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

Oh my! Finally! No rain, not that cold (11 degrees) so a good day to play ball, right? Well, not really. First I had the wrong time of the match. I was sure it would be 4:15-4:30 but it was scheduled for 4pm. Second, the tents and chairs were not setup like normally we would have in a home game. With that, warm up was not exactly like I wanted it to be. Still, we were pumped up to perform well to our crowd. Our starting lineup was: Mikayla as goalie, Greta on the left, Tehillah on the right defending. Inês center midfield, alva on the right and Alva on the left with Franziska as striker. Bella is recovering and doing some health tests and Phoebe is away until tomorrow.

The French team it’s taller and physically stronger than ours. They have one or two players with certain skills but the rest of the team relies upon the old trick of “let’s get into their heads and destabilise their team” tactic. We have players are extremely light, like Wonder Alice and even Inês in that case. The first 5 minutes nothing really relevant happened with the exception of a Chinese lady jaywalking in the middle of the field. Can you believe in that?  At 7:30 minutes we finally had a shot at their goal. Alice had a throw in and Alva trapped with her back to their goal, spin to her left and shoot but the ball hits the pole and goes out. Very good chance.

We dominated the match but without being effective. The ball came to our box for the first time at 11 minutes and Mikayla had zero trouble to get it. As a matter of a fact, the French team did not shoot a single ball at Mikayla. Excusing some minor mistakes, we had a solid defensive system with Greta, Tehillah, Emma and Sinead helping there. As a matter of a fact, I need to praise Tehillah here. By the 15th minute she already nulled two or three possible dangerous attacks from them but wait, there are more to come on this Dutch girl.

At around the 18th minute we had a great chance. Inês shot a long ball and the French defender was there protecting the ball to go out and Franziska, our German Panzer fought for it, using her shoulders but she shot with her left foot so the ball was out. Great chance and presence or Franziska. 19th minute, another WOW moment; Inês shoots and arched ball that goes over the goalie but hits the crossbar but does not get in. VERY CLOSE! Wow!

Two relevant moments around the 25th minute. First was Suh-Young hitting the ball with a Ninja kick and hitting Louise’s coffee cup and spilling it all over her hair and the French coach saying that the match it’s supposed to be two halves of 25 minutes. Every year is the same. They NEVER abide by the rules. The first item of the SISAC rule is clear: “Each half will be two 35 minutes halves with a 5 minute interval for half time. The game length will be subject to ‘stoppage time’ (accounts for injuries, ball-outs, substitutions).” You can check the whole set of rules here.

One thing that I’ve noticed a couple of time was that the French girls were fast, even with the ball. There were moments that they were leaving their defensive field counterattacking and we were not able to catch them up, even with them controlling the ball. Alice had a hard time keeping it up with their number 4 and their number 17 was driving Inês crazy. Greta and Tehillah were doing a good job covering those counterattacking. One of those French attacks, their #1 (the most skilful one from their team) dribbled Suh-Young and Tehillah and passed to the middle, targeting their number 17 that was in our box, ready to strike. Kyra, that came in subbing Alice saved us by taking the ball out. Actually Kyra had a good chance to strike in a ball that was bouncing freely in the French box but she did not hit it perfectly so the ball was out of bounds.

The second half I had the same team that finished the first half and seemed to work at first. Kyra had three solid shots from the left but their goalie decided to work so it was hard to score. At the same time we applied more pressure at their goalkeeper, we started doing some basic positioning mistakes defending. For two or three times a French striker was alone close to our box. Luckily either she could trap the ball or Tehillah recovered and cut the pass.

At the 47th minute another long shot from our Portuguese brain from far. The ball hit the crossbar AGAIN! That was the third time. I started to get anxious and scared that this would be the first match since 2012 that would end in a tie in a league match.

Then a player started to shine. Our Unbreakable Dutch! Tehillah was hit on the stomach, fell on her face after being tripped, fell backwards and always stoop up with a smile on her face and ready to protect Mikayla. That’s the spirit, girl!

Finally all our pressure paid off. On a goal kick for the French team at the 54th minute, Hailey passed to Inês, who passed back Hailey on the right wing. She found Franziska in the box and with a  simply flick of her foot was able to finally break the French wall. 1 x 0 SCIS. Right after this, Franny Skywalker with her nebula cleats got a shot from the left side of the field which the French goalie saved with the tip of her fingers.

The most incredible chance came at around the 58th minute. Free kick to our team and Inês “Ronaldo” shoots to the box. A French defender head it backwards and falls on Alva’s foot. She took one second too long and when she shot the goalie saved literally on the line! WOW!

The most dangerous attack from the French team came right after. Tehillah lost the “time”of the ball and then we had three French players against Greta and… Great Greta saved! Way to go girl! Unfortunately right after that, she felt some pain on her ankle, the one she broke during the basketball season and I had to pull her out for the rest of the match. Emma came back and unfortunately had to listen to all kinds of curses said in French by the players. I am proud of my team that does not need to curse. I am 100% against it ALWAYS. There is no excuse for it, in any situation.

Nothing relevant happened until the end of the match. I did some experimentation with Inês as a striker while Franziska was the center midfield and I had also Sinead defending to take advantage of her good pass and her speed. One thing that I observed was the French tactics, specially their #17 if I am not mistaken. She was “bitting” Inês ankles constantly, like hitting with the tip of her cleats every time, just to annoy Inês. We have to forget about it and play our game. We also committed too many fouls (seven in total) because we were getting annoyed by their disruptive way of playing so we were pushing them away constantly.

I am sad because we will not have a practice before the next match, against SSIS away. We need to improve shooting desperately. SSIS have a very uneven field which makes trapping the ball even harder and I am very concerned about injuries there. Last year we lost Kyra and Phoebe there. Let’s hope all goes ok this time.

Goals: Franziska
Assists: Hailey
MVP of the match: Tehillah