Day Five - Monday December 7th, 2009

Up early this morning at 6:30am for both teams and in the lobby by 7:30am having had breakfast, cleaned the rooms and in full uniform. We headed back to Reach 11 for the final time on this trip in cold rainy weather to play Derby County Wolves from Michigan. The club was ranked number one in both the U16s and U18s last year going into the play offs so we knew we had our work cut out for us. All games at the showcase have been taped and also scouted by US Soccer Staff. The Under 18 team was fortunate to be scouted this morning by former Men’s National Team Coach Bob Gansler. We started the game brightly enough with good possession and managed to get behind the Wolves defenders on a couple of occasions. Unfortunately we managed to self implode somewhat by giving the ball away in poor defensive positions and found ourselves 2-0 down with goals in the 14th and 15th minutes. We dug ourselves out of the hole we created with a well worked goal when Giuseppe Gentile got down the right hand side, beat a player and crossed to the near post for Nick Barnhorst to tap in past the goal keeper from three yards out in the 17th minute. It put us back at 2-1 and we made a better game of it until a long diagonal ball from their right back was played over the top to one of their center forwards. With a great touch towards our goal he pushed the ball to the right of the advancing Nick Hensley and knocked it in for the Wolves’ third.

At half time I talked about our defensive shape and it being a too wide laterally and not joined enough vertically and also about not giving the ball away in areas where it would become problematic to get our defensive shape quickly. The boys responded well. In the second half they restricted the Wolves to only one clear cut chance. We were quicker to the ball when defending and we worked much more as a unit to defend. We did not conceded again and at the other end we created a number of half chances that went wide or over the bar. Our possession and penetration were much better when we had the ball and we were unlucky not to get the game back to 3-2 and then really give the Wolves a run for their money. They were a very good team, the best we have faced this weekend with some special players too. It was again a good test for the boys in the early part of the season. The starting team with substitutions in parenthesis was as follows:

GK Nick Hensley (Trent Johnson GK)
LB Tyler Adams (Will O’Brien LB)
CB Thomas Allen
CB James Nero (Keith Pittman CB)
RB Kyle Searles
LMF Brett Luccia (Andrew Sperr LMF)
CMF Robbie Beatty (Sean Cogan CMF)
CMF Jono Grad
RMF Nick Barnhorst (Michael Nelli RMF)
CF Giuseppe Gentile
CF Conner Miller (Andrew Benningfield CF)

The Under 16s weekend was rounded off with another very exciting and competitive game. We created some great chances early on and could have easily been ahead after ten minutes. Derby County then settled in and passed and moved the ball extremely well. They kept us under pressure and deserved to take a two goal lead. We managed to score a goal against the run of play right on half time to bring us back into the game. The second half was very different. We pressed and fought very well, and really stifled the Derby players. We pressed and pressed, and kept Derby on the back foot almost the entire half. Our pressure resulted in free-kicks, corners, and half-chances, but Derby managed to hold onto to the lead. A fair result in the end, but a great performance in the second half by our team.

Jeremy said, “Overall the weekend was very pleasing and a positive start. We have quite a young group and so a big question was if we would be physically capable. I felt we dealt with this well. We played some good flowing soccer at times but tended to force the play, or play isolated too often. Defensively we defended well as individuals and showed resilience. We showed what I hoped to show this weekend. We are capable enough both sides of the ball. We will now get to work training, and given time I feel we will be playing great soccer come the spring. The players will keep learning about each other and will get better and better as a group. We have quite a few new faces but the group looked happy together off the field. You can be proud of how your sons carried themselves on and off the field. In a nutshell – many good things, and lots of exciting things we can work on”.

I’m now on the plane coming home and as I reflect on the weekend I think our two teams have accomplished a number of the goals we went out to work on. We played against three good clubs. We tried to establish a defensive shape that we could defend in but then play out of once we won the ball. We tried to play good soccer when we had the ball, not just whacking it forward, but also not just keeping possession for the sake of keeping the ball. Both teams looked to penetrate their opponents when we could and get in behind through combination play, the killer ball or individual skill. Also, both Jeremy and I got to see everybody play in circumstances where they were under game pressure. With only two and a bit weeks of training players were bound to make mistakes more often that we would have liked. I am also pleased to report that at no time did we receive any complaints about the boys at any time during the trip. A big thanks must also go to Bob Seales and Pete Minogue, for all their help over the weekend, they played a very important part behind the scenes.Now it is a question over the next few weeks of all the players minimizing mistakes and building on what we learnt in Phoenix. Well done to all, now on to our league schedule. Thanks for your continued support of the program!