Three weeks ago the match against Tri Hai ended in an unbelievable 4-4. Even though the expected goals were heavily in favour of the Raiders, after 80 minutes we only had ourselves to blame that we didn’t win the game. They scored some absolutely outrageous goals, but that’s also part of football. This time we knew what to expect and we started the game well.

Unfortunately JV had to be subbed off after 20 minutes due to a small knock, since it was a friendly it made sense to give him some rest, luckily Jeroen did an outstanding job replacing him, and he made sure the defence well organized and confident. Together with Bryan, Sam, and Nayan (who was a bit invisible) they formed a solid line and Tri Hai had a lot of trouble to generate real chances.

That being said, during the first have the Raiders only created 2-3 solid chances as well, of which one resulted in the 1-0 after a fast counter. Sam played the long ball and Wissy was able to head it behind the defence towards Giulio, who dribbled with the ball around the goalie and shot it in the far corner. Bram tried to lob the ball over the goalie from outside the box after good work from Emma, but it went wide over.

During halftime we knew we had to set up our game to make the difference in the second half. Paulo made a beautiful rush passed 3 tri hai players to deliver the ball in the box on a silver platter to Ben, who made no mistake and made the 2-0 to give us comfortable lead.

A few minutes after we let Tri Hai come back in the game after they scored their first goal of the evening. We went pushing for the 3-1, but instead we got a penalty given against us, luckily Khang made an absolutely brilliant save which boosted our confidence and kept us in the game. Right after Wissy scored the 3-1 and Ben scored the 4-1 through the legs of their goalie. We were sharp on the counters and split their defence open with through passes over the ground. Vinh & Sang really delivered when they were subbed on and both had a great performance.

While Emma & Giulio were class as always. In the end Bram made up for his earlier miss, and put the final score of 5-1 on the board. All together it was a great team performance and we’ve controlled the majority of the game, we were patient enough to let them come and hurt them on the counter. Great effort lads!