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Senior team beat Anzacs but lost its captain

Last Saturday, our senior team had its 1st league game of the season 2023-2024. The grass was green, and the field was in good condition despite the rains of last few days. We had a couple of new players in the squad with Marcel back as goalkeeper. Peter was missing on his side in the midfield… So, we opted for a 4-4-2 formation to have a bit more balance in the team.

We started well with a solid defense and were using our fast players Matthew and Hira-san on the wings to create opportunities. Our youth player Matthew was especially dangerous. On one of his runs, he deposed Anzacs’ right defender and delivered a perfect low cross to the upcoming Hira-san who happily scored our first goal of the season.

After our goal we got another opportunity. Matthew was involved again running straight to the goalie… Instead of shooting, he laid-off the ball to Hira-san who just missed the target.

After this, we lost a bit of our composure and started to play more long balls, but most were not accurate… Therefore, we struggled to keep possession of the ball.

Half-time talk was there to put the team back in order and we started the 2nd half much better. Anzacs had to push more forward to get a result and we were waiting for counters opportunity. Marcel had to make two good saves to keep our clean sheet. On a through ball from Alex (another debutant); Matthew got launched again from the middle line and finished without hesitation in the top of the net.

In the last 10 minutes, it was a kind of one-way traffic as Anzacs were putting several long balls in our box and got a couple of corners in a row. Masa-san saved us on one of them from the goal line with a header.

With 6 minutes to go, disaster struck as there was a clash of heads in our box involving our captain… He knew straight away that he had damage from the impact… Instead of stopping the game immediately, the referee let the game play and Anzacs scored… Quite unbelievable as he had to come-off and went to the hospital to hear the bad news. He got fractures of his nose, his cheek bone and eye cast and will need an operation soon to fix the damage.

[ SIFL ] Shanghai Lions FC 2-1 Shanghai Anzacs

It was a very sad ending in our 1st game of the SIFL season. All we can do now is to wish our captain a speedy recovery.

It’s now time for October break and will be back to training on October 10th. Next match will be on October 14th against Shooters.

Cheers

Sad Freek

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