Saturday afternoon saw the culmination of the first week’ of training for Real Monarchs as it played in a scrimmage against the RSL Academy. The Monarchs saw goals from Damian German, Sam Brown and a trialist while allowing no goals.
“We liked the intensity,” Head Coach Jamison Olave said after the scrimmage. “The intensity of some guys was good. For the play, we saw a couple of good things defensively but the important thing is we realized there is a lot of work we need to do with our players to win next week’s game already. Bringing new guys into the team, there are a couple of things to fix but overall I’m very happy with what we see today.”
The first half saw defenders James Moberg, Noah Powder and Steve Jasso highlight the backline while accompanied by Kyle Coffee spearheading the attack, Devin Vega playing on the wing and Jimmy Slayton posting up in goal. The remaining positions were filled out by trialists and promising RSL Academy players.
The half saw little action, with each side trading possession and attempting to open up passing lanes with rotation of the ball. The Monarchs side was able to find a few open shots, however, the Academy goalkeeper was able to put stops to them.
The Monarchs rotated out its players ahead of the second half, keeping only Slayton in goal. Forwards Joe Gallardo and German took the attacking front, while Brown and Chris Bermudez played the middle of the park and Steve Jasso anchored the backline. The remaining XI was again filled out by trialists and players from the RSL Academy.
A trialist opened the scoring shortly into the second half before German doubled the Monarchs lead from a low pass across the front of goal. Brown finished off the scoring in the final 10 minutes, cleaning up a loose ball at the top of the 18 with a clean strike into the back of the net.
“We have principles already of compacting and being a team that defends together and tries to win the ball but that’s normal,” Olave noted. “Bringing new players into the team, they have different principles and come in with different habits and it’s going to take time for them to adapt to what we are looking for. We need to work with them and they need to be open to buy-in and help the team try to do what we ask them to do.”
