Although it only lasted about an hour, here are my observations:
- A drill with six aside, that emphasized tight passing and then taking an accurate shot at the end. Each team was in a small square and tried to make 6 one-touch passes in a row and then kick it into the small square at the other end in order to score a point. *Note: it seems like we have concentrated a lot on tight passing drills. Hopefully it will pay dividends this season.*
- An 8v8, small field drill with players surrounding the field (sidelines and endlines). These players assisted whoever had the ball, and helped to keep this gam moving. This became a fast-paced game like you'd see in indoor soccer and had everyone focused on quick build-up, good finishing and maintaining form. Was quite intense. A couple of players were pretty vocal about their teammates on this one. I heard several comments that I won't repeat here. This is the accountability that Lagerway talked about.
- Finishing - everyone took turns receiving a pass from the coach and tried to finish. There were some pretty impressive shots. Olave, Cordoba, Bomma, Morales - all hit some high quality shots. However, there was a stretch when Rimando was in goal where nobody even put the shot on net. He said "Do I even need to be here?" Next thing you know, he was in the line with the players taking the kicks and he blasted one past Reynish and said "that's how you do it". It was a pretty funny moment at the end of practice.
- Brennan Tennelle was running during practice and didn't participate in the drills. Yura participated fully, but was icing down his left (I think) knee afterward.
- There was a group of kids there watching practice, and when the players came out after practice they were swarming for autographs. You'll see a couple of pictures of this.
- The crowd of media was a little bigger for this than preseason practices. I assume that's a function of it being nearly gameday, and that there was a chance to get a glimpse of DC>
- DC came in for their practice and I snapped a couple of pics, but their practice was closed and I didn't catch any of them afterward for pics.
Here are a few pics (click to enlarge):
