There was no report for yesterday, February 6th, for the simple fact that there really wasn’t much to report. The days after games are normally off days. Down here it is very much a stretching day. The team did go through some 8v8 game on ½ field. N’Silu continues to get goals. Nothing overwhelmingly special, in fact you’d say most of his goals are ugly, but they are going in with some frequency during these small scrimmages. Also, Wallace showed well on a couple of occasions. First, he took the ball off of Olsen’s feet and slipped a nice pass through to Doe for a goal. Later he made a superb individual dribbling effort through traffic and scored a goal. Today’s morning practice was a ¾ field intra-squad scrimmage. The teams broke down as: Yellow G – Kocic D- Namoff, Janicki, Burch, Wallace M – Simms, McTavish, Barkage F – Moreno, Doe Red G – Thorpe D – Zaher, Veris, Miller M – De Jong, Vide, Mediate, Khumalo F – Emlio, N’Silu Highlights - Emilio scores a nice goal with good hustle and finishing. The play started out as N’Silu manages to win the ball in the middle of the park. As he pushed forward he sucked Simms and Janicki onto the ball, but managed to see Emilio streaking past him, catching Yellow’s defense unawares. - Khumalo is able to step around McTavish and speeds down the wing. Good forward support by Zaher allows Khumalo to get out of the trap in the corner. Zaher continues to swing the ball around the arc to Mediate, then onto N’Silu, who taps it back to the middle for Emilio. Emilio places a perfect ball in the upper right corner out of the reach of Kocic. - Namoff does a give-and-go with Simms and flies down the sideline. He starts an assault on goal with Doe to his left. Namoff taps to Doe who then does a nice dribble to beat Zaher and Mediate. Doe finishes the play with a superb blast into the lower left corner. I thought Khumalo showed well throughout the contest. He managed several attacks down the flank. On the other hand, I believe he needs more guidance on helping support the defense. I don’t remember Jaime Moreno being this vocal before. Roger missed both sessions of practice. The team said that he “is not feeling well.” Unlike last season Emilio is clearly on a mission. Last year he came in around 10 pounds overweight and clearly not game fit. This season he is in excellent shape physically, and apparently included some off-season regime’ for skills. His finishing has been extremely good! Other Notes The afternoon practice consisted of a dozen strength and stretching stations. Trialist GK Evan Bush has moved on to other things. He will be trialing for a USL-1 team. Sitting out due to soreness: Quaranta, Olsen, Pontius, Fred.
Thanks again, John. You da man! N'Silu really hit a streaking Emilio? I'd say that's 180º different from last year! I must spread reputation around, blah, blah, blah.............. Can somebody(ies) help me out?
Thanks, I really appreciate the Florida updates! A motivated Emilio is exciting for sure, I hope he gets some early goals this year to get the ball rolling.
Thanks as always for the updates. These are both excellent developments. Good to hear that Jaime is becoming a more demanding leader, and good to hear that Emilio has a fire lit under him.
Every team in MLS has only one or two huge impact players. Behind GBS and Alejandro Moreno in Columbus, there really isn't any other players that scare me.
The same Rogers that looked like crap in January? And the same Marshall with health and speed issues? Rogers has speed, Marshall has height, but most teams in MLS have two players with the same MO. Neither one stands out as someone to be feared. Monitored, sure, but I doubt there's a gameplan set up specifically against either one. GBS, on the other hand, is going to draw that kind of attention.