On a glorious afternoon for football, our year 5/6 boys football team hosted Merton looking for our first win since the corresponding fixture back in November. We had our entire squad available, and I set them out in a 2-3-1 formation to be able to press the opposition.

It was an evenly matched game in the opening stages, with both teams creating good chances to score but their goalie and Miguel made some fine saves to keep the score at 0-0. We won ourselves a corner midway through the first half, which Luca fired low and hard into the box. When you execute these corners well, the ball can bounce anywhere, and luckily for us, it came off a Merton defender to make it 1-0 to us through an own goal. At times we left ourselves a little bit open in the first half. However, Merton couldn't take advantage of that, and we managed to capitalise on a defensive error as Tommy cooly slotted past the Merton keeper to take the score to 2-0 heading into halftime.

The message from me at halftime was clear: we needed to be a little tighter at the back. I briefly chatted with our defenders about how to go about this, which they took on board very well. We also just needed to be a little quicker with our decision-making in the attacking 3rd, whether moving the ball on quicker or getting a shot off at goal. 

Early in the second half, we were starting to dominate the play more and creating numerous chances to score. At this point, I wanted to say that the goalkeeper was their player of the match, which is a huge credit to how many chances we created, and he was making some fabulous saves to keep us out. Merton did create a few opportunities, but some excellent defending and a few smart saves from Riley managed to keep them at bay. One of the lighter moments in the second half was George's 'interesting' attempt to score an overhead kick from the touchline, I'm sure he knew exactly what he was doing, but it did give us all a chuckle. We managed to see out the game from here and keep the score at 2-0, which meant our first clean sheet. Being a gk myself, I was over the moon that we didn't concede any.

Overall, the boys were excellent. We created so many chances, had some wonderful passages of play, pressed well and defended as a unit. They thoroughly deserved that victory, and I hope they all enjoyed playing in the game as much as we all enjoyed watching it.

Team: Miguel, Riley, Adam, Zach, Henry, Oskar, George, Teddy, Luca, Tommy and Theo.