A review by Abhishek.
With the real team espanyol beating Mallorca this morning 1-0, the X-League’s Espanyol wanted to follow suit by getting a victory against rivals maestro. Captain Walter knew how attack oriented team Espanyol were so wanted to fight fire with fire by kicking off with a 4-3-3 formation.
Espanyol started the match off with the bulk of the possession passing the ball around fluently. Maestro players were desperately trying to close them down and with the stupid sun beating down on the players it proved to be quite a chore. It wasn’t too long before the first goal for Espanyol came. A defensive error from Walter gifted the Espanyol player whose name I don’t know a golden opportunity to break the deadlock and he did not disappoint. The second goal for Espanyol came in quick succession as Walter tried to clear a skidding ball and it backfired and lobbed past
everyone and landed in the back of his own net. A rather unfortunate incident. I literally saw that in slow motion( don’t know if it was the heat or if the ball was really moving that slowly). But even being down 2-0 the Maestro players did not give up and started to branch wider more. Fresh legs were introduced in the form of Han rong for Gerald. This helped to increase the tempo of the game as Maestro desperately searched for a goal. Jeffery played a lovely through ball to an open Abhi but he couldn’t capitalise as his shot whizzed past the post. ( again I’m not too sure how far it was away from the post but lets just assume that it was pretty near k?) We had a few more opportunities via the flanks thanks to build up plays involving jonathan, rong an, august and han rong in the first half and just as we were finding our groove the ref blew for halftime.
For the second half Walter played a 4-4-2 formation with a relatively new line-up. Espanyol were playing as one unit by compressing themselves and by passing the ball among one another and suddenly they would play a long ball to an unmarked striker who had quite a bit of space ahead of him and he would try to channel an attack. Such a scenario happened to lil’ eric and he made a last ditch attempt to stop the striker by sliding him from the back in the box. The referee instantly blew for a penalty and the Espanyol captain coolly slotted home their 3rd goal. Lil eric also received a yellow card (whats new). Walter decided to spruce things up abit by shifting Norris to the flank to give more outlets to attack from. As Norris was playing wide it was easier to find him and hence he could work his magic on the defenders. He and hakim silkily moved past the defenders to create more opportunities via the flanks but our attempts to get a goal were futile. Meanwhile credit must be given to Alan, big eric and jonathan who worked their asses off( can I cuss? Can I say asses over here?) in trying to keep Maestro in the game by displaying some outstanding defending. And finally the whistle blew for full time, Espanyol 3, Maestro 0. Maestro players would have felt harshly done as the score line did not really seem fitting given that most Maestro players had a pretty good game.
Espanyol will take the victory as they too know on a different day the outcome could have been very different.
Pros :
1) Jonathan had an outstanding game in centre mid and as a right back showing everyone what a valuable asset he is to the team defensively and attackingly. ( I am not being biased he really did have an awesome game.)
2) Team kept on trying instead of giving up even after the 3rd goal was scored.
3) Some good build up plays shows that we have the potential to create goals from anywhere on the pitch instead of just set-pieces
Cons:
1) Global warming.
2) We still lack a creative attacking midfield playmaker who can spray the ball to the flanks and can help to dictate the play.
3) We honestly need to pen down some small tactics to use in the game like how the wings can pull wide and we can spray the ball to them when the midfield area gets too cramped up, and how instead of always floating the corner in get afew ppl to pull defenders into the box to mark them and allow rong an to be free and let the corner taker pass the ball to rong an so he can take a shot directly from the edge of the box. ( it catches the opponents off guard)
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