We had 7 men at our soccer match today. Let’s say 6 because I’m fasting and I’m not 100%. Let’s say 5 because our goalie got kicked in the knee 20 minutes into the first half, and ended up giving up some goals he wouldn’t have otherwise. Actually, let’s go all the way down to 4 because one of our two middies got kicked in the ankle late in the second half as we were pressing again to effectively guarantee we were insane for playing.
They started with eight, and were up to 10 players before the twenty minute mark of the first half. We had a 4-0 lead with 5 minutes to go in the first half, and then they scored on a totally unfortunate clear attempt. We went into halftime 4-1 feeling really good. We knew we’d gotten lucky, and that they’d had a bunch of chances, but we really felt like we could make a go for it.
They made a very good adjustment at halftime. They started overloading the backside, and started crossing early. This forced us to overload the backside as well… not a big deal. Since we were down men, I chose to instead keep someone always as a center back, and to instead have the folks on the ball side be much more aggressive. As in, if you’re the left back, then attack the ball. I shift to become the left back, and the right back becomes the center back clearing up the balls in the air. On paper, it’s exactly what we needed to do, but in practice we just broke down.
I just don’t know what happened…
I couldn’t clear a ball to a white shirt to save my life. That led to 3 of their goals. We had a goalie/defender interchange error. That led to one goal. I just feel as if I lost the game today. It would be easy to blame the 10 guys that didn’t show up, or the fact that I’m fasting or a million other things, but in the second half I just didn’t execute.
The amazing thing is that I genuinely in my heart believed that 7 on 10, we had a chance. Next time…