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Shanghai Lions Football Club

Lions advance in Hebiguchi Cup after eliminating D.I.B. FC

[ SIFL Hebiguchi Cup ] Shanghai Lions 2-1 D.I.B. FC

Last Saturday we played D.I.B. FC for the fourth time this season and it was an important game for several reasons:

  1. First of all a win would give us two wins, a draw and one loss against them and a loss would obviously make us look weaker than them
  2. Of course, keep on Hebiguchi Cup race was the other important factor.

With only two players on the field at 10:22 (kick off at 11:00) it was not the ideal preparation you like to see as a coach. Phone calls were coming in about bad traffic. But with the car population increasing every single month there should be no surprise about bad traffic! Within 10 minutes before kick off we got our 13 players and god bless D.I.B. FC started the game slow so that it was better for us getting into the game. Games against DIB are always very tight and both opponents were just waiting for each others mistakes. Charles had a perfect opportunity to give us the lead but his lob went just wide and on the other side we gave away a free kick right  in the middle of the the edge of our penalty box… Not a good spot as DIB’s Chaoyuan Yin curled the ball in our left corner… 0-1! We did respond with a fast counter attack and scored the equalizer threw Matthieu. In the second half we tried to get the winner but a combination of hot weather with several players coming back from injury made us sink deeper and deeper in the defense. DIB looked fitter but there is a thing called fighting spirit. If you don’t play well you can still fight and that’s just what we did. The reward came in the 87th minute when Benji on the left found Azz, free on the far right, who quickly passed it to Matthieu in the box who turned and slotted the ball in the top corner! Its not the first time this season that we scored in the very last minutes and that’s a good sign.

This coming Saturday we will play Metro in the league and the fact that DIB just transferred two players to them will give us extra motivation! Great win and we now need to focus on the league and get back into fitness for our last 6 games !

Cheers Freek

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