Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Golden Opportunity Wasted

I blew it.
When I last posted I mentioned that in an ideal world I would play so well that AIK would want to sign me.  I reasoned that if I scored two goals in the match that I would have a great shot of signing directly with AIK and jumping two division and a boatload of prestige in the process.

Well I had two golden opportunities.  I missed them both.  Not only didn’t score, but missed the goal entirely both times.  Goals that I have scored before and goals that (if I ever get a contract) I will score again.  The first was about 10 minutes in and we had just conceded a goal to go down 1-0.  The attacking midfielder played a ball over the left back and I ran onto it and controlled it perfectly in stride out of the air.  That left me one on one with the goalkeeper on the right side of the box.  I decided to strike the ball on the volley, but scuffed it badly and hit the outside netting of the near post.  Glorious chance missed.  I did by far the harder skill by controlling the ball with ease, then blew the (relatively) easy part.

The second chance came with us down 2-0.  It was maybe 25-30 minutes in.  The attacking mid played a hard ball to my feet and I ran at the left back.  I ran at him at full speed, which pretty much meant he had to guess which way I was going to cut to have any chance of tackling me.  He guessed that I would go to my right foot…wrong.  I walked past him and had only the keeper to beat from 15 yards and inexplicably tried to use the inside of my right foot to guide the ball into the keepers near post.  I assumed he’d be cheating to his far post, since my momentum was carrying me that way.  I was also an idiot for using the inside of my right foot for a ball that was in the middle of my body.  Either a toe poke or left footed shot would have been a better choice there.  A second great chance missed.

We lost the game, 2-4 btw.

The silver lining in my performance was that I did a good job handling the winger for AIK.  His name is something Mutumbo and he’s considered the top winger in Allsvenskan.  He was the only player on that team that I’d heard of going into this match.  Once I was subbed off he scored within two minutes.  I also “assisted” the first goal.  I put that in quotations because I don’t know if it was credited as an assist.  Mutumbo was trying to dribble out of trouble deep in their end and I tackled him.  The ball went directly to our attacking midfielder who cheekily chipped the goalie.  Technically it did go directly from my foot to the person who scored, but anyone watching knew that it was not a pass but instead a quite fortunate tackle.  All the same some credit must be given for winning a tackle that leads directly to a goal.

I have nothing else today.  I think I’m in a good position at the moment to win a contract, but then again this isn’t the first time I’ve thought that and I’ve been wrong the other times.  I feel like I absolutely need to score a goal in our next training match on Saturday to ensure my position.  We’ll see.  If nothing else the Swedish agent who I’m working with here saw me play for the first time today.  He will have seen that I can play at this level and if Enkoping doesn’t work out then he’ll be more inclined to work to find me another club because he knows I can cut it, even if Enkoping doesn’t agree.  Talk to y’all soon.

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