Sunday, February 18, 2007

Tell me it aint so!

Ok. To start off with, thank you to everyone for coming. Don't know exactly what held everyone up, but I can imagine (traffic, nagging girlfriends, who knows), Secondly, I'll be the first to say I can play better. Don't know if it's the fact that I didn't warm up properly or what, but I certainly wasn't 100% in the game.

As I see it. Aguilar was not a good team, but they were a team. They all seemed to know each other- where they were running, what kind of passes to serve, who can convert on a cross, etc. We, on the other hand, for obvious reasons, lacked a bit of that.

We played differently from the last game- not quite as compact, and not quite as aggressive. Aguilar was very good at piling up their people up front. That was the secret to their first goal. Their second goal was my mistake. Although I would have loved to think my man was offside, if he was it was just by a hair. I should have had him.

What we did well. Communication I think was a bit better in this game. Using J*** as a playmaker also seemed to work out. Although far from perfect, the defense was able to use the offside trap to some positive effect. Also, morale stayed pretty strong throughout the game. I didn't see anyone hanging their head.

What I (in my humble opinion) think we can improve on: perhaps just a bit more will to win- a bit more determination. I also think that everyone can agree that the passing could be much better. But that often improves with time. It would also be great if the whole team could be there at the designated time.

This loss kind of hit me hard. I hate losing. Better said, I love winning. Think I've said enough. Oh yeah. Next game is more of a home game, as I think none of us live in the valley. I may try to bring some cold beers up to Griffith. If we win, everyone gets one. If we lose, they go home with me. Something needs to motivate us ;)
Feel free to post with your choice of beer. Majority rules. Peter

Thursday, February 8, 2007

That's soccer!

Whoever watched the US v. Mexico game must have felt a bit of remorse for those poor Mexicans. I can't remember the last time a result was so undeserved. My heart goes out to that poor Mexican team that just couldn't convert. But that is also the beautiful game.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Second game of the season, but first game for us!

So, this is my first blog, but I'll try to keep it nice and professional sounding. Anybody can post to this, but the main idea is to create an avenue for the players to interact and make comments about the game.

Because I've just got back from living in German cities for the past 6 and a half years I still have a problem with driving ( I also don't have insurance yet), so I took public transportation to the game site. It took me about an hour and a half. But it was worth it. I was in Mexican-American soccer fanatic wonderland. Indeed, most of the faces I saw were those of Mexican-Americans, and so what- were all equal on the pitch.

So I got there at about 10:30 to make sure I would be on time and to warm up a bit. The game was to be at 11:40, and the team had agreed to meet at 11. 10:50 comes around and I'm checking for early birds. No team. 11:00- no team. I see the first signs of playmates at just past 11, but the area is huge, with at least 6 different soccer pitches and 6 games being played simultaneously.

So, the main organizer shows up with 3-5 others. This is our team, but I knew this was how it would be. Interestingly enough, everyone knows where our game is to be played. Metroleague is one of the highest amateur leagues in LA, and it was definitely the highest league at that park.


The Game: we start off really unorganized. Rather than having a formation worked out we start to call out favored positions while on the pitch. In the first few minutes we had about 3 players playing central midfield, but we eventually found our places and some things started to work out.

Although I am not sure about this I think about 8 of the 11 players on the pitch had never played with each other before. Oh, and we had no 'gelernte' (properly trained) goalkeeper (although he did a fantastic job).

I think we gave up our first goal between the 35th and 40th minute. Our opponents had earned it at that point, but only just. Things were pretty even keeled even up to half time.

Morale was still pretty strong at half time. We assessed our difficulties and weaknesses constructively and well. We knew we just had to be patient, get lucky and quite simply, play better.

As the second half started we came out with a continuation of our already surprisingly good effort. But, as you could imagine with a team that had never played together, we lacked certain things which make a team more dangerous offensively. We suffered from that as our opponents put one more up in about the 50th minute.

The team was not daunted by this, however, and we were able to make it 1-2 to their favor. About 5 minutes later the floodgates broke.

The slight edge that our opponent had all throughout the game got stronger somewhere after the 55th minute. By the time their holding midfielder (one of their very vocal leaders and a fine player) scored their confidence was so high that we couldn't catch up.

I'm embarrassed by the final result. It suffices to say that we scored only the one goal and they had more than 3 goals and much less than 10.

But I think spirits were still high and of course, hopeful for a W at our next match.

Peter