MR U18 NL Gold 2024/2025 (Market Road League) - EFA SL Gold

First "Derby" of the season.

Both teams played in a 1-2-3-1.

Last season, this group has finished second in the league and has won the Cup. The team has lost very important players, however, the new players who joined have arrived not to make forget the ones who depart, but to create their own chapter with us!!!

We knew that our South London team as very good technical players and some physically strong. On the other hand, we also knew that they still don't have routines on how to play 7v7 (making their debut in this competition). We focused on doing our game following my ideologies of play.

In possession, we moved the ball quick and well, our players understood when to create the overloads, when to identify the opposition's gaps and exploit those gaps properly. We created numereous goal chances, we converted 9. Offensively, I think the team interpretated the game very well.

Defensively, for big part of the game, the team understood when to press, how to  create 2v1s defending to regain possession, how to stay compact, how to dictate the play.

In transitions defence to attack the team exploit well the moments where the opposition was out of position and scored a few goals from those transitions.

In transitions attack to defence, in the first half the team never lost its balance and composure. In the second half, some players started losing a bit their focus and potentially losing stamina. I don't know if it was related to going to half-time 7-0 up. We allowed the opposition to create a couple of good chances.

Nevertheless, a very good start from our Gold team.

This season, I will avoid speaking on individuals and focus more on the team where each individual has its own impact in the team, and is not on player who is going to win matches, but all together!!!

Even though is still early days in the season, I want to highlight the way of how the new academy signings are here to make history, and the positive impact they already started to have in the team. I also want to highlight the importance of the players who have been with us in previous seasons on helping the new players feeling welcome and helping them feel confortable with the one another. In the end, is with this type of behaviour, players (people) become better in and out of the field, and that is what makes it special to play for the European Football Academy.

I always will say, "one for all, and all for one, together we stand, divided we fall"!!!