Delightful performance from the Beechwood Boys

     This past Saturday the Beechwood Boys played at Erlanger Lions, easily the smallest field in the whole league.  That's a field that encourages a kick-fest type of soccer but the boys resisted that and played very skillfully with a wonderful touch on the ball throughout the game.  The result was a win, finally.  The best part of the whole game was the end though.  The boys were thrilled to have won, of course, but not overly so.  To me it seemed that they had a very relaxed "just another game" sort of attitude afterwards.
     The primary task I set for the team in this game was to show me that they could execute some sort of "fake" or feint to get the opposing player to freeze.  I told them it could be something flashy like a full on fake-shot or something as subtle as a little head-fake.  Well they dove into that assignment with gusto and I was seeing some very good deceptive dribbling throughout the game and from every player.  The video below shows Lucas pulling off a very nice little hesitation move that freezes the opposing player in place just long enough for Lucas to get by.  From there on in the video you see Lucas perform a very crisp Cruyff turn and then attempt that same move again.  Luke is playing off of Lucas at the perfect distance to be supporting without interfering and the result is something I think of as a typical "Legends overlap", that is, an accidental but very effective exchange of the ball.  Lucas isn't passing the ball to Luke as in a real overlap but Luke is anticipating that Lucas might lose possession and so he's in position to pick the ball up if that happens.  The result, splitting the defenders, is no less effective for being somewhat unplanned.   Along with all the fundamental ball skills they need, the ability to understand situations and anticipate the flow of the game is a critical component of effective cooperative play.  In this instance we see one Legends player smartly anticipating that his teammate will play like a Legends player, that is, Luke knows that Lucas is going to keep trying to dribble through until they take the ball from him so he positions himself to be ready for when that finally happens.

     Of course Luke does the same thing Lucas was trying to do and stubbornly attempts to dribble through everyone without ever looking up for a pass.  Good.  Luckily when he does lose the ball Lucas is there to cut off the shot attempt from the other team.  Energetic, supportive play.
     The rest of the video shows a great run from Oliver who had one of our goals in this game (Luke had the other two).  This run isn't the goal but it shows how hard Ollie is working and how smartly he's anticipating the possibilities.