You might say coach Kayla was born with a soccer ball at her feet. The daughter of a soccer coach, Kayla played club and college soccer before moving into coaching, working with players both in Minnesota and internationally. Questions or topics you are wondering about? Drop her a line at coachkayla55.1@gmail.com
If you were at the game on Wednesday, you may have seen some rather unfamiliar faces and names in the starting XI. As I sat in the stands, I heard murmurings around me as the lineups were read with many wondering who the newer faces were and how they would do against a strong club from Costa Rica—Deportivo Saprissa.
Indeed, most of the starting XI hadn’t seen much playing time at all this season with one (Bertrand Owundi Eko’o) starting in his first MLS match ever. Despite this, Mason Toye and Frantz Pangop were two players off the bench who had a significant impact on the game, not only impressing the fans, but also the coaching staff as well.
As a coach, games like international friendlies (although that is debatable how friendly the match actually was with how chippy the game turned out to be toward the end) are a great place to showcase and challenge your bench players. It’s an opportunity to show the boys, who spend Monday through Friday playing a more supportive role for the usual starting eleven, what match game speed feels like.
All coaches want practices to be “game-like” but the reality is that practices are never quite like the real thing. There’s never quite the same atmosphere, adrenaline, and anxiety that comes with the real game as compared to practice time and for many of the players on the bench, their lack of playing experience also is another significant factor.
“We need to get them [players on the bench] playing men’s football,” Adrian Heath stated, “I spoke about Mason [Toye], and people forget, that one moment a couple months ago he was playing high school football. And now he’s starting to learn on the job. He needs to play every week. He needs to, you know, he showed glimpses tonight of what he can do. But we need to get more games into him.”
This truly is one of the most challenging parts of being a coach—balancing being competitive in your week-to-week schedule with also building the confidence of your bench.
Toye later noted after the game, “I’ve been able to build a lot of confidence, I’ve been working super hard in training, trying to earn more minutes and just get better every day. So, that’s really just training. We came into this friendly—especially me and some other guys—coming in as a statement game for us, trying to prove a point to our coach that we deserve to be on the field.”
Pangop, another newcomer to the MLS this year, had his moment of brilliance off a pass from Toye, someone he had been specifically training with over the previous week. “I knew Frantz [Pangop] was going to be there, we had combined a couple times before. We combined pretty well in training in the days previous. I knew he’d be there. I just flicked it on to him, turned and he took on the man and did really well and scored,” Toye reflected after the game.
This truly is the beauty of having your bench players all play together at once. They spend days training and working together, often in groups. The trust and camaraderie between training groups often is evident, especially when they step onto the field.
Toye noted that kinship between players who don’t see much playing time, stating, “I have Wyatt [Omsberg] and Carter [Manley], and we kind of talk through and keep each other’s spirits up when we might not be playing for a couple games. Wyatt is on loan. We really try to band together and just talk through it and keep our spirits up. It’s been alright, you know? I’ve learned a lot, and I’m continuing to get better every week in training, so I’m really happy that I’m here and with this group of guys.”
Pangop himself saw the game as an opportunity to shine. “It was a friendly game to expose myself. Every player had a chance to show himself. That is what the coach demanded. I am very happy for myself, but especially for the team, that I could score that goal.”
Francisco Calvo, a former player for Saprissa and one of the few familiar faces in the starting XI, truly said it best regarding the importance of coaches playing to their benches.
“I think that for the huge clubs in the world, the most important thing is the bench. The bench makes the team strong. If the guys on the bench are in good shape and fight for spots, the guys who are playing have to get to work.”
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