Report
Struggling to get a decent squad together with our own players we invited Eduardo, Zsolt and Tom to play this charity cup on a sunny and windy day at the Mauerpark facilities.
The draw put us in group A with teams such as FC BH Berlin, Grüne Tulpe and streetfootballworld. There were 3 other groups equalizing at a total of 16 teams at this tournament.
We started the first game against FC BH Berlin, a team I would rate 4 out of 10 on the scale. They started strong, pressing but after a while we took over and pressed towards their goal. After almost half of the time played we had a corner from the right hand side kicked towards the long post by Alejandro finding Zsolt (romanian oak of 2 meters) heading in the 1-0. The opponent tried to come towards our goal but lost the ball pretty often resulting in counter attacks of us making it easy for us to go 2-0 (Steffen) ahead right after the lead. A minute before the end we conceeded a nicely performed own goal by Zsolt after a low pass infront of the goal by the opponent ending the match 2-1 for us.
Next group game opponent Grüne Tulpe (originating from the Green party of the German Bundestag) was a 7 out of 10 on the rating scale. It was quiet a boring game with low chances on both sides keeping the goalkeepers freezing on the arctic breeze which circled across the pitch. But, yes but there was a goal, scored by the opponent on an irregular base. A free kick towards our goal found no taker and landed in the back of the net – 7-a-side free kicks are always indirect – and to our surprise the referee gave the goal.
One win and one loss brought us into a tight situation, we just not wanted to go home after the group stage and we had to lift some rocks in the last group game to avoid this situation. Let me say: We won this game 2-0 by a goal of Eduardo and Steffen.
Quarterfinals – A well-known tv station called RTL was our opponent and they finished the group stage with collecting 9 points out of 3 matches but that didn’t scare us. It was an intense match, chances over chances on both sides, more box scenes than anywhere else but there. A draw (0-0) after 12 min of game time resulted in penalties. We won 4-3 by penalties and now the Semi-final was about to come and we smelled something like “yes, we can make it to the final and win that thing”.
Semi-Final – Our opponent was no other than the well known lads of Glückauf Utopia who play with us in the Bunte Liga (7-a-side league). Commencing really strong because we had by now a player less meaning so substitute we stood more in the defense than in the offense. Two quick goals by Utopia made us wake up and a counter attack and a furious 20m strike by Gianluca from the left hand side made us come back to the game (1-2). We pushed and ran but caught easy counter attacks which the Utopia guys calmly played down till they crossed the line for a third time bringing them the lead for a 3-1. Two minutes or so were still left and we gained some last power shooting from everywhere…with success! Steffen managed to score a low pass from the side for the 2-3 but at the end time was up and our last game was the final stop.
Players
Marian (C), Abdel, Steffen, Daniel K., Alejandro, Gianluca
Guest Players
Eduardo, Zsolt, Tom
Scorers
Zsolt, Steffen (3), Eduardo, Gianluca
Report by Marian
