Mad Cows vs. Sagittae

Last Friday it was time for a new match of the Mad Cows. After a week filled with Christmas parties, mulled wine and hot chocolate everyone was feeling great, though slightly sleepy. When we arrived at Sancat, our captains had a surprise for the team that surely would wake us up: our Christmas presents! Fluorescent orange vests, a very professionally looking drinking set and, perhaps best of all, a suggestion for a new name. When Sanne and Laia had gone to the store to buy our new goodies and had to tell our team name, the guy misunderstood it and fittingly renamed us ‘Mad Chaos’. A name that quite well captures the spirit of our team and would also be suitable in case, after too many stamina-building trainings by Nino, we decide that football is not for us and we want to start a death metal band instead. Cheered on by a great curva, consisting of Inés, Clara, Franci the Kid and Núria, we started our warming-up and even managed to complete a ‘shooting the ball to the other person in the line, running to the other side, receive the ball, and shoot again’-exercise without balls flying everywhere. It was clear that this evening we were more zen than we had been in any of the weeks before.

   

     We began the match with Bea, our ever-present salvation, in the goal, Laia and Sanne as our wall of defence and Letizia and Ieva as our ferocious attack. We started the match with good focus, although Sagittarae possessed the ball more than we did and put up many attacks. Sanne and Laia coordinated their defence well and did not allow the other team to set up any truly dangerous attempts to score. Laia was replaced by Paula, who played great even though she had a bad cold, and Hanna came in for Sanne, putting up a solid defence. Agnieszka substituted Ieva and, with great energy, was always moving around to find the ‘empty space’. Adrienne took the spot of Leti. Although the attack tried to create dangerous situations for our opponents, in general most chances were formed on our half of the playing field. But thanks to the continued efforts of our defence and some beautiful saves by Bea, we entered the break with a score of 0-0. 

     

       In the break, Nino had the difficult task of keeping us calm, for there is always the risk that we enter into Mad Cows-crisis. The second half started out well, however, with the same line-up as the beginning of the match. Ieva and Leti created some great chances together. The most beautiful opportunity of the match was initiated by Leti giving a dead sharp pass to Ieva, who came running in at the second post and, ending in a great sliding, missed the ball by only a finger length! In spite of our great efforts, we entered into our moment of chaos when Sagittarae saw a chance to pierce through our defence and score a goal. Leti was very eager to even the score and was about to break free when a player of the other team kicked her. Injured, she had to leave the field, and be replaced by Hanna. Paula came in the game for Laia and Agnieszka for Ieva. Unfortunately, we had another goal against us. Then, after a moment of regaining her strength, Leti re-entered the game and Adrienne substituted Sanne in defence. The last moments of the match included some beautiful attacks with Leti shooting a ball from the side line to Adrienne, who came running in from mid-field, and shot the ball with a lot of force, but without any direction. A more dangerous chance was created by Leti, who saw a chance to ‘bomb’ the goalie of the other team. During the match, we also got several free kicks, one beautifully shot by Laia, and corners, but the goals did not want to fall tonight (at least, not for us).   

      All in all it was a great match! Unlike in previous matches, we had only five minutes of chaos and the remaining time we were playing organised and managed to set up some great opportunities for scoring. Perhaps it was the great curva, the Christmas presents or the inspiration we got from the mulled wine and hot chocolate, but we were definitely playing as a team. We did much better than in our previous matches. Let’s continue this line and we will surely be on our way to victory.