So the day that I did not want to arrive, it’s here. The last practice ever. I say “ever” because I am not going to coach after SCIS. It’s too much stress and commitment. Besides that, where will I find an amazing group of athletes like this one?

So today we started with a meeting my class to go through the ACAMIS info and plans of what we should do during the competition. After that, once more practicing tactics. This time, it was perfect! Everybody executing their role perfectly. We played three quarters of 20 minutes and I had the chance of playing with the girls for one last time. It was really cool. It was also very fun to see Hailey as a goalie for a while.

After the tactics practice, penalty kicks. First I wanted to be no goalies. I put a small goal inside the big one, leaving just two little spaces on the sides so they would be forced to take it out of the middle. The girls complained and someone asked me to be goalie. Well, I used to be a goalie a looooooong time ago so it was an interested challenge. I defied them; whoever could score two goals on me on a row, could leave. Congrats to Inês, that finally after 4 years was able to finally score a goal on me. 🙂 I did not want my goalies to be in the goal because our turf hurts and defending 40+ penalty kicks can be very harsh and painful. Also, they need to practice taking the penalty kicks because there is a chance in the game that they will have to shoot. I already have in my mind who will be at least the first 3 takers will be.

Well, we are ready for ACAMIS.In Beijing we will have the chance of making history once more and there is no better group of athletes to make it possible. My Amazon Warriors, 7 more battles to the Olympus!

This practice was doomed to not be good since the inception. The girls were eager to participate in a friendly volleyball tournament organized by a student as his CAS hour project. I don’t mind at all my athletes participating in other activities. What annoys me is the fact they would MISS my practice to do that. Other coaches strictly forbidden athletes to participate in other sports at all.

Anyway, we reached a consensus where I would finish practice early (5PM instead of 6PM) so they could go there. My main goal in this practice was to train new formations, specially hamburger one where we need to stay back all the time.

It was a disaster.After three or four minutes, Mikayla was not feeling well and asked to rest a bit. Having to adapt Inês as the third person on the defensive system was not what I expected and also some players where not with their mind in the practice. To make things worse, Kyra started to feel pain due to shin splints. It was very frustrating for me because I’ve felt that most of the girls did not want to be there and we had a GREAT chance of practicing defensive system with Marta being here. She is fast and she can dribble so if we could hold her back, it will prove that the system worked. After one hour of practice I’ve noticed that things would not work out so I’ve ended it, kind of disappointed with my athletes, which is something extremely rare.

I thought a lot what was the reason and what I did wrong and what was frustrating me. Since I am the talkative one, I’ve decided to address it. I’ve talked to the players that kind of disappointed me and explained my reasons behind the practice. They all responded really well about my concerns, restoring my confidence that we are all here with the objective to make this team the best possible. Anyway, we have one practice left and I hope we are really focused on that one. Before that, time to celebrate in our international dinner! At least was fun seeing the girls enjoying themselves playing volleyball, specially Bella (that never played) on court with her football cleats.

The main challenge after 4 years coaching is to create engaging and at the same time productive drills. For me the basic thing to be a good team is passing and to have good passing, we need to be extremely confident trapping the ball and conducting it without having to look down all the time.

With that on mind, first I did a sequence of drills where the players have to “comb” the ball and speeding up with the ball as close as to your feet. We only have more two practices and I know nobody will learn anything new but with practice we can improve and we MUST improve. Unfortunately we had only one hour of practice so I could not spend too much time on that.

After this drill, was about passing, sprinting and trapping the ball, calculating the steps so you would not lose speed. Then came the fun drill. I moved the small goals to the field and they became “defenders”. I would pass (then later Inês), close to the defender and the players had, with one simple touch, take it off the “defender” and with two more touches, shot at a goal with a very narrow space. The dribble was great, most of the players managed to do but the shot at goal was a disaster. I think only one or two players got the shot perfectly.

To close the practice, we had a different scrimmage. Considering I did not have Bella, Suh-Young and Tehillah (all sick) The ball must be on the ground at all times and we could only score goals in the SMALL box so passing was key. If the ball was two palm of ground, would be a free kick. I have to say that Inês suffered a bit on that. 🙂 I felt it was EXTREMELY productive, forcing us to really focus on passing constantly. My dream is to have our team passing like the Spanish National Team where they have almost 80% of the ball possession. We have the basic skills. Now we need to have the nerves of steel and confidence to do it.

On the worrisome note, seems that Kyra still is not 100% of her left leg. I’ve notice on her shots that was not full power. Hope it’s nothing serious. Anyway, two more practices to the last tournament ever in China and probably my last tournament as a coach too. Time to face other challenges in life and sincerely, after those four years coaching the perfect team, what else could I coach?

Practice today was supposed to be tactics and then a light scrimmage. We started with basic drills of passing and running in a triangle. Took me a while just to lay down the cones since we had so many people to practice (Julia and MartaMessi were extras there today). We did that for long, around 10-15 minutes.

Then we practice A LOT corner kicks. After all, we scored two goals against SMIC through corner kicks. We had to practice 5 from each side with Kyra and 5 with Inês. After that, time for a scrimmage.

Then, things started getting wrong. I’ve noticed my already pale Swedish Black Spider even paler. Worst, she was not shouting. Bella not shouting, something is wrong. I’ve asked if it was all ok, she said she was feeling dizzy and wanted to throw up. I told her to step out of the field and rest a little. She almost fainted on the grass behind the goal. I decided to move her to the nurse, where she could stay laying down more comfortably.

Practice followed up. Marta, playing for the red team, was driving the defenders crazy, specially Phoebe but she was not scoring so Phoebe was actually doing her job right. It was definitely a productive practice. It was great to see our Happy Viking playing well as a center midfield. At the same time the dynamic between Inês and Franziska is getting better and better.

After practice, the extremely kind and polite Bonhommes gave me and Bella a ride, so I could help her to get home. I am glad to know that Bella is feeling much better and maybe she can return to practice on Friday.

Day before SISAC. Here I am at 1:47AM writing this post. Ok, being sincere, I still suffering from jetlag so I took a 2 hours power-nap before but still super focused on the competition tomorrow.

Today we had a 45 minutes about how the tournament will be, explaining the format and the brackets, specially to the newcomers (Alva, Emma, Greta, Alice, Mikayla & Tehillah). Our first match will be against SMIC. We actually played once against them two SISACs ago and we won 2 x 0. They were 4th place on the East site of the river so technically we have the odds in our favour but we know how those short tournaments works, right? Not going so far back, last year YCIS Puxi had a very strong team but lost to SMIC if I am not mistaken on the penalty kicks.

There is no question that the pressure is on us. We are the undefeated team. We are the current champions. As a matter of a fact, there are few players in the current league that can tell that they defeated the Amazon Warriors. But you know what? We can handle this pressure. We are mature enough, we are well prepared for it. We just have to control the match and play our game.

Let’s make Saturday, April 12th, a day to be remembered. BELLATORUM INVICTUM!

I was not in the mood of being playful today. Our below average (by my insane standards) performance against German school trigger the alert in me that we may be accommodating, relying upon our past laurels. Ok, I am being a bit overdramatic. Let’s recap how was it.

We had two illustrious participations in this practice. One from our Defensive Rock Katy Ni and from our one and only MartaMessi. We started with basic passing drills using the inside of the foot and trapping the ball. While the team was doing that, I’ve practice with Franziska shooting some balls at a specific spot at the goal. Franziska is shooting extremely well and the whole team rely upon her skill as a striker whenever she is in the field.

After the passing drill, I asked them to do the changing directions drill. they sprint to a cone, have to immediately change direction to another cone, change direction again and shoot at the goal. THIS is our weakness now, in my opinion, we take too long to change direction and to actually shoot at the goal.

The last drill was the funnest to watch. It was one-on-one. One attacker against one defender. The attacker has to dribble the defender and the defender has to avoid the attacker to shoot at the goal. Actually the previous drill of changing directions would be of great usage here. If you are able to quickly change directions, you will drive the defender insane and the defender must avoid the striker to reach the middle to shoot at the goal. To make things more interesting, I put Marta against Mikayla and Tehillah. If you can stop Marta, you probably can stop anybody else. It was an excellent drill for both defenders and forwarders.

For the following 90 minutes we had a scrimmage. We played a match of two 20 minutes halves, like what we will face during SISAC. For a long time it was 1 x 1 until by the end, Marta scored 2 goals for the Red team. We played one more segment of 20 minutes and this time the yellow team won, 1 x 0. It was important to see how hard it’s to score when you have the time pressure that SISAC can impose us.

Finally, we practice penalty kicks. Each one of the girls shot 4 times to Bella and 2 times to Mikayla. I have to say I was super impressed with the performance. Most of them were shooting really well. Considering that probably the goalies from the other teams will not be as good as Bella nor Mikayla, I think we are pretty much well set on penalties but we must work hard not to allow a match to go to penalty kicks. Now there is not much we can practice or do to SISAC. All that we could practice or learn for Saturday is done. Now it’s just step onto the field at SAS and show why we are the undefeated Amazon Warriors and show Shanghai the  “jogo bonito”.

Nice day to practice, after a while without just having drills. Also after a long time without having everybody available. We practiced ad nauseam passing. For me, the beautiful game it’s all about passing. So we did the triangle, where you pass and run to receive in front. We did that for more than 20 minutes, switching from the right to the left. It was frustrating at times because the girls seemed to be doing that without being focused, just doing because I’ve said so. All drills have a reason to be. If you don’t put all the effort in the drills, there is no way it will work in a match. We also need to understand the reason of the drills. When can we use it during a match? Why should I shoot with the side of my foot and not my toes? And so on.

After that, we practice a bit ball control but pushing the ball on the line and change quickly directions. I split the girls in two groups and who did the slowest, had to run two laps around the field. I don’t like to do that because I know that nobody likes to be “punished” but I have to say that it works as an incentive to everybody put more effort in the drill. After that, we did attack Vs defence where three attackers (strikers and two wings) goes against the defenders. I finally felt more confident on my attackers. They were working very fine, passing quickly, not wasting time. In this drill, unfortunately Greta felt her ankle once more and had to leave to put some ice. I hope it’s nothing major.

After that, to close our practice, the drill that the girls love the most; shooting! Poor Bella, always suffering but with a big smile. 🙂 That was the happiest moment for me during practice. We were shooting amazingly well! I was really impressed by them. I just hope they keep that accuracy for the matches to come!

My happy Swedish Players.

Today was the day we should be ready to be destroyed and it happened. We are good. Very good. But the boys’ team are in another level. We played a serious match. The only modification we had was the fact I’ve asked the boys not to dribble and not to shoot too strong.

For us, our job was to try to keep them away from our goal. We played 90 minutes, with breaks every 15 minutes due to the pollution rates. For 5 minutes we managed to keep them away but after one goal went in, it started to pour into our goal. Kudos to Bella and Mikayla, they worked A LOT today and showed why we have the best goalies in the league BY FAR. Our defenders tried too but the boys passing game was too good. It’s important to say that Phoebe scored 3 goals… own goals. We shot… one ball towards Giovanni’s goal, but it was out. By the end we achieved our mail goal, which was losing the 2nd half by less than the 1st. The final score was 18 x 0 (first half ended 10 x 0) .

It is interesting to be on the “other side” of the field. The side that suffers goals almost every minute. Normally we are the winning team but today we had a taste how a weaker team feels when they are being destroyed by a stronger team. Not a very good feeling. We need to always play our best, but always respecting the other team by playing our game, not laughing or joking on the field or on the sidelines.

Thanks to Jun Hwa, Hugo, Elliott, Giovanni, Remy, Eiji, Guven, Yuri, Felix, Alex ….. and Schneider, The Complainer. 🙂

So today was Zumba  time! The most anticipated and dreaded practice to some of us.  Dreaded by the ones that have an iron waistline like me and cannot dance at all. On the other hand we have people like Hailey and Inês that are natural dancers.

The instructor this time was Mr. Wardle. She made the girls dance/workout almost non-stop for one hour and a half. We had the pleasure to workout on the stage of the theatre, like stars! Franziska, Alva and Sinead lost this amazing opportunity. If you think it’s just fun, you are completely wrong. Zumba it’s an intense cardio exercise, that strengths the core and works a lot the leg muscles. Besides that, by the end of it, Ms. Wardle also worked with the girls push-ups, sit-ups and so on. It was awesome!