June 17, 2007

"What?!? What are you doing?!?"

That was my reaction as the Silverbacks tried to sub in a defender in the fourth minute of injury time on Saturday night. "Oh, the Silverbacks were trying to protect a lead," you might say. Not so much, the score was 0-0 and we were well on our way to another frustrating home performance by the team.

I saw the PDL team play a scrimmage this morning, and I saw the women play last night. Both of those teams play better soccer than the 1st division team. I haven't seen so many long balls since a steroid-infested batting practice routine by Jose Canseco.

I actually felt bad that I invited some new friends out to the match, it was so bad. I've seen U10 teams show more tactical awareness and commitment to entertaining soccer.

Let's take stock of this. The team started with a right back playing in the center, a left mid playing in the center, a center mid playing forward, and a forward playing right mid. Then, we put a center back at right mid and a left back at defensive mid. Since we try to surprise teams with our lack of injury reports and mystery signings, I guess we also go for the surprise route by playing people out of position.

I can't wait to hear the excuses on this one. You know what, every team deals with injuries. The transfer window is open, transfer someone from the PDL team if you have to. The PDL team at least tries to play soccer instead of just kicking the ball as high as they can. When you're resting the hopes for rescuing your season on a right back from Wilmington and a forward from Georgia Military College, you've got some serious problems.

It's a real shame, because I had hope going into this season. At this point, it's turning into a comedy of errors and I just keep going back to see what I can laugh at next.

At least the amateur tournament is over and Coach won't be playing next weekend in Charleston. I hope the team he supposedly coaches didn't distract him too much from the team he plays with. He should be okay for Friday...

If I can bring myself to it, I want to watch the game on USL Live tomorrow and do a statistical breakdown of the mess. It's a shame that you can't buy beer on Sundays in Georgia, I'll probably need it for that.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Just so you know, I checked this blog when I got in before I checked the forum, because I knew it would be more interesting reading. As we all know -- no one will hardly ever write anything bad about the team on there, even when they put on a craptacular performance like tonight's...

At the end of the game I tried to get a chant going of "We're not making the playoffs", but no one else would participate. So I didn't even bother trying any of the others I was thinking of: "that was awful", "heads must roll", "underacheivers", etc. I also tried to throw the team card that they gave out onto the field, but it just went straight left and landed in the walkway...

You know how you think of the perfect comeback 5 minutes later? I had a similar moment on the drive home. I was thinking why the hell didn't I think to take a big sign to hold up that said "NO WIN TONIGHT = HEADS MUST ROLL". Oh well...

DDA

Longshoe said...

The official stats credit Atlanta with 10 shots, 6 on goal. I only really remember 3 good chances, two that were saved well and Ukah's off the crossbar in injury time. Other than that, there wasn't much going on.

6 wins in their last 25 league games...

Anonymous said...

I'm actually let down because there were more defenders in the stands who didn't dress and sure could have put some boots on and sub in for the forwards. With such long ball power we would have been unstoppable.