================================================================================

Well, the score doesn't tell the full story, but we got beat squarely, no question about that.

All the goals they had were in the first half, when we had to play the game facing a strong wind directly into our face. We did a pretty good jobs denying any of their chances to score inside the penalty box, but we let them shot freely outside the penalty where we paid dearly for that. They actually only took about 6-7 shots outside the penalty box but made four of them in. Though do give them the credit as they powered the shots pretty good, even though the wind did help.

Second half, as the wind is now on our side, we pretty much controled the game, though we were as lucky as they were to score as they did. We did have quite few good shots to the goal and none entered the net. But I think we played pretty well on the passing game.

Overall, our opponent is a good team. Not that I'd not warned, I don't think they allowed one single goal last season at div 13, while scoring bunch themself, as bad as div 13 it may sound, it is still a tough thing to accomplish and they clearly showed today they deserve to be here. That said, I think we can still match up them well if we can play our best game, clearly we didn't today(weather may be one factor).

Loss as it is, again, keep in mind that our focus should, and won't, be on the score only. Our goal here is to have some fun and enjoy the game. We should be glad to have the chance to play against with this kind of good team as it will help us to
improve our own game, part of the purpose of playing in the league afterall.

Several things we can learn from the loss:
(1) we still need everyone be on time and early if all possible, we again had only barely enough of a line up only minutes before the game started, which didn't help at all as we didn't have a ready line up and part of the reason we lost couple goals quickly.

(2) we're still not to used to play under windy days, not sure how we can change it but something to keep in mind it is the kind of weather in Dallas that we'd have to get used to

(3) they clearly played better ball control than we do, something  we can learn from. To play against them, then require all
10 players on the field to play tight marking of your man, which we didn't do well, thus made their passes look much easier.
If you play an aggresive defense, they wouldn't be able to make their passes so smooth

One good thing is that this is probably the strongest team we will be facing in this league based on what I learned so far. And we have another chance to play with them later in the season, I think we won't let them off that easy next time we meet again.

Anyhow, still long way to go for the season, and we will take one game at a time.

Enjoy your week!
 

Goal/Asst  1st half - WangHao/RuiGang
                 2nd half - Liyi
                                Dagang
                                WangHao/Ray
                                Ray/WangHao
                                WangHao/??

Penalty      None
================================================================================

With the rain out game from last week, this one qualifies as our season kick off game:-) So our unbeaten season  kick off game winning record stands still:-)

A great game from everyone, given the fact that it had been long since our last real game. All players, including those who first played with the team, had done an exceptional job. Especially we kept our cool while the opponent gave us that little scare at the middle of the 2nd half, but we held on and quickly answered two more goals on our own to end whateve hope they might have had for a come back.

A quick run down on the goals scored(filling in the blank or correcting any if you see fit):

Goal #1 - only goal during the first half. We were trailing one goal behind as they caught us unprepared at the very early of the first half, scored soon after their miss on a penalty kick(big blow on their part). But we didn't panic and  settled down, played good control on the ball w/ a good passing game. RuiGang kicked a well targeted the pass
from the right side of the mid-circle, over the head of all the defenders, the ball landed perfectly on WangHao, who had a clear path to the goal, and he did as he had done so many times, calmly put the ball into the lower right corner of the net. Score is tied 1:1 at the half.

Goal #2 - only few minutes into the second half, Liyi took the ball onto himself at left mid-court, and dribbled passed  more than three of the defenders into the penalty, scored a perfect goal on the far side of the goal post. We led from there on and never looked back.

Goal #3 - a goal I missed but according to witness account, a mess  occurred in front of their goal and a kick from one of their defenders bounced off their goalie and then bounced off  their goal post and happened to land in front of Dagang and the rest is the history :-)

Goal #4 - yet a result of our control of the mid-field where we  passed around the ball was again inside right outskirt ofthe penalty box, where Ray put a great control of the ball at the right and attracted few defenders over, and then he passed the ball out towards left where the ball finds WangHao who was very glad to show the ball into the bottom of the net, again:-)

Goal #5 - talking about returning of the favor, this time WangHao made a great pass from the center court to Ray who outran couple defenders and made a beautiful sliding shoot as just about the goalie was able to block the ball

Goal #6 - 3rd goal for WangHao, though I lost track of who made the assist though was again a result of our good passing
game execution.

Goal #7 - this was supposed to a good goal for us, where Ray intercepted an illy pass from one of their defenders at the middle court, dribbled down the half field, shaked off couple of their defenders, and made a good fake towards left to shake off the goalie and sent the ball through the right hand side into the net, a perfect execution!

But at this point, the referee called an obstruction fault on ourside, citing one of our non-ball player made an offensive obstruction. What? Oh well, that's the life in the league, but we all know it's a good goal for Ray.

In addition, we created alot of scoring chances but couldn't convert them into scores, there were alot of todo with the wind and the bad field condition, but we scored enough to win. All of you did a good job, notably our forward combo in WangHao and Ray, I am sure there will be alot of more scores to be recored under their names this season. Our three central defenders, Dapeng, RuiGang and Andy, they played the entire game w/o rest and held the ground when is needed.

We do need to learn couple things from the game also:

(1) We do ask people to arrive early, as we caught short handed at start of the first half w/o a full line up (we did have enough head count but not in term of play positions). I understand the field is far most of the guys but still I'd like to ask everyone trying to arrive early. Teams will be much tougher as season goes and we may not get lucky again if we loss a goal too soon in a game.

(2) Overall, the referee is ok, but clearly he tried to swing some calls into our opponent's favor time to time. We don't like to see it, but keep in mind this is, and will be, the fact of life in the league. It's out of our control, and we will see it again if not worse. If so, keep your cool, play w/ our game, and most important, never argue w/ the referee in any circumstance, you would do only harm to the team than good, in addition of any penalty brought down onto yourself.

Good thing is that we will be playing our next three games at Russell Creek Park, and all games all on 1PM. Let's keep the win on our side, for awhile, shall we?:-)

Have a nice week!

Goal/Asst  1st half -
                 2nd half -

Penalty      None
================================================================================

Well, looks like it will be awhile for us to break the spell on us for having bad luck on night games:-)

We did play a good game last night, and if you hadn't noticed, we'd been playing well as a team lately, in term of working the ball, passing, as well as communicating, during last few games. The end results were more scoring chances had been
created, but we'd need to improve better on putting the ball into the net. Despite the score might have said differently, I do want everyone to recognize the improvements ourself had as players and the most important, as a team.

To be fair, we did get beat by a better team last night, no doubt about it, and no easy way to spin around that fact, so let's take the loss, make a good perspective on the matter, and move on. Keep in mind, there are many good soccer teams out there who can beat us in any given night,  so we're not out there trying to prove to the world we are the best team on the planet. As long as we can enjoy playing the game, either via working with the team, with the teammates, or  getting improvements in the game of soccer, win or loss, it shall no matter.
 

Goal/Asst  1st half - HeYi/Liyi
                 2nd half - Ray/Dagang

Penalty      None
================================================================================

A very hard fought game, though I thought we played a great game why againsting a very physical team, despite the  lack of subs we had, I believe we should have won the game but the luck just wasn't with us today. Still, I am happy with a tie and it's enough for getting us a playoff seat by looking at the other team's pts right now.

If not looking at the final score, we actually played very well from all aspects of the game, considering we had only two subs only, and our opponents are very physically demanding throughout the entire game.

I would first attrib to Yingwei who did a superb job at the goalie, who fended out numerous attacks from both air and the ground. Our defense did well too with practically no subs. Our mid-field,  again, almost all played the full game, basically executed a well controlled game until later half of the 2nd half while fatigue came in. Liyi did a great job moving back to play HouYao while Charles got a bump on the knee and had to come out from the game for a moment, and accomplished by
carrying the ball up as well as back in time to defend. Charles made back to the game soon and showed his offensive skills while playing at left mid and QianYao, worked with other mids and our forwards to create several opportunities. Our forwards were probably the hardest worked bunch:

first goal - I believe it was Liyi made a slice through pass to HeYi and he dribbled passed two defenders and the first shot was blocked by the goalie and the ball was bounced back to HeYi's foot, instead of another shot, he tricked the goalie by tipping the ball over goalie's head and gave us the 1st goal second goal- only minutes into the 2nd half, Dagang made a charge into the penalty box and his shot was blocked by the goalie, the ball bounced off another defender and got to Ray,
Ray only made quick stop of the ball, and powered it into the far left side of the goal, off the finger tips of the goalie. The start of scoring trend for Ray I suppose:-)

Nothing is more important than playing and enjoying a good game played, I think we did one today and even though we might have liked the final score be a win but I don't think a tie is bad thing either, especially it was clearly we were a better soccer team in the game, if not better on the endurance side, but we did have only 13 players.

We are still well ahead in points in ranking so nothing to worry about, we're looking for our last regular season game the coming sunday @7pm and then may be one more rain make up game. So let's try to get everyone out to play and I should again say you guys beat me to the expectation and we're in the playoff hunt, again, way ahead of schedule:-)

 

Goal/Asst  1st half - WangHao/Joseph
                 2nd half - Steve/Charlie
                              - WangHao/Liyi

Penalty     None
================================================================================

Not much to say, another good win for us, and we executed our game very well. Another big and huge and physical team we're playing agaist with, more so than the Warriors and Odyssey, though they don't have a good offense.

The most important, a great weather to have fun playing the outdoor and we got everyone playing. Great defense we played and gave them no chance on our goal net. Also we scored three beautiful goals:

1st half - WangHao/Joseph - a shot by Joseph bounced from their defender's leg and Lao Wang passed to WangHao who was at side, WangHao made one adjustment and powered ball into their net.

2nd half - Steve/Charlie - only minute into the 2nd half, Steve made a great charge into their penalty box and gave us one more goal.

WangHao/Liyi - Liyi drilled down from the center and made a pass to left to WangHao who then took the  ball down to the penalty box with a defender chasing along side and left footed a powerful shot into the lower right-corner of the net, no chance their goalie could reach that ball.

We are into the last stage of the regular season with two road games coming next two weeks, no news on rain make up games, but expecting to have at least one before the playoff to start. Let's take the next two games then, we may need all the players we can get to come out.
 

Goal/Asst  1st half - HeYi/Ray
                             - WenXin
                 2nd half - Charlie/Steve

Penalty      3 Yellow
================================================================================

Not much to say, we owned the game, period. Both teams should have known each other very well by then as there had been at least four games played between the two before this one.

We played on other advantages, control the ball. Three
great goals we scored:

1st - Ray made a great pass from the center circle in between the defenders to Yi who took the ball and made a one-on-one
move with the goalie and scored.

2nd - WenXin, an over 30 yard power shot, and despite their goalie's attempt to save it, didn't. The ball went directly into the upper right corner of the goal. A great shot!

3rd - Steve tipped the ball to Charlie, who came out strong from a medical leave and tip the ball over their goalie and scored.
What a come back game for Charlie!

We're now back among the top ranks in the div, though we do still have couple more tough games ahead with teams who are now at #3 and #4, so not time to relax yet but enjoying the wins for now.
 

Goal/Asst   1st half - Dagang/Andy
                              - Charles(PK)/Ray
                  2nd half - HeYi/LiYi
                               - Dagang/HeYi(CK)
Penalty       1 Yellow
=================================================================================

An all around great game we played for the season, kind of tracking our performance from last season:-), as we rebounded from an early season slump:-) A nice finish for the first half of the season, and we will be going back to Russell Creek park for next three games(all at 3pm in the afternoon), which is a much better change from the lousy field we had yesterday:-)

The team we played wasn't foreign to most of us, Cruzeyro, who we played a tough championship game the past spring as well as had a tie during the spring regular season game with them. They came out strong, also benefited by having the wind with them in the first half not to mention revenge must be in their mind, the first 20 minutes were all them lurking around our half of the court and had few dangerous shots. Our defenders had a hard time to clear the balls well while facing the strong wind but
did a good job not to allow them to score. On a corner kick from Yi, Andy made a header attempt but the ball felt infront of the goal and Dagang followed up and put it into the net, which gave us the early lead. Soon after, they captured an opportunity on our back and tied the game, followed by another free kick goal that gave them a 2:1 lead. But we kept the cool and actually made more attacking attempts than they do with our good short passes. Only minites Ray was put in as a forward, he made a charge into their penalty box and was pushed down to the ground, a penalty was awarded and Charles powered the ball into the net, which gave us an even game at end of the half.

The 2nd half was pretty much all in our control, we passed even better than they did contrarying the normal thinking of that a SA team has a better passing game:-) and controled the game paste. They had basically no threats to our goal and we scored two more, one is Yi's classic tip shot, well, for those went to Grand this year at LA, the exact same spot he made that tip shot in the game with Riders, gave us the lead, and Dagang made a beautiful header off Yi's corner kick, that sealed the game for us.

Team-wise, we played calm and well all around, except few minor mistakes, otherwise all around great game played against a tough opponent. The most important, we kept our cool even we're trailing behind and played ourself back to the lead. Hope this is a good indicator to start off  our second half of the season, and now we can all relax and do what Yimou had been calling for, let's have a nice
BBQ party the coming Saturday!

Goal/Asst   2nd half - Wanghao/Liyi
                               - HeYi/Wanghao
                               - Li Changcheng
Penalty       None
=================================================================================

The game was a quite entertaining game, and a much better player one than the first game between the two teams.

Notable points from the game:
- Odyssey started out the game strong. Their players were very aggressive coming out of the gate, thanks to their youth and
physical frames. They challenged us agressively and didn't allow any easy passes or controls. And they scored two quick
high balls on us on minutes into the game.
- Despite that we were trailing 3 goals at the half, we never gave up. We controled the 2nd half and scored three beautiful
goals. But they had their luck of the time and scored one more on a header from a corner kick to win the game.
- It's a tough game time for everyone, and I do like to thank everyone who did their best to make to the game, as I know many of you had to make trade off on work and family.
- We did loss the game on score but we didn't loss the game on spirit, and we played yet again a great come back game.

At the last, I am more or less glad that we finally have a loss game, and I think it comes at a perfect time. It's not that I'd like to play the devil's advocate but for anyone with a right state of the mind, should have recognized that we as a team, is at a period of team's growth process that needs to take a break and to spend sometime to focus on further team building rather than just the games. Here is the reason, not that I'd not mentioned here before:

- It had been a stressful and physically demanding year for the team, if not adding up the two seasons from last year. We need sometime off, physically and mentally, period.

Keep in mind we're the "Party" team, and we're not the types who can function well under stress, and why we need to? (We pay out of our own pocket to come playing the games for god sake)

- Being taking easy doesn't mean to play sloppy games, we still play our best at games but we're making sure everyone has
the right mindset for the rest of the year and may be next spring too.

This leads back to my universial recipe for success, setting the right expectation. And if you may recall, our expectation for
the season is simply staying in the division and working on challenge for playoff in the coming spring. It shall allow us the
time to:

(1) recharge
(2) work further on team building
(3) and most important of all, learn how to take losses
without the pressure of having to challenging the titles

In my mind, (3) is what I'd like to see the team to develope and to graduate out of from this break period. This is the division between being a man and a crying baby, and is the most crucial character to have for the team to success in the long run.

Good team knows how to win games, but the great team knows how to loss games before to win more games. We're a good team, but not proven to be a great team yet, so if you really like pressure or enjoy challenge, then take on this task as your ultimate personal goal to contribute for the team in the years to come!
 

Goal/Asst   1st half - He Yi
                              - HeYi(PK)/Steve
                              - Wang Hao/He Tao
Penalty       None
=================================================================================

Our first game post-labor day weekend. Despite the score says, the game was quite one-sided as we had most of controls of the game. The Warriors are probably still fresh in memory of the big lossed they suffered from us from last season, and didn't come out strongly in games. We didn't either, as intended to be, since most of our players need the time to recoup from the exhusting labor day weekend. But HeYi did his hat trick again to score a long ball from the corner only minute he got onto the field and in a first touch of the ball, very impressive!

The first half ended with 1:1 tie. Soon into the 2nd half, Steve dribbled down into their penalty box and was fouled, a penalty kick was awarded to us and Yi put it right into the right corner, replied his PK at labor day but this time around, put it into the net. A nice ending for the incompleted action:-) Moments later, Tao, playing right-mid-fielder, made a great cross pass towards the left side of the penalty box, where WangHao made the catch and put the ball into the net, despit their goalie's attempt to try to tip the ball out. We were leading 3:1.

After that, we were alittle sloppy on defense, tireness is one reason, also give their credits not giving up(or they simply had nothing to loss). And we weren't really caring much on subs either, and as soon as I myself pulled Dentist out of the gk and placed myself in(Big mistake!:-) We had a penalty kick, and the lead was trimmined down to one, with about 10 minutes
to go. Then they made one more shot and I'd done nothing trying to stop it, the game ended at 3:3.

Overall, I think we achieved our goals. Getting our guys to rest and to recoup, not lossing the game:-), no injuries. And was the reason I wasn't trying to put too much efforts on line ups(noticed all the pos shifts). The goal is to help us to digest the excitements from the labor day weekend, both mentally and physically. Also preparing for the consecutive games in the coming week.

At the last, I hope everyone should be with me on the understanding of not putting too much emphasize on the game result, especially the regular season league games. Do what we could and our best to  win the must win games but be little intelligent on the rest of them. Stressing too hard on every game will stress out youself and everybody else around you quickly. Getting everyone enjoys their playing is the key and the foundation for any success. Hope everyone is on the same page with me here.

Goal/Asst   1st half - Zhangxin
                           
Penalty       None
=================================================================================

Another kickoff win! We're on a 4 kickoff game winning strike now:-)

As DP had pointed out, a quite hard hame played. If not the reason for the heat and our first real game in almost 3 months, then it's their tough and physical defense. Good is that they can't make any scores and we have Zhangxin who pulled his hat-trick again and hustled the ball out from the goalie and put it in, a big hands to Zhangxin!

A win is a win, no matter what. But we do can learn from DP and Steve's advices, and try to improve as we go. It as a full house turn out on sunday and everyone got to play, one big achivement on my playing time management job, so I awarded myself couple Krispy donuts on Monday:-)

But kidding aside, I really appreciate all of your understanding and patience with me while we're trying to arrange our lineup. Hopefully the next time around it should be stable enough and everything should settle down into their comfortable position. But never the less, thank you for your support and cooperation.