In the last three games against Gonzales, Hammond and MSC High Voltage, MSC Chaos has had varying results from undeserved and disappointing to successful to seemingly confounding respectively. In the first match against Gonzales the score, a 4-3 loss, wasn’t indicative of the way the girls played. We made a couple of mistakes that unfortunately resulted in goals for Gonzales. The mistakes were a result of poor communication and a lack of assertiveness in the back. The most disappointing thing here was that the mistakes were wholly unforced rather than being the result of pressure from the other team. While the result of the game was disappointing I thought the girls moved the ball well and there were moments where the ball movement was beyond what I was aware we were capable of. These moments opened my eyes to the fact that the amount of potential on this team, which I already felt was very high, may be even higher. However, being satisfied with a couple of moments of brilliant play isn’t my style and the girls shouldn’t be satisfied with it either. We need to work to get to that level of play for entire games. The moments I am talking about are the few times when the girls were playing the ball to feet, communicating constantly, moving before the ball was played to them, and moving into open space after they played the ball to a teammate. The result of doing all of these things together was the girls strung together 5-6 passes at a time ending in chances on goal. For the most part we were effective in front of goal but, as in other games, there were times when we were tentative, not following shots or getting on the end of balls played across the goal face.
The second game, against Hammond was a satisfying win. We continued to do all the things we did in the first game and a 6-0 win without any silly mistakes is always a good way to wipe away disappointment resulting from silly mistakes. The girls did very well in front of goal in the Hammond game and again put together some things in possession of the ball that were way above the heads of our opponents. There weren’t many mistakes in the second game but then again Hammond didn’t play at a high enough level to cause many mistakes.
The last game in this review is our 1-0 win against our sister team MSC High Voltage. I know that on paper many thought this would be a big (as far as the score goes) win for us and that the close score line was unexpected. Being in South Louisiana unexpectedly close score lines have become the norm this fall so why shouldn’t it be the same with us. I think that, as in our last game in the Gator Classic, we came out a bit over confident (some of the girls admitted to this) but I don’t think that we played as poorly as we did to start that game. MSC High Voltage kept players 20-40 yards in back of the midfield line and when we were in possession their midfield did a good job of getting back in front of the ball. The result was that when we went forward there were 5-8 opposing players to deal with and even with 3 players in the front line the numbers didn’t work in our favor. We simply couldn’t get enough players forward fast enough to create the chances we expected. We had a number of chances from outside and these could have resulted in couple of more goals had we been following the shots up with pressure on the goalkeeper (we definitely missed Maddie H. in these situations as she relishes the opportunity to put pressure on the keeper). There is a simple way to deal with teams that play a defensive game such as High Voltage did, but we haven’t talked about it or worked on it as there is only a slight chance of coming across teams that play that way. The thing to do in those situations is to push the ball forward and rather than going to goal when the ball gets up top simply continue to possess the ball as we do in the midfield until we have the numbers forward to create better chances.
The second game, against Hammond was a satisfying win. We continued to do all the things we did in the first game and a 6-0 win without any silly mistakes is always a good way to wipe away disappointment resulting from silly mistakes. The girls did very well in front of goal in the Hammond game and again put together some things in possession of the ball that were way above the heads of our opponents. There weren’t many mistakes in the second game but then again Hammond didn’t play at a high enough level to cause many mistakes.
The last game in this review is our 1-0 win against our sister team MSC High Voltage. I know that on paper many thought this would be a big (as far as the score goes) win for us and that the close score line was unexpected. Being in South Louisiana unexpectedly close score lines have become the norm this fall so why shouldn’t it be the same with us. I think that, as in our last game in the Gator Classic, we came out a bit over confident (some of the girls admitted to this) but I don’t think that we played as poorly as we did to start that game. MSC High Voltage kept players 20-40 yards in back of the midfield line and when we were in possession their midfield did a good job of getting back in front of the ball. The result was that when we went forward there were 5-8 opposing players to deal with and even with 3 players in the front line the numbers didn’t work in our favor. We simply couldn’t get enough players forward fast enough to create the chances we expected. We had a number of chances from outside and these could have resulted in couple of more goals had we been following the shots up with pressure on the goalkeeper (we definitely missed Maddie H. in these situations as she relishes the opportunity to put pressure on the keeper). There is a simple way to deal with teams that play a defensive game such as High Voltage did, but we haven’t talked about it or worked on it as there is only a slight chance of coming across teams that play that way. The thing to do in those situations is to push the ball forward and rather than going to goal when the ball gets up top simply continue to possess the ball as we do in the midfield until we have the numbers forward to create better chances.
