SNN 4 - Verona 5 May 2008

Again a very close game against Verona.
And again, early in the game, we were taken by the surprise
of playing against a good passing team.
We fell behind quickly to a score of 1-4
(I believe that was the score at half time.)
But our defense adapted well and held Verona to 1 goal in the
second half while we scored 3.
We did very well at intercepting passes and defending near the goal.
I wish we could have played a third half !

Verona's winning strategy was to stop Zyl (he was complaining
about too many players on him), however I think this could have
been overcome with passing to open players.
They did this the first time we played them too.
We should have trained for this !
We need to have pre-planned offensive attacks like
Verona and Koln.
We saw what happened when 3 good-passing and tactics players
from Koln played for Milan against Verona.
Most defenses are not accustomed to defending against
a well-organized attack. (the weakness of the tackling
animation. makes it even more difficult.)

One thing I did NOT notice in this game was the use of the
look-down dribble.
That may be a partial explanation of the low score.
The game was more enjoyable.
I find playing against players who use this kind of dribbling
frustrating and aggravating.
It's not practical to have a rule against it but I think players
can be shamed into not using it.
If you see someone using this dribble to drive through defenders,
shout it out to everyone.