Lions veterans start the league with a win !
Lions,
We had a busy Lions weekend ! First we had our SIFL game in the early morning of Saturday versus Reunited. They just had beaten the Shooters the week before so we knew it wouldn’t be an easy game. In the first 20 minutes we couldn’t deal with the fast pace of their African strikers and didn’t manage our defense well. Our plan was to score first but reunited scored first when we couldn’t clear a ball in the defense. Now we needed to response and that’s what we did on fast counter attack finished by Romain. In the second half we promised to put it right and indeed we created several opportunities and Reunited hardly came over middle line. But creating chances is not good enough if you don’t finish them ! So the game ended in a draw 1-1 which felt like loss ! ICS Channel Shanghai was filming the game and you might see a glimps of the Lions today at 2100 on Shanghai Live (at the expat session). Next game will be against DIB for the Cup and that’s the perfect stage to put our team back on track, obvious we need to step up our commitment now and show that we are hungry for the title !
On Sunday Morning the veterans kicked off their season’s opener versus the Irish ! It was a beautiful day and it was great that we managed to put a full squad out despite many players not being available. We got the help from two of our U17 players, Yuki and Ryo who played well. We took a 3-0 lead after two halves and played decent football. It was nice to have Big Michael back our good old goal scoring machine and he netted two goals and Fred F. was in fine form as well despite his bronchitis, scoring two goals as well. Final score 4-2 win and our next game will be march 30 !
The SPL Lions were playing at the great pitch in Century Park. Our opponent was Sport for Life the new team in the SPL this season. Our plan was to work on our goal difference and we started strong within 8 minutes we were up 2-0. However SFL came back thru a corner and they came very close to the equalizer from a free kick which at the last moment was saved by Max our goalie. We scored another goal to make it 3-1 but again we let them score from a corner but our spirit was good yesterday as we responded witin 20 seconds when Nicolas went on a run and crossed to Yosh who scored to make it 4-2 at half time ! The second half it was all Lions and indeed we started to work on our goal difference scoring another 5. Final score 9-2 and with the Marlins and Cowboys ending their game with a draw we are back in the drivers seat ! Go Lions !!!!!
Looking forward to next weekend already lets have a record number of Lions at the training this Wednesday !
Cheers Freek
