usually i try to write these like i'm a journalist, but not today. today i am just excited for the team and i'm going to brag.
sure we lost, but what a game we had. we scored four goals -- almost equalling last semester's 5 goal tear against one of the mexican sides.
bruce petherick, our scoring champ and team tactician (if i'm the "manager" he's clearly our coach), came up with a 1-3-1 formation today that worked perfectly. it was the first time a formation felt comfortable, and we made the most of it. of course, having the players to make it work was an important part of the equation.
the key was the tandem of taras netsko and brian woychuck, trading off as sweeper in front of the keeper. both of them are solid defensively and aren't afraid to move forward. i don't know how many times taras blocked a shot today, and brian was consistently driving attackers crazy by stripping them of the ball at the right time.
what the sweeper did for us was to force our midfield into a more active role, thereby stopping them from falling into predominantly defensive positions. with all of them moving forward, and mateo, luis and even my dad pushing up into attack, more options opened up and bruce was able to play some great passes through and cause havoc in front of the net as our main attacker. and when he wasn't on the pitch, luis or mateo moved out of midfield, into attack, and kept the danger going.
we had some great man-marking from erika, who kept jolie fou's big player, chris, silent for most of the second half (and i can tell you...his shot was a rocket. i'm glad kiki minimized how many i had to face, although it took a knee injury to do it). my dad played some solid football on the sides, although he definitely has to put more oomph into his passes. and jared was really good moving forward on the right hand side, crossing into the center whenever he could.
all in all it was a great game. who cares if we lost. it felt good to keep the score in the single digits and actually score a few good goals in return.
next week will likely be our last game. we play team cheung in the quarter finals. if it does end up being our last i'd really like to go out as a team after for a pint or two. if you're interested, let me know.
see you, love you, bye!
