The result is not actually what I wanted to talk about. Swope Park are a good team (better than us, to be honest), so to lose by one goal away from home is nothing to get bent out of shape about.
What I want to discuss today is what we are all talking about after the game - the penalty.
Down 3-2, the Lights were awarded a penalty kick in the last minute of stoppage time. It was a gift-wrapped opportunity to steal a point, on the road, against one of the better teams in the division, with the very last kick of the game. But instead of taking the shot, the Lights did this:
What? Why?
A penalty kick is literally a free shot from more or less the perfect position on the field. As in - the team spends the entire game trying to get the ball as close as possible to the penalty spot before taking a shot. About 75%-80% of penalty kicks are scored. That number jumps up to about 85% if the taker manages to keep the ball on target.
So why in the world would you want to mess around and pass it to a teammate at that moment.
Now I know what you are saying: Messi and Suarez did it, and it turned out fine:
Yes, they did but (1) they were already two goals up with ten minutes to go, not a goal down with seconds remaining against a better team on the road, and (2) it's Messi and Suarez (we can all admit they are on a slightly different talent level than Alvarez and Ochoa).
It the end, Ochoa and Alvarez's attempt turned out to be less "Messi-Suarez" and more "Pires-Henry."
After the game, both Chelis and Isidro Sanchez defended the pass-penalty attempt, calling it "brave."
Fair enough, the coach is supposed to defend the players in public. What I worry about is what is happening in private.
In isolation, one ill-advised pass-penalty wouldn't be a big deal. But when you start to look at it in connection with this:
And this:
And this:
And this:
And all of a sudden your club starts to look less like a professional soccer team and more like aThe goalkeeper catches the free kick and then just dribbles all the way out past midfield on his own personal counter attack! I'M DYINGGGGG pic.twitter.com/PPtg7Qe9Si— Mike Manganello (@MikeManganello) June 3, 2018
circus.
So my main question in response to the pass-penalty is this line from the report for the Las Vegas Review-Journal: " a play they’ve practiced since their first week of training in January came up short."
In soccer, you only have so much time on the training ground before the players get tired. You don't want to run the team into the ground, as they have (at least) one game every single week, and they need to start fresh. So with your limited time, the coach has to make some tough decisions. What do we practice most? Because if you spend a session practicing, let's say, crossing, that leaves you with less time to practice corner routines, or organizing the defense, or shooting.
So the question is, what did the team give up in order to practice pass-penalties "since January"? Shouldn't we have just been practicing real penalties (you know, like every other professional team in existence)?
And what exactly environment is going on in the backroom? What is the training environment that leads to the goalkeeper thinking that it would be a great idea to try to dribble from his own six-yard-box past the entire opposing team in the middle of the game, like he is some sort of Neuer/Maradona hybrid? Is it even possible to instill discipline into a team when the technical director can't even go a month without getting banned from the touchline?
The coaches claim it is part of the "show" - but I don't know anyone that is going to renew their season ticket based on the number of weird plays that the team tries during the season. They are going to renew based on whether the team is successful, and whether they play good, quality soccer. That's why we go to games and tune in to watch, because we love the game, not the sideshows. The sooner the coaching staff learns that, the better.
-VSB
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