-

Do you remember what you were doing on the morning of Saturday 12th June? A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. If you normally walk 10,000 steps per day, then you could have walked from Gröndal to Norway since then.

…And for most of the blue team, their last match was the 12th June. So what better way to return to action 54 days later than a sunny Saturday morning at Älvsö football ground?

We arrived in good spirits at pitch 5.1 (yes, they have more pitches than you have rooms in your apartment). With 30 minutes to go until kick off, there seemed to be only one goal and no opposition. But we did have eight balls and six of our own team. Our players had arrived in white shirts, but we knew that Älvsjö wear white, so we had remembered to bring the Gröndal away shirts, which are black. Our players then “warmed up” by changing into these black shirts.

Soon after that the opposition arrived, wearing dark blue. We had gone 1-0 down before kick off! We quickly asked our players to change back into their white shirts, which thankfully didn’t cause too much distress. Then, soon after that, Älvsjö took off their dark blue training tops to reveal crisp, clean and sparkling white shirts. Another own goal! Finally, we went back to the black shirts, which stayed on for the rest of the match.

Kick off came soon after that, and the shirt fiasco was soon forgotten after we began where we left off in June. The coaches were very impressed by the team’s attitude, which was super-positive at both ends of the pitch, and soon we had the reward of a couple of goals. The other team also opened their account, but we kept them away from our goal with lots of great tackling, and you could see that we certainly hadn’t forgotten to play as a team.

The second half continued with the same positive energy, and it was particularly good to see all the players trying to make something happen, either by trying to dribble round a defender, taking on the goalkeeper from long-range, or by trying to set up a team-mate with a clever pass. Elf Ho also scored in this half, but for every goal they scored we stayed positive and scored a couple in return.

After a secret treat for everyone (think one piece of ”lördagsgodiset”), we went into the third and final half. We had spent a lot of time in training trying to encourage the players to talk to each other (to give them autonomy and help them develop their football brains), so it was fantastic to hear them supporting each other throughout the match. By the end of the third half you could say that we had won the match on every level, except for one. If they had a goal every time we had to stop and tie up a shoelace then we might not have been so comfortable. It was especially pleasing how many goals were due to great passing (assists).

But football is about more than just winning. We aim to learn and get better. So the biggest positive for today was that we weren’t afraid. Every player was challenging hard for the ball, and every player was knocked down at least once, but all of them got up and kept trying their hardest. The goalkeepers all ran out and made themselves big, and the players kept pressing, even after it seemed the ball was far away. Please tell your kids, they did themselves proud today! The game ended 9-4 in favor of Gröndal. 
/Ben