Game 1: French Kiss – Swiss XI

First Game of the season, on a very hot afternoon in King’s Park. Nobody is entirely sure this is what we all have been waiting for since a couple of months, especially after the warm up that revealed once more that is was bloody hot. A limited French Kiss team, only 13 players available and one coach, ready as ever, not.

End result: French Kiss – Swiss XI: 3 - 5

The team: Simon in goal, Fabio and Adrien in central defense, Ken on the right and Dick on the left. In central midfield, Angel and Vojta, with Rudi on the right and captain Paolo on the left, in attack Jackal and Evan. On the side, we had new boys Thomas and Edo, ready to make an impact. Much to our delight, our supporters were out in numbers.

Swiss XI, very motivated as they had their first game in first division for a long long time, started like a speed train. After 20 seconds, they got their first corner, within 10 minutes they were leading 1 to 0, a real wake up call for French Kiss. Another early blow, Dick came of injured, and Edo came in on right midfield, Rudi going to the center and Vojta dropping back to left-back. The second part of the first half was much more equal, and French Kiss got some chances, but their goalkeeper did well.

The second half could not start any better, when the Swiss keeper managed to score from a nice center from Edo. By the time we were finished celebrating our first goal of the season, we were 2 – 1 down, soon followed by a third goal, with the Swiss strikers enjoying more freedom your regular Swiss cow roaming around in the mountains without a fence or a farm in sight. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so we went back to 3 defenders and brought in Thomas. Desperate measures, are not always the right ones, the coach found out soon enough. So with a little help from our friend in pink, we came to 3 – 2 on a well taken Angel penalty. Another celebration that took too long, as they were back up two goals before we were even back in the game. One more goal from their side, one more from us, well taken by Thomas with a scissor kick, made it 5 – 3. Angel came of injured, so the coach joined the party. Than something really weird happened to Rudi’s toe, and we had to finish the game with 10.
In the end, the Swiss probably deserved the win, as they trying harder. They created about 10 chances, and scored half of them. On the positive side, we created at least 10 chances as well, scored 3 goals, with goals on their first game for both Edo and Thomas, and we had an enjoyable afternoon game without any cards on both sides. We learned that 13 players is not enough, and that we still need to improve our shape. One more very good thing, despite losing, after the game, plenty of pizza, beer and fun with the vast majority of the team, that’s the spirit, guys.

Next game: Club Albion, on Sunday September 28th, 4:30 p.m., in Hong Kong Football Club. Not to miss !!