Legends Clinched All Three Points In The Last Minutes Against Wellington

As it has been raining for the whole week we were playing against Shanghai Wellington at the school’s astro field instead of the natural gras field. It was very cold and we even got a bit of snow which is a rarity here in Shanghai.

We had some misfortune before the match as our goalie Paul learned after checking in the hospital that he fractured his collar bone during the match vs. Azzurri on Saturday. Luckily, we had FL willing to pick up the gloves.

We had a motivated well balanced squad and we knew that we had to play our best to beat Shanghai Wellington as they are a team who can score goals at any moment in a match.

We started well with good possession especially in the midfield. Shanghai Wellington was trying to move over the wings with their fast forwards but we covered them well with our defenders.

Key moment came when a Wellington player complained our ball was not pumped enough. We asked Mehdi to add some air in the ball and 5 minutes later; David tried to reach Pierre with a long ball… the pumped ball bounced over the outcoming keeper and Pierre was happily accepting the gift and put us 1-0 ahead. Germain had a couple of good runs through the middle but ran out of steam when he was about to shoot.

It was from a corner when Hira-san actually didn’t hit the ball well as it was too low but the well pumped ball bounced off a Wellington player and Laurent was in the right place at the right moment to score the 2-0 with a header.

After the half time break and 2-0 up; we dropped our level and didn’t create much opportunities. We knew one more goal would put the game to bed. However, we did get punished for our poor spell when Wellington saw their corner flying in direct at the second post and it boosted their spirit and things got worse for us when David our engine in the midfield had to come off with a groin injury.

With 10 minutes to go we made our final changes but it didn’t work out well this time as we were exposed on the left and gave a “free” pass to a Wellington player who quickly found their No. 9 striker and leading goal scorer. This time he got a bit of space and put the ball in our net with the top of his shoe.

Somehow this equalizer was a wake up call for us and we gave it our best in the final minutes. Last season, we did score the winner in the last minute against them so we hoped to repeat the same.

Well, believe it or not but history did repeat itself! This time, it was a perfect corner by Hira-san which found Germain at the near post and his header found Othmane our center back free to score the winner 3-2 with a great header.