EFA NL Silver v Sommers Town Youth

Before the brief of the game. I would like to address a message to our players and parents.

Last season we lost over 10 players, we only had one team competing at Market Road, because of the GCSEs. This season we registered two teams in the league, as we weren't expecting such a massive dropped out. We are currently re-building the team. We will be organising open trials for this team on the 6th of October. Nevertheless, the mouth-to-mouth "marketing" is important, therefor, if you have friends who are good players and want to join the team, invite them for a trial - https://europeanfootball.acade... 
We are currently short of players (quantity), not on quality.

I trust all the players who have played this match and are currently in this team, and all of them could be playing for the "gold" team. If we get more players joining the team in the upcoming weeks, and considering that the "transfer window" only closes in the end of January. Several moves might happen from the gold to silver team and vice versa. Therefore, I ask everyone to be patient, commit and work hard.

We played in a 1-2-3-1 for most of the game, in the last 5 minutes we moved into a 1-1-3-2 to attempt to score the winning goal.

The opposition played in a 1-2-3-1 shuffling into a 1-2-2-2.

In possession, the team produced some interesting movements, managed to get into the last third, either through combinations, overloads or 1v1s. However, the definition in the last third scarce quality and effectiveness. Either the first touch wasn't the best, or extra touch on the ball was given ruining chances to attempt to score. Positives were that the players overall understand the principles of the game attacking, they understood how to push forward as a unit, how to run with and without the ball for big part of the game.

Out of possession the team, defended well, stayed organised. There were moments where we read well the play and took risks to regain possession by antecipating the play and intercepting the ball, but also were times where they identified it well, but the execution wasn't efficient which led to get our goalkeeper to intervene to high standards.

In transition defence to attack, the first touch on the ball should have been better (oriented ball control to face the attacking goal), that in one way made us not get the reward we all wished for.

In transition attack to defence, overall was positive, as we didn't concede. On the other hand, there were moments where the team left big gaps between units, however, our defenders understood perfectly those moments by delaying and dictating the opposition's attacks, allowing our forward players to drop. Closer to the end of the game, the team lost stamina (normal-first match and no subs), and we ended up suffering a bit to keep a clean sheet. The last play of the match we created a good chance to score, but the definition due to tiredness, didn't allow to get the 3 points.

To highlight that the weather conditions also didn't help, the rain and wind are also constraints that our players must have into consideration when playing the game.

Personally, even though there are several aspects for improvement, I think the team played good football where only missed the definition in the last third. They helped each other understood the moments/phases of the game and the principles of play. So, even though I always want to Win, I am still happy with the performance of all the players and team.

"One for all, and one for all, together we stand, divided we fall"!!