Week 2: Here comes the 3-5-2!
Hello again, gentle reader, this is 284 pounds of soccer fury coming your way!
This week we played MIIS. I have taken my shower and pulled on my sweats, so let's get to the recap!
Andrew erased our 3-5-2 diagram early Monday in frustration. We had agreed after the Monterey United game that we would work on Chris this week to play a 3-5-2. Chris' justification was that we were going to win that first game anyway so the formation didn't matter. I think that is just silly, we should have been practicing the formation that we were going to play this year. Luckily for us Chris came in and had an "idea" that we should play a 3-5-2 this week. We rejoiced and prepared.
Tuesday practice had me walking the team through their positions and responsibilities. Thursday I missed practice due to work.
Kevin went on injured reserve as he played on a pulled hamstring. He missed Monday and Tuesday and had to visit the doctor. We will miss him but I was getting concerned at the end of the game about his temperment anyway. I don't know if he could have stood a whole season of the awesomeness that is Gunner's soccer.
This week we gained another player named Pedro. Pedro rocks. He is very good. This week we missed Kevin and Patrick but had everyone else there, 3 subs! wow!
We played a 3-5-2 with yours truly playing defense mid field. We had Chris L., Andrew, and Jurgen across the back from left to right. Jacob and me at defensive midfield. Charlie, Bee, and Dan, the asian halfback at mid field and Pedro and Eric at striker. The majority of the first half was played in the middle of the field and we looked pretty good. I was really happy with the 3-5-2 and it's effectiveness at letting us push up. We didn't have a lot of offense, maybe 3 shots on goal with a half dozen or so pushes downfield. We still suck at winning the ball in the air and our team fitness sucks but we did pretty good and it felt like MIIS had to work for all 9 of their goals.
Andrew delivered the hit of the game, sending a player to the ground. I was sent to the gound myself on a short break away and a dumped ball for our forwards.
Overall, there was progress and I was pretty happy with the result.
We lost Jacob to what we think is a left calf tear. Current talk is to move Jurgen to right defensive midfield and me to Jacob's position. Andrew and I would like Sal to move back to Jurgens' position but Chris mentioned putting Pedro back there. I think this would be a mistake as Pedro is a hell of a ball handler and is attack oriented. I'm afraid he would move up the field a lot and we might have a gap there.
More to come and welcome back to the blog folks!
Final result: 9-0 MIIS winners 5 goals in the first half and 4 goals in the second half.
- posted by David @ 9/17/2006 08:13:00 PM