Football Game, Neighborhood Harmony, and Ego, Sept 9-10, 2006

Neighborhood harmony was the main objective of the 9-aside football tournament but sadly it ended as an ego and pride championship at its worst. The whole thing took the fun out of the final for us. Yes, we lost but we won big time in playing good football, sportsmanship and showing to everyone what football is all about. I blame three parties for the fiasco the organizer for not being adhering to the schedule and being firmed from the beginning, the police team for mistakenly thinking that winning is everything and good for their ego, and the BM A that lost their cool in the end, but, I don’t blame them for being so. In all these I took pride on my young charges to remain cool and focus to enjoy all the games.

When Ghazi could not play in the final I knew it would be very difficult for us to win and I was hoping for it to go to penalty kicks. If Ghazi could play I would have fielded Fendi in midfield to stabilize the opponent’s distribution with Ajim. Syafiq and Lokman would be free to run the show for us. Although Baji was not fit he could be a good spoiler up front for us. Wan did his best as I asked him to go all out to disrupt the opponent’s play. Jaja I suspected was a bit worried of his injury but beginning to read the game better now. As usual Shidi and Fendi were reliable and confident at the back. Fadly was great in goal and so unfortunate he could not see the ball taking flight towards the goal mouth. Our biggest lesson learnt yesterday was we allowed our midfield engine room to breakdown. In any case, boys, thank you for being committed and to me you are the champion yesterday. We can only be better next year.

My analysis of the game above is not comprehensive. I purposely did not analyse this for the team yesterday as I wish the team to learn to analyse the game themselves. Firstly, they have to analyse their individual game, what as individual player that they have done right and wrong. Only then they analyse what they have done right and wrong as a team. As a player they have to learn to do this during the game as well. This is what we called a thinking player.