Otten Innovation Cup Evaluation

Played 5 U19 games last weekend in Otten Innovation Cup at PSV Eindhovens great Campus Herdgang. Great teams as usual with PSV, FC Utrecht, Anderlecht, PSG, Man United, RB Bragantino, Jeonbuk, Benfica, Atletico Madrid and us at FC Copenhagen of course. I heard that RB Bragantino and PSV had the "oldest" players and PSG the youngest squad together with Man United and us at FCK. Which we could see at the pitch as well.

What is great fun at this tournament is the innovative rules they are trying out.

• 2*20 min effective play time

• pass/dribble the ball directly on throw ins, corners, free kicks, goal kicks etc.

• 5 min time penalty after a yellow card

• flying substitutions

• 8 sec time limit for goalkeeper to hold the ball

Which in a summary makes each game about 50-55 minutes long, where injuries and treatments on the field effects the total match time most. But I believe the game becomes more entertaining. Since the tempo and intensity in the game goes up. And I get the feeling that more offensive and "fair" playing teams get an advantage over defensive and "less skillful" teams and players that takes a lot of free kicks and yellow cards, tries to break and slow down a match etc.

Our first match against Jeonbuk from Korea was not that good. Controlled it pretty good, but did not create that many goal chances. Made a big mistake in our build up as well, so we "gave away" one goal and lost the match 0-1. Not a good match from me either. Got to press a lot, which we did well in the first half but not good at all in the second half. In offense I played a lot in the "pocket" and the inner right corridore as I say and did not get to use my 1v1 and atacking strengths in the last 1/3 that much.

Our second match against Benfica was a bit better, we won 1-0 but we can do much better than that. Our defensive play was very good though. Benfica did not get any real goal chances at all.

Third match against FC Utrecht was by faar our best match. Created a lot of chances and should have won that on regular time. But we got only 1-1 after a beutiful goal from me after a great pass from Bids. Won the penalties after, since we scored all our penalties and Utrecth missed 1 and Toby saved one. I took the second penalty for us , high up the right corner this time.

Our fourth match was again against FC Utrecht again, only bad thing in this tournament, that it was played with all Teams in the same group. Which meant we got to play against Utrecht and Jeonbuk again, since we all got placed 5-6-7th in the group.

We played a bit "younger" team in this game and lost 0-2 and Utrecth was better than us in this game.

Last game against Jeonbuk again, won 4-0 against a tired and wore down Koreans. Which I guess had played there better players a bit more during the week.

So we ended 6th in the group and 7th finally in the overall standings. But in my opinion we should have been Top 4 if we did not make that mistake in the first game against Jeonbuk. RB Bragantino had the most interesting players, Atletico probably the best Team. But PSV performed best and won the tournament again.

So a decent but not good Team performance for us, starting up the season. I was OK but cant say that I was good and happy with only 1 goal and a nice penalty. But Im healthy and feel very strong and really looking forward to next weeks official start of the season with an away game against AGF. Where I believe we will go with many more of our best U19 players.