Monthly newsletter - September 2023
Hi Ballers,
Hope you all had a great end to your summer and are enjoying the start of Autumn weather, the start of the football season and colder, darker nights…
For me, this summer was incredible! I had a great time running the summer football camps and did plenty of one to ones. I love hearing how players I coach are doing during the season so please send me updates during the season.
October Half-Term
Reminder that the October half-term is now less than 3 weeks away (where is the time going?!). It’ll be at Ridgeway Academy in Welwyn Garden City on their brand new 4G astroturf pitch, click here for details or to book.
What I’ve been watching
Let's start with the controversial game this past weekend between Spurs and Liverpool. Both teams have had exciting starts to the season; Spurs are finally playing some exciting, attacking football with new manager Ange Postecoglu getting much of the credit (Maddison should get a lot too - I love watching him play!) and Liverpool seem to have built a great midfield after many departures although still could do with strengthening their defence in my opinion.
It was a crazy start to the game with both teams looking to create chances and the first controversial moment came after 25 mins when Curtis Jones stretched for the ball and inadvertently went over the top of the ball and onto Bissouma’s ankle. I’m torn on this one - while I think that players should be protected from bad tackles, I do believe that this was unfortunate for Jones. Sure, if you slow it down and freeze frame the contact on Bissouma, it looks horrible. However, when you watch the full clip you can clearly see all of Jones’ weight goes on to the ball which then makes him roll over it and onto Bissouma… I personally as the ref would have given a yellow for this - what do you guys think?
Only a few moments later Mo Salah puts Luis Diaz through and puts the ball in the goal with a great far post finish. This goal was looked at by VAR and announced offside… For anyone watching the game live like me, may have been surprised by this. I like to play the VAR game of when they show the offside pictures before applying the lines you try to work out whether or not it is going to be given or cancelled - this one I was sure was onside. Spurs go on win the game 2-1. The refs association immediately after the game released a statement saying that for some reason both VAR and assistant VAR missed the offside decision. For me something like this should not be possible - there must be some kind of backout technique to use so that decisions like this can’t be ‘missed’.
What else?
Jude Bellingham. That’s the sentence. I’ve watched a few of Real Madrid’s games recently and he is a sensation. If I was building a team built around one player, it would be him. He’s athletic, has a great temperament, can defend, creates goal scoring opportunities, scores goals… bar going in goal (which he probably could do) he can do everything!
Luton Town became the first of the newly promoted teams to the Premier League to win a game this season by beating Everton 2-1 at Goodison Park. I’ve not been too impressed with Luton this season but 3 points can do amazing things for a team so I hope that Luton can kick on from here.
Harry Kane continues to do what he does best - score goals. He now has 8 Bundesliga goals in just 6 games with a goal every 66 minutes. It will be interesting to see how Bayern do this season as obviously he has gone there to win trophies - but have they got enough to win the Champions League, I’m not so sure.
Worth a watch
This clip from ‘That Peter Crouch Film’ is a pretty entertaining watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv1OKdS3Rzk
This James Maddison interview offers some great insight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwN9oz6WmhQ
Thanks for reading,
Jesse