Tag: sports

Last weekend, I had a great game and Ender’s was merely passable. This weekend, things were reversed as I had a frustrating game and he did very well. After last week’s two-goal performance, I had high expectations when I saw that the other team’s goalie was older and not very good. I knew they had a decent defense anchored by a fast Portuguese sweeper, but I also knew I could score on them since I had a goal and an assist in both previous games against them.

But various factors conspired to deny me. The first chance blown was when a rebound bounced wide rather than to me waiting for it in the center, the second when a beautiful pass from the other striker was ruined by a stealthy two-handed push in the back from the sweeper that knocked me off balance just as the ball arrived. The third was a phantom offsides call, the fourth when instead of simply passing the ball forward, our attacking midfielder decided to shoot the ball wide, and the fifth when I had a clear run on the left side of goal, but badly scuffed the shot under pressure from the sweeper. We’d dominated the run of play, but nevertheless the score was tied at 3-3 when our captain replaced me 15 minutes into the second half. As I feared, that promptly shut down our attack, as we no longer had anyone on the field to stretch it horizontally or vertically. We spent the last half hour under constant pressure and wound up losing 5-3.

I know it probably confuses the guys to repeatedly observe that taking off a lesser player for a better one reliably provides negative results, but it all comes down to geometry. It’s not just that I have more speed, but also that if I am the attacker further away from the ball, I move out wide when we attack, which usually draws two defenders after me. The outside defender has to stay with me, and since they know I can beat him, the inside defender also has to cheat 10-15 meters in that direction as well. Not only do we get whatever opportunities are created when the ball is passed my way, but more importantly, taking 1.5 defenders out of the equation creates the space our midfielders need to bring up the ball and attack.

For example, there is a very good reason that an important aspect of the Barcelona tika-taka approach often involved one wing standing literally on the left chalk and the other on the extreme right side of the field. When you’ve got Lionel Messi in the middle, the single most useful thing you can do if you are not Messi is to pull a defender wide with you and leave the man room to operate. Fortunately, one of our new attackers has good speed, so I think I can teach him to do what I’m doing and we can stop playing a half-court game when I’m not on the field.

Ender and his defense started their game in a very shaky manner. They very nearly gave up a goal in the first minute, and the opponents had a pair of attackers with enough speed to make the defenders visibly nervous. One nominal backpass from the right defender (who subsequently had a very good game) was more akin to a shot than a pass; Ender had to volley it clear as it bounced. However, I was coaching from behind the goal and pointed out to Ender that they were attacking pretty much the same way every time up their left, so he blunted its effect by aggressively coming out of goal to intercept passes into the box, or, on one occasion, stuffing an attacker one-on-one at the top of the box. He also made a fantastic diving save on a low ground shot towards the right post after a corner, then pushed another shot onto the near post when the left defender was beaten. He did a nice job of intercepting a corner kick by leaping up and slapping it away before an attacker could get a head on it, and then was fortuitously bailed out by the crossbar on a free kick that was too high for him.

After ten minutes of Ender and the defense withstanding moderately heavy pressure, the star player finally did his patented “run through four defenders and pass off to an open man” for the first goal against the run of play. That shook the other team, and a second goal on the first corner kick they gave up – which, to Ender’s amusement, I correctly called in advance – broke them entirely. It was 3-0 at halftime and Ender didn’t have much to do in the second half as his team put in five more goals. Then, as is usual in such situations, the defenders got greedy to score and lazy about getting back, thereby leading to two goals that he had no serious chance of stopping, both from inside the 6-meter box. They ruined his chance at a clean sheet, but his team put in one more goal to close out the game at 9-2. It looked like an easy win after the fact, but as I pointed out after the game, if they had scored one or two of those early chances, the game might well have gone the other way.

One amusing note. The one girl on the team, who has played with these boys for years, is hopelessly overmatched but hard-working and uncomplaining, scored two goals as a result of her perfect positioning at the far post. It’s funny to watch her play, because she knows exactly what to do whenever she gets the ball: immediately pass it to the star player. The moment the ball is heading her way, he accelerates towards her and she will find him and pass it to him even if he’s got three opponents around him. After she scored the first time, all the guys mobbed her and the star, who had cross the ball to her, nearly knocked her down by enthusiastically pounding her on the back. The truth is that the boys don’t mind girls playing with them at all so long as they play hard and play on the boys’ terms without any expectations of special treatment.

Two wins in two games as the starter, with three goals allowed per game, isn’t bad at this level. The regular goalie will be back in two weeks, but Ender appears to have secured his place as next year’s starter in the interim. I think he’ll be entirely content to return to his role as backup goalie and substitute defender for the rest of the season. The new coach clearly appreciates his multi-positional utility, and it’s nice to see that someone who knows what he is doing is finally in charge.

I’ve seldom been as angry as I was a weekend ago. For the last month, Ender has worked very hard to earn his place as the youngest member of a pretty good team, literally fighting for respect from some of this teammates and doing more than his part to shore up the defense when some injuries and suspensions removed all four of the defensive starters.

However, he is also the backup goalie, which is the position he plays most often in practice. He’s as tall as the starting goalie, but being three years younger, is about 20 pounds lighter. Two weeks ago, the quasi-coach told him that he was going to play, then neglected to put him in even though the team went up three goals and was in complete control of the game. Then last weekend, we showed up to the game to discover that a) a new coach, b) the starting goalie had injured his foot at school, and c) a goalie who belonged to a different club.

It was bad enough that instead of starting the backup, they’d gone outside the club to bring in a new goalie. But that was justifiable, since Ender had a poor practice earlier that week. What was worse was that the borrowed goalie was terrible. He only gave up three goals, but that was entirely misleading because the other team simply could not put anything on net. They must have beaten him 12-15 times, but kept shooting the ball wide or over the goal. It became a bit farcical at one point when the kid was out of position, got beaten by a lob, and instead of turning around and catching it on the bounce, tried to do a bicycle kick that missed. He was bailed out by the fact that the ball happened to bounce on the hard ground of the penalty spot rather than the grass, and bounced just over the crossbar.

Nevertheless, Ender still didn’t go in, even when his team was again up by three goals. He was angry and I was downright furious. Why am I spending an entire afternoon every weekend to watch my son not play? After the game, Ender told the coach that if he wasn’t going to play even when the starter goes down and the team has a three-goal lead, he’d much rather suit up as a defensive substitute. I suspect this may have alarmed the new coach since he was suddenly faced with the prospect of having one suboptimal goalie on loan and no backups.

I didn’t question the coach’s right to decide whatever he wanted. Making bad decisions is a coach’s prerogative. What I thought was egregiously stupid from the club’s perspective was the apparent reluctance to work with what they’ve got. Ender is young enough that he could be their starting goalie for the next three years and he is their most promising candidate for the spot since the current starter will be too old next year. And he may be slight, but he’s almost certainly going to be a more imposing physical specimen than the current starter in the near future. So instead of working to develop him, you discourage him to the point of having him switch positions? It made zero sense.

The new coach must have reached a similar conclusion after Ender had two very good practices this week, as he not only started him this weekend, but didn’t even bring back the loaner-goalie as a backup. Ender was visibly scared stiff after taking the field, but the whole team was supportive and the defense did a fantastic job in the first half of keeping the pressure off him.  Except for one little thing in the first ten minutes: they gave up an unnecessary penalty. Just what every young keeper making his debut needs. Ender dove right and missed the ball, but it hit the post and Ender got up just in time to make a nice reaction save on a close-range shot from the rebound.

That, along with a stuffed one-on-one late in the game were the high points. However, he let one high shot get through his hands when he jumped a little too late, and then I had to warn him when the team went up 4-1 because the defenders began to get goal-hungry and lazy about getting back to defend. To no avail, as it turned out, because the other team’s strikers rapidly put two more past him from close range that probably couldn’t have been helped, then, flustered, he blew a fourth one that he should have had. Still, his team ended up winning 7-4, he made three or four solid saves, and the general verdict was that he’ll make for a decent backup at this point. Not a great debut, but far from a disaster, and the first team coach told me that he thinks Ender has the ability to play at the next level in three years when he’s eligible. Since his own son is on the pro track, I suspect he knows what he’s talking about.

My own season has been personally satisfying but somewhat frustrating from a team standpoint. We tied our first two games against a very good team and a bad one while I contributed essentially nothing besides a few near misses. Last week, I found myself losing my starting spot, although it might have only been the captain wanting to save me for the second half when the defense is tired and the field is more open. He’s well aware of my age and limitations. We lost to our number two rivals 4-2, although I did get an assist when the right midfielder put the ball past the defense down the line for me. I pulled the two central defenders and the keeper to me as I approached the box, then chipped it over them towards the far post, where Julien, a tall attacker who plays for us as well as the first team, effortlessly headed it in. It was pretty; after the game the opposing team’s goalie came up to say what a nice attack it was. Of course, its easy to be magnanimous when you win. We have a bit of a history, as three of the last five games between our teams have come down to me going one-on-one with him at the final whistle. The edge is his at this point, 2-1.

This weekend, I not only started, but had to play the whole game, as we had lost two of our four attackers, including Julien, to injury, and our third attacker couldn’t make it. Fortunately, we were playing a lesser team and the midfielder who was moved up to the other attacker’s position was in the mood to pass, which isn’t always the case. I scored the first goal when he went one-on-one with the keeper, then slid it over to me to put in the empty net. Unfortunately, the clueless referee waved it off for offside, which was impossible since I was BEHIND both the ball and the player who passed it to me. I got a second goal, which actually counted, when the same guy put a long cross-field pass past the defense, I ran onto it, and slid it across the face of goal.

Then I got a third one by jumping a careless backpass from a defender, rounding the keeper as he came out for it, and walking it into the net. I should have had a fourth when Sergio sent a perfect ground cross through the box, but I leaned back too far and hit the crossbar. Stupid, stupid, stupid… I knew the moment I hit it that it was going too high. I had another great opportunity later cutting in from the right, but Giorgio called for it so I drew the goalie and slid it across to him and he was about a step behind where he should have been. He barely managed to get his foot onto it so the ball went wide. That cost us, because two defensive blunders gifted them a pair of easy goals and we ended up with a 3-3 tie. Two goals is great and all, but I legitimately had three and probably should have had five.

On the one hand, it’s good to know that even at my advanced age I can still help the team, and on a good day, compete favorably with the guys in their late twenties and early thirties. On the other hand, almost everything hurts and I’m walking like a man twice my age today.

AD will be back on the field on Sunday:

The Vikings gave Adrian Peterson the weekend off for damage control.

But now they’re falling back on due process.

The team just released a statement from owners Zygi Wilf and Mark Wilf saying the All-Pro running back would fully participate in practices and meetings this week and is expected to play Sunday against the Saints.

It appears the NFL owners are beginning to grasp that reacting like Pavlov’s dogs to the Social Justice Warriors ringing a bell is not good for the game or for business. Now let’s see the NFL reinstate Ray Rice.

The football world has been striking poses left, right, and center, pretending that Ray Rice is the Second Coming of OJ Simpson. The Ravens released him and are giving out free jerseys in exchange for his old ones, the ever-sanctimonious Roger Goodell added an indefinite suspension on top of the previous two-game suspension, and various players and commentators are ritually denouncing him.

And for what? A single punch.

This is absolutely and utterly absurd. There are punches thrown in NFL games and practices every single week. If the NFL were to apply the one-punch standard consistently, half the African players would be out of the league by the end of the season.

This is not to say that Ray Rice is a good guy. If you watch the video closely, it looks like he does something to provoke her in some way at the elevator buttons. It almost looks as if he spits at her, she shoves him, he shoves back, and then she charges him and gets KO’d. We’re clearly not dealing with a pair of innocent angels here.

But here is the salient point. He’s not “beating her up”. He’s not abusing her. He’s not attacking her. In fact, the reason she got knocked out isn’t because he’s a big strong man, but because she was rushing at him. What he threw was clearly a defensive punch, and quite likely an instinctive one. I’ve been knocked out in much the same way while sparring, by walking directly into the sort of jab that one normally wouldn’t even feel. Remember, F=MA, so while Rice has a fair amount of Mass, a significant part of the Acceleration that provided the knockout force came from her rushing towards him.

There is a reason the prosecutor saw fit to allow Rice to avoid trial, most likely because there is considerably more than a reasonable doubt involved. One never knows with the inaptly named U.S. “justice” system, but it is highly unlikely that Rice would have been convicted of the one count of third-degree aggravated assault with which he was charged. To call his one-punch KO an assault, or even abuse, is to insult the men and women who are genuinely assaulted and abused. While ignorant people only look at the effect of Mrs. Rice crumpling to the ground, anyone with fighting experience is looking at how she rushed at him, how he retreated to the side of the elevator, and how he didn’t step into the punch or snap his hips. The police appear to have taken notice of these things as well.

“After reviewing surveillance footage it appeared both parties were
involved in a physical altercation,” read the Atlantic City Police
report.”

Lest you forget, intent matters greatly with regards to the law, and there is absolutely no indication that Ray Rice entered that elevator with any intent to harm his fiance or that he had any intent to do more than keep her off him when she rushed him. In fact, the only party that is seriously harming his fiance, now his wife, is the NFL, as Roger Goodell is depriving her husband of his ability to support her. That will certainly have more long-term negative effects on her than thirty seconds of unconsciousness did.

I see this as nothing more than pink shoes in October. It’s just another aspect of Commissioner Goodell’s clumsy and misguided attempt to market the league to women. Ask yourself this: how many of you, male or female, would still have your job if you were held to the one-punch standard being applied to Ray Rice?

This is your weekly NFL open thread. SKOL VIKINGS!