He Doesn't Know (How to Play)

Yesterday was one of those days where you're sore to the point of lying down most of the day, so I did just that. At work, I played a game and a half, but I stayed in net for the full game with Off in the Woods. I got a bit of strategy going with that team, they used me at the back quite a bit and we played offensively. I let in three and none were scored, but my long balls got some work.

Today I felt better, and after the easiest exam I've ever taken, I played with the U of W soccer club. There were dozens (two dozen, to be exact) of players there today, so I made a team with some friends from present and future co-ed teams. After we got our asses handed to us a couple times and the crowd thinned out, we divided into two teams and played to 15. With a couple players that didn't match the skill level of the bunch of black guys that we played against, we ended up demolishing them 15-2. We passed incredibly, and not only defended well but came back to defend in numbers.

I played a pivotal role in the win, I assisted at least eight or nine of the goals, had a goal line clearance on a clear cut breakaway, and scored once from a nice low ranged shot. A couple of my assists were nice too. A couple stick out in my mind: the first, I flicked the ball over a defender's head to an open team mate making a run right next to the net from about 20 yards away. In the second, I took a ball out of the air, and my first touch set me up for an aerial pass that I made to an open team mate running to the far post, unmarked.

Regardless, while the opposition was skilled, they were only really with footwork, whille my team had some with footwork, a finisher (who "doesn't play often", but I told him to play up because I saw he had an eye for the open spaces, good positioning, and great finishing), a playmaker, and couple good defenders.

The aforementioned finisher scores six or seven goals, many of them assisted by me. We counter attacked well, and I found that the other team tended to leave him alone, probably because he wasn't as skillful as the rest of the players.

We had a great game, using each of our strengths very well, while exploiting the weaknesses of the other team brilliantly.

By the end of the game, I had garnered the nickname "Chelsea" for the jersey I wore.

Can't say I minded it, really.

"Now the Game can Begin"

I finally made it out to my school's twice weekly futsal group, and I saw a few familiar faces from Jahan's old league, including Victor, the Brazilian with appropriate footwork that remembered my name quicker than I his (and I'm pretty decent with names). I ended up marking him for quite a while, and he's still good, but I've definitely improved compared to this time last year in all aspects.

With the small ball, it seemed easy to do tricks and such, and I ended up with five or six goals and around ten assists over the two hour game. There were other highlights, of course (like nutmegging some pretty decent guy) and all in all, it was good fun and a good challenge. In particular, it was physically demanding; I'm exhausted now, though that could also be due to waking up at seven A.M. for the first time in months.

It's definitely something I'm going to try to get to every chance possible, if it wasn't second division ball, practicing, and a high number of games that made me better, it was Jahan's league and teams. Most days, I expect it to be only a few people, but we'll see. Even if there aren't many people, it'll still be good competition and great training.

I also have a strength training routine planned out, and I should begin that soon as well; most likely Friday. The rest of my week is filled with physical activity.

"Josh, grow a pair." "No way!"

Darn decent day, today.

I've been crap with training and the diet though. That beings said, in spite of how it may sound, there is no diet or true training regime.

However, no favors are done to any sort of bodily mechanism when I get McDonalds for dinner. What else is open at 10 at night, though? I ought to start packing my own meals, really. It's too bad I enjoy packing light so much. As well, there are a ton of logistics to go with it all. I have to say, baby steps must be taken though. We'll start with these for a week, I suppose:

1. Greasy food kept to an absolute minimum. The odd toad burger is fine, we'll say one cheat meal per week.
2. Water is the only beverage that should be consumed. Inebriation counts as a cheat meal.
3. No junk food, including snacks.

That should do for a week, I'll modify it at the end of the week. Training is difficult at the best of times, but I think regular games are enough for now. I'd like to use the school gym, but we'll see with time constraints and all.

The first (half) game was with a new team, sitting comfortably at the very bottom of division three. If any long-time viewers remember, I played in division 4 at the Highlander last winter season, and my team found it hard and sat on the bottom of the table. If I recall correctly (which I do), the White Eagles played them at one point in the "Battle of the Colored Animals". Due to bad attendance I was asked to come out, so I did, and played forward, which was really more of a free role.

The precession of events was strange, when it came down to it. Literally, I would get the ball, and nobody on their team would be able to do a thing. There were times where I'd take shot after shot for fun, their entire team would stand around. I scored on a left footed volley, a right footed volley, and a shot from the flank after I burned a defender. I had two assists as well, a left footed cross on a free kick to the far post that was headed in, and a ball I sent across the from of the net, right in front of it, for a tap-in.

When I left at half time, we were leading 7-0. We eventually won 12-1, and this stands as the greatest win margin thus far this season (in that league). The funny thing is that last week the very same two teams met, and my team was beaten 5-1.

Fun fact; I'm tied for 43rd on the scoring chart.

Here are some of the more interesting stats. I don't believe the Goals Scored stat has been updated. Also note the routine drubbings Red Dogs have faced this season.

At any rate, it was a good half game. The Chilly Willies game was the same in a different way; I also scored a hat trick, but had lost any sort of lustre. My three goals were as follows:

1. A tap into an empty from an impossible-to-miss distance*.
2. A tapped in ball between an opponents legs while he struggled to clear the ball.
3. A breakaway goal that was originally saved by the keeper, only to bounce off the guy running right behind me and into the top corner. The keeper was promptly tread on by his own player.

Three laughable goals, with me laughing all the way to the (goal) bank for the second time that night. I believe that puts me back in the top eight after a whole whack of missed games.

Fun fact; Twice, people complained about absolutely (and purposely) demolishing me on the field. Only once did the ref actually care, and he actually put up with the other guy saying that he was going to push me if I pushed him, which I didn't. It was (actually) just an out-classing (in more ways than one). The other ref yelled at my team's bench for protesting his terrible decision.

Curse my repertoire with referees. Apparently, I don't get calls because "I can bounce right back up". Go figure, no wonder I'm hurting†. Tune in next time for...

"Ridiculous Referees", or, "Greg is Dead because he is Fragile".

Same bad time, same bad URL†.

* - Please note that there are no impossible-to-miss distances in football. See: Scotland's Iwulemo.
† - I am actually hurting because I slid to block a ball, but fell on my ass much too hard. My left cheek is in severe discomfort.
‡ - Please note that the URL may change, due to the original URL being a mere placeholder for some fantastic idea that was eventually to stroll into my mind. Also, stay tuned for layout changes. Maybe.

The Dutch have a saying...

Out of my own zeal, I had a foray as forward tonight. I did well, though I did neglect a crucial defensive duty at one point that allowed a goal that eventually would be the difference from getting a result. We lost 6-5 in a very fun game against a team that would be responsible for some good times.

So good, in fact, that we stayed half an hour late and played a scrub match on the open field against them.

Personally, my game went well. I didn't score, but I was threatening and creative. I would venture to say almost too creative.

Excuse my ego, but at one point I may've been as clever and quick-witted as I'll ever be in the span of half a second. You might even call me a flair player after witnessing my exploits.

On a dangerous diagonal run in front of their goal, I drew the attention of a defender and their goalie in a couple touches. I noticed one of our players coming in towards to far post behind me, effectively making a criss-cross with me. She was one of our defenders who never usually scores, so I wanted to make it easy. In that run, I stopped the ball and fooled their entire team, allowing for an open shot on goal which in turn was my fanciest assist ever.

My holding-up was good, my use of space was good, my ability to open the field up was useful; quite basically I make a decent forward. It's up for debate if I'm a better forward than midfielder, but as it stands, I don't mind playing both. Perhaps one hit against me playing forward is my presumed entitlement towards not defending - when we won a ball back I prepared to run up, though we lost it soon after. I ought to have ran back and defended a goal scorer, but I had lazy forward syndrome; which is an officially catalogued disorder in the DSM-IV. Best defined, its when a forward doesn't defend when he or she should.

Let's face it though, forwards are a intrinsicly fragile breed. I've heard feeling bad about letting in goals as an excuse for one to not play defense in order to give others a turn. The worst part? The excuse worked (and still does to this day).

Other notable points include burning a defender (who was either taking away my left footed shot or trying to force me a few miles to the edge of the pitch) with a stepover and shooting (horribly wide on a far post attempt), or having my first shot in the scrub game nestle itself right inside the edge of the goal from a long volley. Next time, I suppose.

Or maybe I'll just play defense to not allow counterattacks.

"He's Italian... But boy, is he good"

There's a first time for everything. Some notable examples:

1. The conception of the universe.
2. An indirect left footed free-kick from 25 yards out that ends up in the net (with credit to me).
3. A post before a game.

I've skipped updating on a couple recent games, but I figure the minutae are redundant anyway. Suffice it to say that my defending's been pretty spot on these last few days, as well as my passing. My shooting? Ask the two or three shots I've taken. I need to ditch this idea that I have to spread the ball to everybody without fear of social backlash. I pass (more than) enough, I've maybe had five or six shots since my last post, which would be at least four games. Passing has been spectacular lately, I can find open players like nobody's business. Too bad it's not resulted in much.

One neat thing that happened yesterday was the quickest two touches I've ever had that resulted in a goal. It happened in about a quarter of a second, and found the bottom corner. A tidy goal to say the least. I managed to trap it with a planted foot while winding up the shot. Interesting

Today's game is against a team that's beaten us, but aside from that has largely been unsuccessful. We're missing a handful of players, but the playtime might be for the best; we'll see what we can do. Who knows where I'll be playing tonight, I'm guessing Mid, but with the absentees, I could be anywhere.

In other news, I've had a team offer for outdoor that I'm unsure about. What I'm looking for is playtime and practice time, and secondarily I'd like to get free registration and upper-level ball.

I'll have to start squeezing my contacts to see what I can do.

"Player of the game is Derek's hair"

On Saturday night, we had a late game. 11 PM, to be precise. This was (obviously) hellaciously late, and to compound it all, we had a referee who is quite normally terrible. The game wasn't so bad, we won comfortably at 5-3 (With their last two coming late thanks to some defensive sloppiness), and I scored a treat and a half of a goal near in the first half.

The goal was a half volley taken down with my chest on the run after I headed it over some person then ran around them. I assisted another goal delivering a low cross inside the box to an unmarked teammate (my run had taken them all off him).

I've worked out the formation for the 7-a-side outdoor season recently, and in spite of spending about an hour tinkering with new formations (2-2-3, 2-3-2, etc...), I settled on pretty much the same formation as we've always used, the 3-3-1, with one minor difference; moving one of the defenders into a holding midfield role, acting as a deep-lying playmaker. The result is a 2-1-3-1, where the midfield plays higher up the pitch than usual. Width is also key in this formation, I hope to use it to spread defenses out with the advanced midfielders.

The positions will be a bit different, we used to all come back on defense, but now we'll be trying to counter as much as possible, so the wings will almost exclusively play wide and in an attacking manner. I'm debating getting the striker and attacking midfielder to come back, creating a huge gap in the center of the field when we're defending. The first attacking pass will be out wide, then the striker and attacking mid will break out and counter, with the holding midfielder following them shortly. From there, the strategy would be to (probably) either carry it up the side, deliver a lead pass to the striker, or a square pass to the attacking midfielder. Aside from the counter, generally play would be wide and involve working it around the defense, spreading them out, and counting on go-and-gos and individual skill to split the defense.

This season, pre-season practices will be (somewhat) mandatory, as well, in order to show interest in playing. We had a few issues last year with attendance, so hopefully this makes the team take it more seriously. Maybe, if there were a little more competition the team would take it more seriously as well.

Normally, I'm a pretty optimistic fellow, though tonight's game against friendly rivals Superfriends spells trouble for us. They're atop the league with a perfect record and a massive amount of goals scored for, and their goals against record is even better.

Anything but a drubbing would be a positive result, but we'll see.

Knock knock

Hopefully these two most recent updates aren't just a temporary glimmer in the vast emptiness of my recent blogging activity. I do intend on making updating a regular occurance again, but the usual cop out of "I've too much to do" seems likely.

One thing that's recently become a strength of mine is tactical awareness. For example, I've seen that with Team G, teams tend to defend way behind us, possibly due to their own modifications. Let's face it, we have one trick in the bag; the counterattack.

If you compare the amount of goals scored from set pieces/open play/counters, you would probably find that we score minimally on set pieces (free kicks taken as shots), incredibly rarely during open play, and almost entirely on the counter.

I've a few theories as to why this is the case:

1. Most of the players have little to no actual soccer training.
2. Everybody wants deadly through balls so they can get the goal (we're historically a team with minimal passing).
3. It suits certain players on the team. Early in our history, frequently Jay would just carry the ball the entire way to the goal. The strategy that worked for a while was that forwards would move up, dragging defenders from Jay.
4. We have fast players and a few midfielders with a good eye for spaces in the defense that can be exploited.
5. Nobody knows to come to passes when they're not through balls, or make themselves space. With that, few of us simply do not know how to play in open play.

Regardless, today, I noticed that the team I played against with the Chilly Willies was quite slow to defend, so counter attacking really took them apart. I believe the final score was 8-3, and I had a goal and at least one assist, and a couple good chances thanks to good movement.

My one goal was quite fancy. It was a 3-on-3, so I took a bit of time to move the ball into a good attacking position. At about a 13 yards out, I noticed I still had quite a bit of space, so I let loose a relatively tame shot for the top left corner. My accuracy was spot on, thankfully.

I passed smartly today, almost scored on a free kick, and found good space for passes and runs. My marking and defense was unspectacular, but it wasn't really required - I forced their star player to long shots and made a few important steals and blocks.

There were a few bloopers though, including a handball in my team's penalty box that went unseen by pretty much everybody (in my defense, it was rifled and just hit my arm that was near my body), and I blew a good chance when a cross surprised me and hit me in the chest right in front of the opposition's net.

At one point I unleashed a cute little volley with my left foot right at the goalkeeper from close range, by it was unfortunately saved. However, good can be taken from that - my left foot is becoming better daily. And to think, a couple years back, I was absolute crap with it.

My next game is Friday, and tomorrow I've got a fairly packed schedule that I need to find time to write a research proposal due the day after. On the positive side, it's only a few hundred words, if that. It's for that coaching young sprouts class, and I'd like to write on something quite relevent to footie, if possible. I've been tinkering with the idea of effective warm-ups at the beginning of practice, but we'll see.

"Ahh, the three minute mark. When retards make themselves known."

I've been far too busy to even consider updating, but rest assured, an update is needed and in demand (!).

To give a brief rundown of my life in its current state:

• I've been practically living with Stephen and Carissa as there's an issue with my license and my bad decision to wait until March to get a one-piece license. Oppsie.
• I'm back at work, still paying off the good old Toronto trip of last summer. Particularly proud of a hundred dollar dent I made yesterday.
• I'm back at school, learning the ins and outs of 6 classes this term: History of Science, History of Modern Europe, Coaching Basics, Social Psychology, Genetics in Psychology, and Coaching Soccer¹.
• I'm playing on six teams, and was invited on three (though one was a joke) teams today. The joke team was Ballistic, a team with a clear grudge against us, and particularly me.

I played twice today, scored a hattrick to end a goal drought that was due to passing far too much. The first was a ball coming to me in the box while I was relatively unmarked, so I picked the corner of one of the tiny OLV nets. The second was a tap in from close range, and the third was a hideous deflection. This was with Off in the Woods.

Earlier, I had gone a touch overboard in my instructing soccer class and slide tackled quite close to somebody who softly touched a ball into a net. Morals of the story:

1. Don't be a puss, just bloody well do it.
2. I didn't hurt him.
3. Ryan's a cool guy.

But really, coaching soccer, the course, is amazing. We've had presentations from some interesting people, create our own questions for the exam, and coach each other exercises every other day.

I've also got into reading about soccer, as well. I picked up this book from the library from the early eighties about coaching the whirl. Absolutely amazing, and what's better is that I can pick it up for fifteen cents. Of course, the material is a touch dated, but Christ, I'm on my second read through, and if that isn't the most amazing in the universe², I'd rather not try to fathom what is.

I've turned into a much more clinical passer lately, at the expense of having more goals. I'm really not sure what is better; I often see a few chances come and go for those that lack a finishing grace.

Though I do think I'm starting to develop a reputation playing against teams. So often, people will back off me and give me many, many seconds on the ball before I do something. In an unrelated but still interesting note, I think I'm turning into an ideal defender too. Strange.

Well, thoughts are turning into a jumble, so I ought to stop listening to prog rock and go to bed. I promise, I'll get more flamboyant with my writing again soon, I just needed a warm-up.

Coming soon; Jahan makes a return to the blog.

¹ - Ordered from moderately interesting to "bloody hell, I get to play footie for a class".
² - I am not much of a reader.