Today was Charles’ last soccer game. It was a beautiful day for a soccer game, especially after it rained for literally the entire previous day.
The game started off well with one of the players scoring early in the first quarter on a pro forma kick which somehow rolled through the defense and in to the goal. For most of the rest of the game I would say the opponents had better field control, spending a lot more time on Charles’ side of the field. Charles’ team’s offense had its moments but didn’t really push all that hard. The defense tended to huddle back around the goal so that any break by the opponents would get from midfield to the keeper box without opposition. Despite this Charles team held them off until the final two minutes, while scoring again for a final of 2-1. Charles tells me this team had previously been undefeated, which is nice because it means all the teams had to lose at least once during the season (which is good for them!).
The second score was a good score. One of the kids made a good drive down field and took a shot, but it bounced off the support. Another child had actually run down with him for support and so was in a position to kick back the bounce for the score.
Charles played the entire game because they only had one substitute (the opponents had 5, which I expected to make more of a difference late in the game that it apparently did). Mostly he played defense with a quarter or so of offense. He did well, frequently booting a ball back or breaking up a play. Offensively he did well, almost scoring twice on good drives down field, although his support wasn’t all it could have been. Charles was persistent at times but sometimes he would just stop if he lost control of the ball rather than trying to pressure. Still he played a good game.
The entire team was doing well, it was probably it was their best game. In particular the two weakest players had very good days, putting in more good play in one game than the rest of the season. Several of the middle players had particularly good days as well resulting in a strong team for the day and and very good game with lots of good offense and defense.
