Dutch Lions Junior Academy @ 4v4 Freeze Futsal Tournament
Date: Sunday 1/21/2012
Final score: 9-8 W, 10-4 W, 6-7 L
On Martin Luther King day 5 players of the Dutch Lions FC Junior Academy played the 4v4 Futsal Freeze tournament, hosted by Hammer FC. The U9 Boys Orange delivered 4 players for the team (Eben, Luke, Seth and Trace) and the U9 Girls completed the team with sending Leila. The Dutch Lions won the first 2 games, but lost the third game. Overall they played a strong tournament and had a lot of fun!
This first game the Dutch Lions looked really uncomfortable on the court. The Lions played against Hammer FC U9 Boys (the home team) The ball was rolling a lot faster than on the regular field, is a lot heaver and there are no goalkeepers. After 10 minutes in this first game the Dutch Lions were 6-2 down. As real champs they were able to adjust to the circumstances and started to play “Dutch Lions Soccer”. Lots of good passes and some moves to fake out the other team. This revival lead to a very exciting last couple of minutes in the game. When the game ended the Dutch Lions scored 1 goal more than the other team, and won the game with 9-8.
The second game the Dutch Lions were on fire right from the start. They got ahead early in the game and kept the lead the entire game. While being up a couple of goals, the Lions players started to focus more on using their moves and fakes. This focus lead to less goals, but more development moments in an area the Young Lions really like to excel at. The game ended in a 10-4 win.
In the last game of the tournament the Dutch Lions played TFA from Cincinnati. Before the Lions realized the game started the scoreboard already showed a 3-0 lead for TFA. The Dutch Lions didn’t step to the ball and lost the ball every time the had it. After this “not so good” start of the game the Lions raised to the occasion. The young lions were able to connect more and more passes and some great moves to score goals. Halfway the game the scored was tied at 4-4. In the remainder of the game both teams were very even and kept each other under pressure. Towards the end of the game TFA received a doubtful PK, which ended up being the winning goal. Coach Tommy: “The PK doesn’t matter, things like that happen. We should have started the game better and should have taken more shots, but we will learn from this and make sure we will do better next time. That’s development”.
Coach Tommy was very happy with the tournament and the performance of the team: “I have coached Futsal before when I worked in New Jersey, but never in Ohio before. I think the players had to really get used to the pace of the game. But once we got the grasp of it, I believe we did really well. Using nice passes and some cool moves to outplay the other team happened on multiple occasions. All the players had a great time on the court and I think we definitely learned a lot. It was just a great experience for us.”
