The first game of the regular season is always tough.
Tough to scout.
Tough to anticipate the game plan.
Tough to win.
Head coach Dan Stratford entered his team’s regular season opener against Robert Morris knowing as little about the Colonials as he did about his own roster.
What he learned quickly, though, was that his players were confusing excitement for the season ahead with recklessness. Soccer is a sport built upon controlled chaos, but Stratford felt that his team abandoned the game plan and played impatiently.
Patience has been a tenet of Stratford’s coaching style since his hiring in 2020; he said that the team severely lacked that decorum during last night’s regular season opener against Robert Morris.
Defender Bjarne Thiesen takes the ball up the pitch.
Julia Mellett – Sports Illustrated: FanNation – Mountaineers Now
“I didn’t think we were patient enough, especially in the second half,” Stratford said after the game. “I thought we were in too much of a hurry to try and score. It’s a catch-22 because when the game gets quite stretched, our attacking players see that there’s space and they get a little excited and they want to take that space quickly … I just thought we were a little naive not to recognize, that when we had tried and failed in these big transitions a few times, that we didn’t slow the game down and go back to what was giving us success in the first half.
“We had good spells this time last year against Pittsburgh and Penn State, where we were really dominant in possession, more dominant than we were tonight. It’s not a lack of quality or a lack of understanding. We’ve just got to make that step with this group,” Stratford said.
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Defender Frederik Jorgensen battles for possession against Robert Morris.
Julia Mellett – Sports Illustrated: FanNation – Mountaineers Now
Now that the Mountaineers have started the regular season out with Country Roads, Stratford is confident that the crew will settle into the style of play that got them an Elite Eight berth in 2021.
“Everyone wants to score,” he added. “We’ve not got to do this for a little while, and everyone has to scratch their itch, so I give them some leeway, because I understand that as a player, that when you haven’t played in a long time, you ‘re excited to do the things you think you’re really good at.
“It takes some restraint to play within our system, and some restraint to show some patience and wait for those moments to come to you rather than trying to find those moments all the time… The more games we play, the more we’ ll settle into that.”
Midfielder Sergio Ors Navarro plants to clear the ball.
Julia Mellett – Sports Illustrated: FanNation – Mountaineers Now
Stratford said that training that inherent patience takes time and dutiful repetitions.
“When you look at the video and look at the quality of decision-making, you suggest something different,” he said of future game-plan alterations. “I think what we looked like in moments in the first half is what we train. What we looked like in the second half, I’ve never put on a practice that looks like that, so that’s always a challenge as a coach, right ? You have to reteach and this group, in some elements of how we’re playing and what our identity is, is that we need to reteach some of the philosophy and some of our identity with the ball.”
The Mountaineers have a quick turnaround time for that identity implementation; the team only has three days to practice before heading up to Pennsylvania to play the Pitt Panthers at Ambrose Urbanic Field on Aug. 29 at 7 p.m
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