French Legends Rank 3rd In SPL V World Cup

Last Sunday, the SPL V organized a 7 aside World Cup Tournament with 11 teams from all over the world. It was cold and windy but luckily the rain of the day before decided to take a break. Prior the tournament, we were hit with some bad luck as 3 of our Legends got locked-up at home and were not allowed to leave their home.

We had a small squad with only 9 players including the coach and David in the goal and with 6 games to play we knew it was not going to be easy.

Our spirit was good and we faced USA in our 1st match. It always takes a few minutes to get used to 7 aside as it’s a different game. We didn’t give a lot away and finally towards the end we managed to score a good goal by Pierre after a nice combination.
Our next game was against Korea (actually composed by players from Japan FC). We worked very hard to keep a cleansheet as the pace of the game was fast… We did score a goal towards the end to take the 3 points.
In our 3rd game against New Zealand (Wellington), we struggled a bit as they had several substitutes with fresh legs. We started to play too many long balls and they were hard to handle on the slippery small pitch. The caught us on a counter when we couldn’t get back on time and they took the 3 points.
Our fourth game was against England which was nice open game with both teams playing full attacking football. We took the lead but soon England got one back with a low shot. We had some great goals with tikki takka combinations to make the final score 3-1 for France.
Our last group stage game was against Ecuador. We were close to win the match with Ben hitting the cross bar and Pierre missing from close range after a surprise “Presidential” step over. The game turned upside down after a clear foul on Mamdouh was ignored by the referee despite the fact that he was one meter away from the incident. We stopped playing to get a free kick… Instead Ecuador scored 🙁

Due to the last match result, we couldn’t make it to the finals and were up against Scotland for 3rd place battle. It was 0-0 at the end and 5 penalties would decide our faith. We had a good run with Freek, Pierre, Skiv & Mamdouh scoring. But when Ben showed up… maybe he got nervous knowing the camera crew was watching him & he missed! However, David kept us already in the game with 2 excellent saves. This helped secured the 3rd spot of the 2022 SPL V World Cup.

Overall a fun day which we enjoyed a lot despite the tired legs. After the World Cup, we got a couple of well deserved beers. This Friday, we will have our Lions Legends Christmas Dinner at Senso. We are in the good hands of Severino and his family. We’re looking forward to a great evening!

Cheers

Freek