On the 13th of November, Gems FirstPoint School hosted a tense match. The WSO U19 football team suffered a disappointing loss as FPS won 6-3.
The starting XI for WSO was: Anantharaman Venugopalan (Goalkeeper), Suleiman Obeidat (Right back), Sami Kifah Alkitani (Center back), Jared Cloete (Center back), Muhammad Osaid Butt (Left-back), Cameron Harrad (Defensive Midfield), Varun Manohar (Defensive Midfield), Ahmed Hesham (Striker), Mohammad Sabha (Attacking Midfield), Andres Jimenez (Right wing) and lastly Ahmed Mohammad (Leftwing) with Ziad Pike, Mahdi Zaid and Mohannad Sabha on the bench.
FPS came in the game with the red hot 3 games winning streak but WSO was on 2 games losing streak hence the WSO team was a bit demotivated going into the game. FPS had won the toss and chose the favourable side. The game started strong for WSO as they kept the pressure on the opponent penetrating their defence on many occasions however failing to utilize on these chances. FPS had soon recovered from starting of the back foot and scored two goals in quick succession and then scoring the last goal in the dying minutes of the first half just before the referee blew the whistle.
During the break between both teams made substitutions as they needed fresh legs. The teams had bought on new fallbacks to put further pressure on the other team. The referee blew the whistle to commence the start of the second half and WSO was caught napping as FPS had scored a quick corner. After this foolish mistake, the coach advised the players to stay cautious as fatigue was starting to kick in. Soon after these silly mistakes, the captain encouraged the team to play possession rather than counterattacking however several mistakes where still being made hence our final substitution of the game was bring on our late-game specialist Mahdi Zaid. After Mahdi came on the pitch the team scored 3 goals in less than 6 minutes however this was too little too late. The first goal was a beautiful cross by Andres to Mohammad Sabha who smashed it with his right foot to the top left-hand corner and the second goal was a masterclass by Andres as he chipped the goalkeeper beautifully and the last goal was the most impressive as our striker Ahmed Hesham had put his body on the line (literally) scoring a superb header but the goalkeeper had missed the ball and accidentally punched Ahmed in the face causing his glasses to shatter all over his face causing cuts on his left cheek making him lose a lot of blood. This quick succession of goals was not the first time and this strange phenomenon was coined as the ‘Mahdi Affect’ as whenever Mahdi was on the pitch team morale and abilities would increase ten folds.
After the end of a disappointing game, Ahmed Hesham was nominated as the Falcon of the match as he put his heart and soul into the game. I had the chance to interview one of our players, Mahdi, to ask about what were the positives and negatives of the game and he said “ Well to start of the result of the game was obviously disappointing putting us on a 3 game losing streak and bottom of the league however if we look at our next fixture it is against a weak Uptown side which we hope we will prevail against as this is the strongest team we have fielded so far. Looking at the positives of the game we had quite a lot such as keeping them under pressure and keeping them in their side of the pitch. We could see that FPS was struggling initially against this tactic however they had quickly started countering us and did not miss any chances. The problems that we saw in this game very troublesome but with practice, we can improve. Considering that we are the youngest side in the competition I believe we still have a lot of things to learn and if we keep playing together we will understand each other's gameplay increasing out team chemistry and team morale. I would like to point out that Ahmed Hesham had a stellar game and if he keeps this up he can easily win Falcon of the year.”
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