Having had a relaxing Tuesday in the city of Arnhem, it was back to work on Wednesday with a match against a local amateur side called SVV Youth.
To start the day, we had a light session brought to us by Dutch coach Rob Witschge who has had experience of working with Marco Van Basten whilst he was in charge of the national team.
With such an overwhelming character taking us it was clear that we wanted to impress as much as we could whilst training with him.
The session went very well with everyone picking up a couple of pointers that we could take into our new season which starts on Saturday 13th August.
After the session, we went back to the hotel to rest and recuperate before our away game. With a good lunch inside us, we headed on the coach to our destination.
When we arrived, we realised that the pitch was huge so we were confident that we could implement our passing style into the match.
We played our positive style of football and it paid off in the first half as we took the lead through some poor goalkeeping and shoddy defending.
It only took a simple finish from myself to put us ahead and with each side enjoying many spells of possession in the second half, it came down to the team who could be more ruthless in front of goal.
With Matt Ingram pulling off two tremendous saves, it was us who proved to be that side as Max Herbert and Jason Twum scored to make the game safe at 3-0.
The game slowly fizzled out towards the end but the boys and the coaching staff were happy with the way we managed to win.
Today has been a relaxing day for most players, with the very few players who are injured doing some rehabilitation work. The lucky players were able to go swimming at the local pool which was very relaxing with the boys having some free time and some time for stretching tight muscles.
As the evening drew on, the always anticipated “first year scholar dance off” took place. With a diverse variety of dancing, Jason Twum and Romario Redley stole the show with some mesmeric moves.
This brought the evening to a hilarious finish with spirits being very high for the next game against Scunthorpe United.
Friday arrived and with an 11am kick-off, the match got underway with a good start, both teams sharing possession of the ball equally.
However as the game went on it was clear that we were much the better team with some delightful link play in midfield.
However, we were unable to convert our large amounts of possession into chances and this cost us as Scunthorpe took the lead in the second half through a penalty.
It finished 1-0 but the scoreline was not important as we knew that we had played some great football over the ninety minutes and also during the whole tour.
As we leave on Saturday, the tour is drawing to a close.
It would be very hard for me to pick highlights from the tour because the whole two weeks has been a great experience. The match against Vitesse however, sticks in my mind because personally, I learnt a great deal from that game.
I learnt about the Dutch movement in midfield and now I’m looking forward to implementing this into our league in England.
I would finally like to thank the LFE for organising the whole trip as it has been an incredible tour as all the teams have been able to experience another culture here in Holland. Without the organisers the trip wouldn’t have been nearly as good, so thank you very much.
