Of course I had to lead off with that.
Manchester United 2 Manchester City 1.
With as much crap I tend to pile on the squad for a lack of fire in their play, it seems that new manager Ruben Amorim has lit a fire under the lads.
I was one who pointed out the lack of effort or emotion in Marcus Rashford’s play several blogs ago, so his being left off the squad is not a huge surprise to me.
Badly needed is all I can say.
But Garnacho?
The wunderkind who has shown flashes of outright brilliance was also left completely off the squad for the derby, Amorim’s first.
That is huge.
Without two premier players available (one in much better form than the other), the move has much more to it than the simple “it was my selection process” story that United’s new manager said with a straight face before the match.
Could he follow up the massive upset of City in the FA Cup Final in his first derby, away at the Etihad, no less?
Not gonna get too high, but I do finally see progress towards what I hope is Amorim’s master plan to once again turn the City of Manchester red!
Speaking of football, I coached kids in several sports when I was a younger man, and one such team was called the Daisies.
No kidding.
The girls from each of the twelve teams in the league picked their own names and my girls (ages 7-9) picked the Daisies over their second choice, the Rainbows.
The other teams got the memo as they chose names like the She-Devils, the Killer Bees, and my personal favorite, the Bad Seeds.
The Daisies.
With the smaller kids when you are trying to coach them and ease them into the game, the hardest thing is to teach the girls not to all run to the ball, and the need for spacing and lanes, etc.
My team was mostly made up of little cookie cutter blonde-haired, blue-eyed California girls, some of them acting like divas already.
Eight years old.
I did have one girl whom no one wanted anything to do with when she possessed the ball. It was like the parting of the Red Sea, as absolutely no one was willing to risk their lives over a silly game.
Kelly was.
She was probably fifty pounds soaking wet and she was one of the meanest little kids on the planet
One of my biggest faults is that I am a sore loser. I absolutely hate losing. So I had to keep my personal feelings hidden with my girls’ soccer team as I never wanted them to think like that.
But little Kelly hated losing even more than I did.
We opened our season with a four-game exhibition pre-season and it was the Yellowjackets against the mighty Daisies.
The girls tried, but showed signs of improvement, as their comfort level rose with more playing time.
We lost 4-3 with Kelly, my goal-scoring menace, netting a hat trick.
After the match, I was on the sideline chatting with a few of the girls’ parents, when a pretty lady said, “why are you punishing the girls? Because they lost?”
I turned red, not really understanding and I asked, “the girls, what’s wrong with my girls?”
“They are running sprints and doing ball drills.”
I turned and who is standing in front of the girls, neatly lined up in two straight lines?
Kelly was making her teammates run sprints and work on passing drills because we lost.
Not one of the girls complained.
It was their parents who wanted to leave.
I went and broke up the impromptu practice and in the easiest decision ever made by any coach in any sport on planet Earth, I promoted Kelly to Team Captain of the mighty Daisies who would go on to finish second to the She-Devils.
Kids are the best.
Stay well.
