Bangkok Storm Football Club

Casuals had another game this Sunday against Iplay a team we lost to 1-3 in pre-season in what was our first friendly with our current squad. Once again, our preparation was awful. We had players who didn’t show up until fifteen minutes before kick off and we had three no shows. As I mentioned in our match analysis, we cannot have no shows. When a Squad is named and confirmed players have to show up.

Nevertheless, we had 14 players show up and we did well. Iplay is a strong physical team who’s been playing together for a while now. And it showed. But in that first half, we outplayed them. We passed the ball well and our movement was fantastic. We stuck to the coach’s game plan and it paid off. I was got injured in the first five minutes and Cuno did a great job of stepping in for me having never played keeper for us.

Iplay had no shots on goal against us in that first half. But our problems in this Casuals league continue to haunt us. In our friendlies and in the BPL, our strikers constantly put the ball in the back of the net. But here, for whatever reason it is, we keep missing absolute sitters. One glorious chance was completely fluffed after a great move that sprang Iplay’s offside trap.

Iplay’s keeper was not bad but we never really exploited him when we had plenty of opportunities to do so.

Half time came and we were tied 0-0 and to be honest, I was pleased with our performance. As I said, like Harrow in the BPL, Iplay is a good team. Without our full squad we were doing very well against them, the only difference between Sunday’s match and Wednesday’s was that on Sunday, we weren’t finishing our chances.

In the 2nd half we went up 1-0 nil and promptly started to go away from our game plan. As Kenji has already stated, we started to have a negative mindset and play deeper in our half inviting Iplay to attack us when prior to that, we had control of the game. Soon enough, Iplay equalized and then we really panicked. Our CB’s started bombing forward leaving the middle of our pitch completely exposed, a cardinal sin. Iplay scored a great 2nd goal and we lost the plot completely.

The ref was shocking but he was shocking for both of our teams. We did have an outright penalty, but that’s football and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

We play Iplay again this Thursday, and hopefully because it isn’t Casuals, our strikers will come to play with their shooting boots on and we’ll have our full squad of 15 players present. We’re getting better as a team week by week. Our performance is improving and as long as we learn to stop making the same mistakes and don’t beat ourselves, we’ll be fine.

Credit to Iplay though, they deserved their win, now lets turn it around and beat them this Thursday.