I think it was a fun day for the boys, though quite hot! I know a number of you have already heard this from me but I wanted to clarify for everyone that although I had earlier placed the goal of winning this tournament, I have retracted that goal. The reason is not that our opposition is so difficult, but that we have changed the team much more than I knew we would when I first made that statement.

I knew, obviously, about our player changes. What I didn’t think about is that we would switch our formation. Marcelo (our trainer last year) was a bit of a maverick within Express and he picked a formation he thought would most help us achieve what we wanted last year, promotion to Super 2. That formation was what we call a 3-5-2, with three defenders, 5 midfielders, and two forwards. (In soccer formations are given as the number of players in each line, starting with defense. The goalkeeper is not counted so they always add up to 10. There may be more than three lines; for example the 4-2-3-1.) He would also tinker a bit with a 3-4-3. But with him gone we are reverting to the Express policy of playing a 4-3-3 (which is itself a recent change from a club-wide 4-4-2).

Changing to a new formation can be difficult, as not only are there some positions that disappear and others that appear that weren’t there before, there are differences in how EVERY player on the field plays their position. This takes time to learn, and prior to this tournament we haven’t had a single scrimmage; we haven’t once received instruction on how to play this 4-3-3.

This isn’t a problem. If we are going to switch to this 4-3-3 I think it is great to use this tournament and the next to figure out exactly how the players need to play to be successful with this formation, and I think it is great to get 7 games in before the season starts.

That said, I think we are still in a position to finish respectably, even if winning will be hard.

Standings

Dynamos beat Lonestars today 3-2, while BYSA beat Texas Rush 3-1. We play Dynamos next, and Rush last, while BYSA plays Lonestars. IF we win our remaining two games we will earn 16-20 more points, giving us a total of 24-28. Texas Rush (in that scenario) could earn no more than 3 points for a total of 24, but BYSA could earn as many as 10. So what happens when BYSA plays Lonestars may negate anything we do today, but we still have an opportunity to finish 2^nd and SHOULD finish no lower than third.

Note on Uniforms

I know that I said we would switch to white jerseys for the second game, but I have to remind everyone that it is REQUIRED that players bring, at a bare minimum, both jerseys to EVERY game they play in. I would recommend bringing both full uniform sets to every game. I do not recommend laundering uniforms between games on the same day. If that is important to you, you may want to consider buying extra sets, especially of the socks as those take the longest to dry. No matter what I anticipate we will wear for each game, conditions may change: yesterday our afternoon opponent was wearing yellow, so I figured the blue would be a better color to wear.