I was hoping that after yesterday’s blog about both Manchester United and my little boys team, I would have something wonderful to write about today. Alas, it is not to be as they managed to lose by 4-0.

Compared to Saturdays game, at least they came out ready to play. They worked hard at the warm up (after I reminded them how poorly we did on Saturday) but were a goal down midway through the half. That sort of thing does not help team moral but to give them credit, they played on and actually put some good stuff together. Some of the players are beginning to find a position they like and are comfortable with. That helps at least on the defensive line because then it is possible to keep a relatively stable level of play. As Parents, you probably noticed that I hardly changed the back players at all throughout both games this past weekend.

There are good and bad things to this approach. The obvious bad is that other players don’t get the opportunity to play defence, not that many (two maybe) want to. This leaves four positions between however many subs we may have. Yesterday, we had three so it wasn’t too bad. We were missing Chris, who hurt his foot on Saturday, Ali, who has a strep throat and Dante, who was unavailable.

We changed our system in the second half in an effort to close down the middle of the field. We normally play three defenders, two midfielders and two forwards which is what we played in the first half. In the second half we played three defenders, three midfielders and one lone forward supported by the midfielders. We certainly were able to shut down the midfield but we did not generate much offense. Oh well…

I thought that Taylor, Alex and Leo had exceptional games especially when Leo took on their whole team from front to back in an effort to score. That was the play of the game, no doubt about it and he almost succeeded. Their first goal was offside by a mile and I can’t understand why it was not called. We were the better soccer team in terms of skill and ability but we do not match the aggression that some of the other players show on the field. This is what beat us yesterday.

BTW, we have fourteen players eleven of whom all want to play forward. We have two forward positions and as I try to explain to the kids, someone has to play the other five positions as we can’t all be forwards.I don’t know why kids want to play there. Do they see it as a glamorous position to get lots of acclaim for scoring a goal or is it because, they do not have to work quite as hard as they do in the other five positions. This is one of the questions that has perplexed soccer coaches since time immemorial. “Why do little boys all want to play forward”? I think it is up there with the chicken and egg debate or maybe even Darwin’s theory on Evolution…

See ya on Tuesday.