Was it summer vacation, the new field in Herndon, or perhaps everybody was up in Baltimore attending Otakon 20. Whatever the reason, at 7:56 last night, four minutes before kickoff, only 6 Orangemen and 3 Alianza had materialized for the game. Mooch, who spent 14 hours at Otakon yesterday, and had been back to Baltimore already today, and was due back to pick up his Otaku and her friend up at 10pm was at the pitch early, at 7:30pm, and found the referee was already there looking for ways to canx the game. He was the ref that called the game on account of the Thunderstorm being 30 miles away three weeks ago, meanwhile we had sustained the worst injuries of year on in that first half of play. Just a general rule, the refs seem to be tightening things up, we’ve had several ask that we take off or tape our rings and I’ve seen more shin pad inquires than I’ve ever seen before.
Eventually we had enough to field a team but only 7 Alianza showed up. So we offered them 3 players to even out the sides. Mooch called on Maurico and Gooch 1 (Mike) and Gooch 2 ( Anne) to bring total team strength to 10 on both sides...with no subs. However kickoff didn’t happen until 8:18. The ref was in good spirits and didn’t deduct any time for such a late start and one positive aspect of his super risk aversion was his policy not to allow the other team to pick-up ringers on the sidelines. And the Arrowbrook field is full of ringers...so it was a good policy.
All in all it was a fun game...but Alianza with Mauricio and the Gooches still crushed us 3 to 7, although I thought we scored a 4th. And we stayed with them until a few questionable calls and one horrendous missed handball in their penalty box, broke our spirit...it just wasn’t going to be our night.
However, no matter how fun the game was, there was still a lot of frustration on the pitch last night....meaning the Orangemen had room for improvement. I’ll start at the top and try to get through the match as best I can remember.
First...let's get this out of the way...if you show up late you don’t get a chance to warm up and you get no touches on the ball you can't be frustrated when things don't go your way. I’ll tell you three players who showed up early and had plenty of practice and warm-up touches. The Gooches and Maurico. They were the first to arrive, pay, dress, and start practicing. Gooch 2 even gave Dave N a hug, while she was handing me cash. Gooch 1 wondered why he didn’t get in on any of that action. But Anne was in great sprits and it showed on the pitch...ven after Mooch stomped on her foot early in the first half. Not only did she get 13 hours of sleep the night before, she had a good warm-up. And it was probably a mistake on Mooch’s part to hand Alianza the players with the most warm-up, however, I do my best to rotate those folks I ask to play for the opposition and and their numbers came up.
So we had a few players show up so late they got no warm-up, none, zero, zilch, nada, zippy touches on the ball before playing. Kendall, John H, and Matt were among the guiltiest but we had a few other’s sauntering up to the field at well past kickoff, and only the late whistle afforded them any warm-up whatsoever. But at kickoff, the 10 who took the field for Orange were the 10 who walked off the field 90 minutes later. There would be no substitutes tonight. The weather was in our favor however, in the mid-70’s and dry, it was a perfect evening to play. Slides were permitted and we would not be taking water breaks on the quarter. There are no quarters in Soccer...just ask Coach Lasso (Jason Sudeikis). This is a must view video if you haven't seen the SNL skit.
Gene, Steve, John H, Matt, Jermaine, Jose, Mooch, Tommy, Dave N, Kendall comprised the team for Orange last night.
It wasn’t a bad side at all, and for the first half we were pretty evenly matched. Both sides had chances and we scored first of a ball floated in from the right with Jermaine getting on the end of it and floating it back across goal and over the keeper into the top corner. But Alianza had two terrific forwards with great ball control, speed, and really hard shots. It wasn’t long before they would equalize. Tommy scored the second goal on a ball he picked up at the top of the box on a feed from John, that Mooch let run between his legs (intentional or not), drawing the defenders to him. Tommy had a wicked strike curling the unstoppable ball into the top left corner of the net. Our third goal was came from a run Jose made on the left and he placed a hard and low cross in and Kendall got on the end of it scoring our third goal. It seemed however, that we scored more. We had plenty of shots. Matt got in the action, John H had one go high and one ring the post, Jermaine had shots, Kendall had opportunities, Jose had some opportunities, as did Tommy. Even with this many opportunities, we could have had more as our passing broke down in the final third with too many decision of our strikers to go it alone rather than making one more give and go to improve their field position. When the short pass came in the final third, and was played back to the striker, it always split the defense and created a shot on goal. This happened numerous times and could have happened a lot more.
So criticism one...get to the field early and take some shots on goal. Criticism two, more passing in the final third makes soccer an easy game. And three, way too much sniping at each other for missing a pass or screwing up a play. Everyone made mistakes last night. No one should be critical of other Orangemen particularly when frustration sets in. Everyone is frustrated and the sniping only makes it worse.
Since we lost 3 to 7, I’m not awarding a man-of-the-match last night, unless I give it to Gooch for being involved in a number of the Alianza goals and scoring one himself. On the Orangemen I would almost give honorable mention to the player (Dave Strider) who was limping with two bad feet but still managed to feed six or more runs on the Alianza goal, that all, alas, went wanting...but they could have been magnificence ...and then he got in his car and drove back to Otakon...I hope everyone else went to Bertuccis. Oh, and special thanks to the Adam's Family for bringing post-game watermelon!
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