News

SIPG

U17 take the lesson vs. SIPG U17

For our 1st game of the China (Shanghai) International Youth Football, we were up against ultra favorite SIPG U17. We all woke up very early and it was good to see all players on time to catch our team bus from Jinqiao to the far-away venue in Jiading district. When we arrived, we saw a great brand new facility with several Astro fields and 4 very good grass fields. The tournament organizer did their best with many volunteers to make the event a success.

We had to attend the opening ceremony in the morning while our match against SIPG U17 was only at 15:30… But we did our duty and took it well while starting to prepare for our game. In the dressing room, Pat delivered a good speech pointing at all the issues which we were going to face against a professional club team such as SIPG.

While we tried to set up a plan, we knew that it would be hard to play our usual game when the opponent can find the open space in an instant and put our players out of position. As a start, SPIG scored very early in the game with a long-range shot over our keeper Jay. 2mn later they scored their 2nd goal… As a consequence, we never managed to get into our game :(. To make matters worse, we lost Brandon after 30mn with an ankle injury as he was our pivot striker.

At half-time, to push the reset button and calmed down all the players. It worked as we started to play as a team and we managed to take equal possession of the ball for a long spell. Our combination football came back to life and we could have scored a goal with a little bit of luck… Henry tried to chip the ball over the keeper but his effort went over 🙁

Yes, SIPG U17 scored 11 goals against us but it could have been more if our keeper didn’t make some good saves and if our defenders didn’t stand up against their attacks.

[ Youth Tournament ] Shanghai Lions FC 0-11 SIPG U17

Today’s positive is that we never lost our head & keep fighting from the 1st mn until the last we never lost our heads and kept fighting. This is the spirit we’ll bring tomorrow to our next match. You win or lose as a team… This is football.

Let’s go Lions! We’d like to thank the parents, older lions & our injured youngster player Yang Yang who all came to watch today. That’s the spirit to support each other no matter the result. Have a good rest and we’ll be back on track tomorrow.

Cheers
Freek, Pat & Nick

Leave a Reply