7:15 departure for Kerkrade to play the match against Roda JC in Kerkrade.
This is so early that few players had already had time to get their hairstyles right, so no gel this morning, but sleepy eyes and wild haircuts.
Since the distance to Kerkrade is shorter for some players to go directly, we only left with 4 players, arriving in Kerkrade we were complete, everyone was already there.
Mees had had a small accident at school, which left him with a sore ankle, in the w-up Mees turned out to have more pain than he indicated, there was not much chance of Mees playing today.
Because coach Patrick was unable to play today, we had a good replacement in coach Martin, he has had these guys last season so he knows what they can do.
We started the game energetically and immediately showed what we wanted, within 2 minutes Sven had already hit the post, soon we got more difficult, we did become dangerous but so did Roda. In the 7th minute we misplayed a ball back, which made the striker of Roda come alone in front of our goalkeeper Giovanni, he knew what to do with it and we were behind. In the 10th minute Roda scored the 2-0 from a corner, in the 13th minute Sven made it 2-1 with a brilliant volley, and 2 minutes later again Sven with a distance shot
so 2-2, with this we went into the first half.
Trainer Martin said in the break that we let Roda play too much football and gave them too much space, this had to change in the rest of the match, we also had to make sure that we played more together and the passing had to improve. All in all, coach Martin was not satisfied.
But immediately in the second half it was Roda 3-2, so everything we were told in the break was forgotten after 1 minute.
After hitting the bar once more, Sven scored the tying goal from a free kick. Seb took one out and hit the net, unmovable for the goalkeeper, so for the first time in the game we had a lead. The game could have gone either way but good goalkeeping on both sides prevented this. Still Sven managed to score 1 more time in the 2nd half, so rest with a 3-5 lead.
Again the coach was not satisfied, the only difference with the first half was that we did a little better with the chances we got.
We started the third half very well, we were brighter and put pressure on the opponent much faster. Yet despite having the better of the game Roda managed to score 4-5.
Soon Roda scored an own goal to give us a slightly wider margin. But 1 minute later Roda scored another goal from a corner, so the difference was only 1 goal again.
In the 55th minute Matteo scored after a nice solo, hey again 2 goals difference,
but like every time Roda was able to score within 1 minute and we only had 1 goal difference again. But there was no real danger of victory in the last minutes, the 3 points are going to Eindhoven.
Whether it was due to the weather, getting up early or not having a substitute, we don't know, but it wasn't really good today. This week the boys will train well and start again next week. And yes winning bad matches is also an achievement in itself.