to do something similar. Inês found our Wonder Alice alone in the middle. She trapped the ball, dribble one, two SSIS players, nobody approached so she pushed forward, when in front of the goalie, just shot with her left foot and scored her second goal. Yes, 13 x 0 . SSIS team gave up, they were not even running anymore while our team never stops. I’ve asked them to pass more, to slow the game, but without the other team pressuring us, with two or three touches we were in their goal box. I subbed Alice and put Emma as a striker to see if she would score her goal but the referee ended the match with 7 minutes to end the second half.
Some people may ask; “Why do you keep pushing forward against a team that it’s clearly weaker than you?” My reason is simple. I think it’s a lack of respect if we start just passing or “having fun” in the field. We treat every team the same. We respect all of them the same way and we will play our best all the time. What I do is whenever we have a solid advantage on the score, I test players in different positions like today with Alice and Tehillah as striker and Greta as left wing. What we did not have chance was to test our defensive system. Mikayla touched the ball precisely 4 times and Phoebe, Greta, Emma and Tehillah had minimum work back there. The highlight of the match were the amazing passes from Inês. Incredible! Like Oscar from Brazil and Iniesta from Spain/Barcelona. Passing like that, our strikers will score a truckload of goals.
Goals: Suh-Young, Kyra, Inês (2), Hailey, Alva (3), Franziska, Tehillah (2), Alice (2)
Assists: Franziska (4), Inês (4), Kyra
MVP of the match: Inês