Lions crash out of Chen Yi Cup

The Lions crash out of the second round of Chen Yi Cup conceding the winner in the last minute of the game. For this game, we were up against Athletic United (竞技联合). It was an early kick off on a rainy day but all players made it on time with the help of Didi! The field was slippery due to the rain and not easy to play on.

In the first 15 minutes we kept most of the possession and our Chinese opponent decided to sit back. We got a wake up call when a simple pass went straight to the opponent and we got 3 defenders out of position and faced a 3 vs 1 situation which they finished easy to make it 0-1. Soon we found ourselves in more trouble as we let them shoot on the wet pitch and the ball slipped under Robin our goalie for the 0-2. We got plenty of free kicks and corners to come back in the match but waisted them all…

During half time we took the chance to point out the weak points and knew we had 35 minutes left to come back in the match !

Amavi was brought down right at the edge of the penalty box and Pat (our sweeper) came up to blast the ball in the left side of the goal. Thing started to look better for us especially when the Chinese team got a player send off after a challenge on Benji and a bad word to the referee. With three minutes on the clock to play we got a free kick on the right and Yohan curled the ball towards Fabi and Pat… It was Pat who scored the equalizer with a good header 2-2 !

[ Chen Yi Cup ] Shanghai Lions FC 2-3 Athletic United (竞技联合)

We smelled blood and went for a third goal however we got a reality check again when we gave away a totally unnecessary free kick on the left side of the box in the last minute. Their best player, the No. 9 was surely not going to cross that ball but shoot it… He did it and blasted the ball in the top of the net !

It was a real pity to crash out like this as we could have easily made it to the 3rd round of the 2019 Chen Yi Cup. All the goals we conceded, we gave them away by our own mistakes. We will try to do better next year!

Cheers
Freek