Thursday, July 16, 2009:

Hello to everyone! Today was a most interesting day in the life of our team. We played our fourth game in our group against Germany. I knew during warm-ups that we were really not here mentally or physically. I cautioned them, that they were ready for an upset, if they did not get themselves mentally ready. The game started lethargically on our parr, as I had cautioned. But, we scored a nice goal 20 minutes in, with Jake Weiss finishing a nice ball from sent through by Colby Abrahamoff. I still felt we were just sleep walking, even after the goal. Germany, was really a very poor team, but they hung in there and finally, 5 minutes after we scored, they counter attacked us down their right side and sent a floating cross into the box on the 6 yard line and our keeper had his feet in cement and ouir marking back was not even 10 yards within his man ands they scored on a header. Score now is 1:1 and the half ended that way.



During halftime, I told our team, that if they did not get their act together (not in those words) in the first 10 minutes, I was going to bench them all and play the non starters the rest of the game. Well, it seemed to have worked, as they finally found a rhythm and flow to the game and in the 12th minute of the second half, we scored a nice goal by Drew Rosenberg, with an assist by Sam Katz, to make it 2:1! Now it seemed we were finally rolling and sure enough we continued and scored our third goal, this time by Eyal Schecter ( our captain and sweeper) with an assist again, by Colby Abrahamoff. The score now stood 3:1 with about 20 minutes remaining.



We decided to replace most of our players that did not start the game and they did very well. They scored a second goal on an offsides non-call (4 players definitely off). That made the score 3:2. But, we were not finished with our scoring and in the 25th minute, we scored a fourth goal by Colby Abrahamoff, with an assist from Harrison Seigel. 5 minutes later, Colby Abrahamoff scored our 5th goal, with an assist from David Goldberg! The final score now stood at 5:2 and a recored of 3 wins, 0 losses and 1 tie for 10 points and a goal differential of +5.



The other results in our group today were Israel 4, South Africa 2 and Canada 0, Mexico 0. Right now, with one game remaining in group play, thye standings are as follows:

1. USA with 10 points

2. Canada with 8 points

3. Israel with 7 points

4. Mexico with 3 points

5. South Africa with 2 points

6. Germany with 1 point



All we need is a tie tomorrow for the number 1 seed from our group, if Canada does not beat Israel. So, regardless we are finally through to the Semi Finals regardless of our outcome tomorrow, but we want the number 1 seed. We probably will play either Argentina or Brazil!



We have now accomplished one of our goals and that was to get in the Medal Round. Now we want number 1 from our group and then we want to medal, then win Gold! It can be done, only if we get back to "Excellence Through Fundamentals"!!



I will update everyone after tomoorrows games. Sean will also post some photos from Aly's Track Meet from lsat night, later today.



Take care and stay well. We miss all of you very much, especially my wife and "Gang of Five" and the rest of my family. We love you all!



Best regards,

Preston and Sean from Israel