last night's soccer game

[bsheldon]

Just a few observations about last night's game:

KC and CS showed up for a while--they both look fit and ready for the season.

This was the first game I have seen of the new coach's regime. I had heard that he likes to play a more attacking style and I was looking forward to watching it. Obviously, I didn't see much of that last night. The back line was almost afraid to make skip passes--they always went man-to-man-to-man slowly accross the field instead of switching sides quickly. I only saw 3 overlaps all game--and all of those came late in the second half. The team really seems young--and it is. There were a few players that immediately stood out and when I looked at what year they were--JR's and SR's. There is a lot of raw talent on the squad and I think they will real good in a year or two.

MO ST didn't touch the ball for the first 5 minutes. The only time they really got possession was on just silly plays by our guys. One player in particular seemed to give it away every other time he touched it in the first half. Overall, possession was probably about 60-40 for SLU--it seemed more than that though. On the few occassions they did get the ball in the first half they attacked and created a couple of chances. We didn't get a corner at all in the first half--as we didn't seem to press forward much at all. We really only had one real opportunity and the goalie made a pretty routine save. The second half we attacked a bit more and had a few chances, but never anything stellar. It almost seemed liked we could attack at will, but were just a bit reluctant to do so. Again, we controlled possession, but could never put anything together moving forward. Again, it just seems like some of the guys are just a bit shaky with the ball at times--I am sure they will get more comfortable after a couple of more years. On two chances in particular the player kind of got caught in bewteen shooting and passing and missed everything--badly. In a game with limited opportunites we needed to do better with the few we got. Our sweeper did a fine job on a couple of occastions that really shut down what could have been some premo chances for them. The other thing I noticed was poor service on the set pieces. Especially the corners--it appears to be a set thing as it was repeated over and over--the ball is played real and tight to the goal on the far post. It was almost always high and either the goalie grabbed it or it went over everyone high and curved out of the goal line. The most exciting part of the game was the last 3 minutes when SLU started playing long ball and came real close to a couple of chances. The ref let the fellas play and it was a physical game--several pretty serious collisions and a bunch of jersey grabbing on both sides. Plus a bunch of chippy stuff on set pieces and after the whistle on most plays. I think shots were something like 8 to 4 and our goalie didn't have to make a single save. We ended up with something like 6 corners--all after the first break. Overall, it was an OK experience, not the high scoring goal fest I was hoping for, nor a dramatically different style of play that we saw with our previous coach. I will probably go on the 26th against UMKC.

A couple of things about Robert R Hermann field: We went to the far side for the second half just for a change of scenery--the pot-a-johns really need to be moved. They are beyond desperate need to be emptied. The process was repeated several times--fans would walk up to the top of the stands and sit for a few minutes and then have to move down because of the smell--just awful. The highest you could go was about 6 rows up. Also, the sound system on that side needs to be tweaked--the sound from the main side was sitll louder than the speakers on the far side--problem is it take a full second for the sound to reach you. So you hear it from the speakers behind you and then a second later you get it again a bit louder from the front. During any prolonged announcements, it just becomes a jarbled mess. A simple delay adjustment on the far side would make things much better.