On Tuesday 31st October NCF Elites U14s travelled to the Westway Centre to compete against Southampton FC‘s London Academy. The date was Halloween but hopefully we were not going to see any horror performances.

The format was to be played as 3 x periods of 20 minutes of 11 aside football.

NCF started the 1st quarter playing a 3-4-1-2 formation. We were slow to get going, a little off the pace and showing Southampton too much respect. However the boys stayed in the game. Three quarters of the way through the period the formation was altered to play a flat 5 in midfield to give us the opportunity to gain dominance in the central areas. There were not many chances in this period however a slight mistake in our positional play gave Southampton the chance to go in 1 nil at the break. 

2nd period the team were asked to press higher up the pitch with a man to man press. The Elites begun to play the game in Southampton half and were more aggressive in all areas. Our decision making became more fluent with players combining in all areas well. We were out fighting, out thinking and now out playing the Saints. However, against the run of play we found ourselves 2 goals down following a well taken finisher from their striker. The boys heads never dropped and following great pressing as a unit Tyler nicked the ball and calmly slotted home to bring it back to 2 v 1.

3rd quarter was dominated by the Elites but we were just lacking the final finish to bring the scores level.

Manager Carl said –

Boys looked a little nervous in the first 20 but following that point we settled down and really showed how good we are as a squad. This was a great match between 2 very good teams. I was really proud of the boys overall. Although we did not win the performance was excellent.

A big thank you to Southampton for hosting us. We look forward to the next one.

Goal scorer

Tyler Allbeury

Man of the Match

Jack Barker

Zac Hooper

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