El Messi Irlandés. Medici Fiorentini 3-4 IUE

Caldine, Monday 7th April 2008. Goals: France, Luis, Dave H (2)

Strangely enough, I was talking on the morning of the game about great goals where players have dribbled from the half way line and finished... Maradona v England, Messi last year are a couple. Atkinson vs Wimbledon is an unlikely candidate, and there is of course Weah at the San Siro from a while back (youtube them all, you'll have lots of fun). Well, they were all beaten in all respects last night by a brilliant wonder goal from our own number 10, Dave Horan, who decided to get his own back on his team mates, who apparently were 'not passing to him' (do the accent in your head), by going straight from the kick off, taking on a couple of Florentine doctors an finishing well, putting us back on track for a win we were on the verge of throwing away.

Also of note in this game was a wonder save by David in goal, after tipping the ball onto the bar, the ball went high into the air, leaving him seemingly clueless as to where the ball was, in fact about to drop onto their onrushing striker's head, only to prove himself to be the Iberian Zatoichi (google it), proving that you don't need to be able to see the ball to leap into the air and palm the ball to safety.

The third wonder of the match was Si's wonder strop that got him sent off, after the ref gave a very very generous penalty against the unlucky Simon and he got up and punched the ball out of the number 9's hands, who, having already thrown himself onto the floor once to win the penalty, did it again and got Simon sent off.

So, down to 10 men, and with tiring legs on a big pitch with fifteen minutes left, plus 4 mins injury time, we did something miraculous: kept the ball for the entire twenty minutes. Unbelievable. Who'd have thought we had the ability not to press the self destruct button. Well done to everyone.

So, the match: Dave H came back in up front, and France returned to the right, with Leo switching back to the left wing. The settled back four, and now habitual midfield partnership of Luis and Ernesto remained in tact from last week. We started off excellently, even though our kits were stinking. Thanks Manolo, maybe next time you could wash them with actual soap. To make things even worse, the Medici were decked out in full Fiorentina away strips, as some of them work for the club. The pitch was a bizarre affair, with fake mowing lines of different shades of artificial turf, and was the narrowest AND longest which we have played on this season. Very strange. Medici played a very suited system to the narrow pitch, and won that made in difficult for our midfielders in particular: a kind of 4-2-2-1-1, with width coming from the strikers pulling wide, with the oncoming midfielders pushing into the space. The key to bossing the game was following these men and winning first and second balls in midfield. While we played very well for spells in the first half, we failed in that key task, making things more difficult than they should have been. Our most dangerous players in the first half were our wingers, who managed to take advantage of the narrow set up of Medici, with the Italian wizards Leo and France getting in behind on several occasions. Much to Leo's disgust he is now definitively a winger. Ha! Shame he go injured after 20 minutes, time enough to set up France's goal, which he almost managed to fuck up, even though he had an open goal and about twenty five yards of space. Their narrow formation also meant lots of space for our full backs, and in fact both of our first goals originated in good play by first Mate, and then Dom for the second goal, who crossed in excellently, with the ball eventually falling to Luis who put in it into the far corner. We mixed out play up well, with a good combination of short passing and longer balls, with the most common pass easilt being me up to Irial, who repearedly did excellently to open up the play to our oncoming midfielders. We started to lose out in midfield, but still looked pretty solid, but risking losing concentration. In the thrid minute of inujury time at the end of the first half, they won an absolutely scandolous corner and took it short, caught us sleeping, and crossed the ball into an empty box. Great finish by Ernesto! 1-2 at half time.

The second half was a typical IUE affair, with us letting in a goal after losing a man during the second phase of a crossed free kick. Dave H scored his wonder goal, and a more normal goal, and they scored from their stupid penalty. We missed the usual bucketload of chances, and generally played well, in particular as we were tiring due to the long pitch. On several occasions we shot when we should have passed, a theme that continued from the first half. Dave M came on and did a solid job first blocking in midfield and then at centreback as we went to 4-4-1 with more of a flat back four as they pushed three up front. This actually gave us the room to stroke the ball around for twenty minutes and close out the win. Good performanec overall with a scoreline that didn't really reflect how well we played.

Team: (1-3-4-1-1) David - Luke - Mate, Simon, Dom - Leo (Nate), Luis, Ernesto (Dave M), Francesco (Charles) - Dave H - Irial (Johnny)