Orangemen vs unReal Fairfax 6 April 2013

The temperature on Saturday night suggest we were playing our first real game of Spring and that we were finally out of the Winter season for good! Our opponent was unReal Fairfax...playing their first official season in the NVA Coaches League. We did play them over the winter season back on 12 December 2012. 

Here is the write up if you are interested in how we did..

Link to December Game

As expected unReal is a really good team....not a weakness on their squad. They poured everything they had at us during the first half and we put up a valiant defense. Our defense consisted of Gene in goal with Karl, Scott, Gooch, Mauricio, Evan (who we haven't seen since 2007), and Juan (a guest) taking turns on defense. Even Ben and Louis took a quick turn in the full-back position.

Their first break through came as we were rallying for an attack and broke forward with numbers. unReal unexpectedly broke up the play and counter-attacked with lighting speed. They were through our midfield and into the final third before we could rotate off our heels. The goal was quick without Gene being able to adjust to the attack. Gene however, kept us in the game. He had multiple saves on the night...a few of which were 1 v 1.

unReal’s second goal of the 1st half came when once again they broke down our defense and threatened in the box. Alfredo responded by racing back from midfield and attempted a slide tackle on James (unReal’s manager) in the box. Unfortunately he brought him down and the ref awarded a PK. Alfredo did not receive a yellow card as the ref ruled his tackle more awkward than malicious. unReal didn’t spoil the opportunity and soon they were up 0 to 2.

During the second half we played much better. Some of that can be owed to the fact that unReal went down to 10 players. I did not know this until later in the second half otherwise I would have offered James one of ours to bring the sides even...since we had 5 on the bench.

However with a little more space our passing increased and we pressured unReal for most of the second half. In fact we scored the only goal of the second half, which technically means we outscored them. Which did feel good. The goal game when Evan made an unassisted run out of defense. He dribbled through the midfield beating one, two, than three defenders. When the fourth approached Evan played the ball forward to Louis who was advancing straight into the box. Louis then stepped left but hit the goal far side of the keeper. 

During the game we took a lot of outside shots...but we scored when we played the ball into the box and proceed from there. In fact we had more close opportunities when we played the ball inside the box. We took at least 5 or 6 shots from well outside the area but none were threatening. I think earlier distribution and playing the ball into the box on Saturday would have worked better for us on this occasion because we had numbers forward.

The other thing that plagued us more on Saturday, much more then normal,  was the number of off-sides calls that went against us. If I say we had 5 or 6 and that would be a conservative estimate.  Strikers need to pay more attention when a good team is intentionally playing the off-sides trap.  unReal worked it well and in doing so didn't have to waste an ounce of energy breaking up an attack.

All in all we played very well...after all this team has actually beat the Vienna Metros.

Special thanks to Kendall for dropping off the front line to play defense during the second half. Earlier in the half he took a line drive to the nose while he was attacking. Kendall shook it off as he was a boxer back in the day an knows how to take a shot to the beak.

After considerable thought, Jan, who played everywhere on the field with boundless energy was found in the attack and then racing back to make a number of major defensive plays wins Orangemen of the Match Honors this past weekend.  Jan runs a minimum of 3 miles a day, everyday.  His fitness shows.