-

This week’s match report begins with an apology. We are sorry that these words are a little late to arrive. However, at least this means that we have all had time to reflect. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since 9am on Saturday. Personally, I find it amazing how quickly our kids forget the last match. They seem to do a lot better than us at ‘living in the moment’, (although maybe we would be the same if someone else spent their entire life looking after us like royalty). I don’t know about you, but for us coaches, it’s not only difficult to live in the moment, but it’s hard to even remember what on earth you should be doing next, and in what order, while at the same time making sure that you remember the thing that you were not supposed to forget…but…hang on…what am I supposed to be writing about?

We began with a bright sunny morning in Green Dale, which made a nice change after a wet and dismal week. GröndalBlue Team welcomed Segeltorps, who were smiling, friendly, and also seemingly confident before the match. This was confirmed when Segeltorp’s coach suggested (without much prompting) that his team had won most of their matches this season. Sometimes this can be a sign of teams that focus on winning (and use tactics that will win at the cost of development), but it’s hard to tell what such confidence really means, at least until the match begins.

We gave our players the chance to warm-up (or should that be ‘wake up’) with a little passing exercise, and then both teams lined up on the half-way line and greeted each other(including a very cute exchange of words between some of the kids). And then we began.

The first half started a little slowly, with both teams finding their way into the game. Perhaps this is no surprise for a 9am kick-off (as compared with the highly energetic start from Gröndal White Team at 2pm this Sunday, in what became their excellent win against Årsta FF). The Segeltorp tactics were also a little different from what our children are used todealing with, which took them a bit by surprise. Contrary to the Swedish Football Association recommendation that kids learn to play the ball out from the back (i.e. learn to use a series of passes to work their way up the pitch), we found ourselves confronted by a ‘long ball’ approach. Indeed, Segeltorp seemed to be playing a formation of 1-3 (as opposed to the formation that we use, which is 2-2). Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with using a different formation, but there is something a bit more problematic about trying to kick the ball from one end of the pitch to the other. (Apologies to all Spurs fans, but we think it’s safe to say that long ball football is about as popular in youth coaching manuals as a Tottenham manager who loses a north London derby.)

Back to the first-half, which was very even, with both teams creating and taking chances. We’re fairly sure that we scored first, with them scoring next, and the score at the first break was either 2-2 or 3-2. But more importantly the kids were definitely awake now, every one of them had run hard, and we were playing as a team. We were particularly impressed by Blue Team’s tackling, which improves with every game, as well as their ability to return to their positions (without being yelled at), which is definitely not true of all teams at this age (or even many older teams).

After a quick half-time, the second half began as the first had finished, including more long ball! Typically, their goalkeeper would roll the ball to the defender (remember, they were playing 1-3, with only one defender and three attackers), and then the defender would try to ‘lump it’ up the pitch. You might expect to see this at the end of a match (for example if a team is losing 1-0 and desperate for a goal), or from a team with no imagination (for example England during most of your lifetime). However, it is a little weird to see from a team of children (who aren’t English). Despite this, we didn’t seem too uncomfortable, and the second half warmed up as the sun rose a little higher in the sky. We scored early in the half, to make it 3-3 (after a mistake from their keeper), and the second half finished either 5-3 or 6-3 or 7-3. At this point, we refer you to the theme of this report – about memory and tactics – to highlight the fact that we genuinely don’t know what the score was, (although we could probably find out). However, maybe this proves the point. The number of goals is not our focus, (even if we fully support the will to win). We prefer to celebrate the fact that we played so well throughout the second half. On a different day, it might have ended with usleading by 4 or 5 goals.

One of the interesting things about this match was how different it was from the last one, despite the fact that the overall ‘result’ was very similar. Both matches were lost by a couple of goals. However, while last time we only had about 3 or 4 shots in the whole match, this time we must have had more than 20, and at some points in this game we seemed to be averaging about 3 or 4 shots per minute. Of course, just like goals, shots aren’t even the most important thing, except to say that we enjoyed watching our players create all these chances to shoot by pressing for the ball or intercepting Segeltorp’s passes. So much of our attacking was created by good defending. This is a great sign of football development. Our memories aren’t perfect, but we’re fairly sure that there were no goals in the final half, which is also a great sign of progress, showing that our kids were reacting and learningover the course of the match. And maybe it’s not just our teamwho were making progress? Finally, after three ‘halves’ of football, Segeltorp finally stopped playing long ball and started passing it out from the back!

/Ben