Stade Malherbe Caen: October + November 2011

Hello, and welcome back to the SMC-story.

Lets start with the matches coming up in October and November.

3 CL games (Galatasaray twice and then Bayern again.)

St.Etienne, Auxerre, PSG and Toulouse… those games are probably the highlights mostly because of their position in the league.

First up: SMC — Saint Etienne  2 — 1 (Capdevila, Figueroa)

Wasn’t that eventful and only opened up in the latter part of the second half when Capdevila poured down the left flank while Okaka played in Figueroa. Figueroa quickly layed it off to the spaniard who lashed a powerful shot inside the near post. Figueroa then added to St.Etiennes misery when he scored 2-0 breaking through an offside trap and slotting it past Penneteau. Even though St.Etienne managed to claw one back it was too little too late to gain anything from this match.

SMC — Nantes  2 — 0 (Milevskyi, Figueroa)

Two nicely threaded passes gave two easy poaches for both Milevskyi and Figueroa in this game. Rodriguez was responsible for the first one and Russotto worked his magic on the second one. Not much else to say as this was a game that we should win.

The third CL group game was at hand. This was a vital match if we were going to qualify to the knockout stages.

SMC — Galatasaray  2 — 1 (Figueroa, Yatabaré)

We got off to a shaky start having only played 9 minutes when Milan Baros pounced, scoring 0-1 for the turkish side. We had some trouble breaking through their midfield to get into good attacking positions but just before half-time Figueroa lended us his strength and levelled the scoreline to 1-1. Second half had some minor adjustment and it was only blue possession for the remainder of the game. Yatabaré got the last word as he headed home a Guarin freekick, beautifly in the 91st minute. (see picture for goal)

2 wins and 1 draw so far in the group and it’s looking like we’ll manage to get to the next round. At least we have the Uefa spot.

FC Sochaux — SMC  0 — 1 (Sverkos o.g)

A boring game were we should have finalised 3 points much earlier than we did. In overtime Sverkos got the last touch on the ball in a tangled corner situation giving us the 3 points. Unlucky for Sochaux who had battled for a draw the whole game through.

SMC — Stade Rennais  3 — 3 (Milevskyi, Rodriguez, Okaka)

How lucky can you get? I felt a bit like Clint Eastwood when he says to the bad guy «Do you feel lucky?, punk!»  But instead it was just me.. with a pea-shooter and the bad guy going.. «Well.. I just might». Rennais opened the scoring with a free header from Leroy in my penalty box 0-1. An error in the marking from Diakhité *sigh*, he just can’t get it right. 1-1, Milevskyi equalised a bit later just to let Rennais get another one just as we were through celebrating our goal. 1-2. Rodriguez claimed a penalty when Milevskyi was brought down and he got it. Placed it cooly to the left of the keeper and we were back in the game, 2-2. But yet again we stood on our heels as Rennais just 2 minutes later scored their third goal, 2-3. A powerful long distance cracker from Midfielder Lemoine, I imagine it looked a bit like one Gerrard scored on the volley that took a weird bend through the air before it hit the back of the net. Okaka saved us late in the game when he broke through from the left flank and got played in by Marcq, making no mistake in the finish to place it just inside the left post. 3-3!

Lille — SMC  1 — 5 (Figueroa x 2, Yatabaré, Pedro Leon x 2)

I had been waiting for this game. The game where it would all fall into place. Doing it against Lille aswell was a major thing as they have always been a threat to us with their style of attacking football.  We were 0-3 up before Gervinho (who is now in Lyon) could reduce their agony slightly. Then the beating continued with additional goals from Figueroa and Pedro Leon.

CL game #4 — Galatasaray — SMC  0 — 1 (Kryvtsov)

An exciting game with only a handful of chances though, but the excitement was in the atmosphere. Kryvtsov headed home his first champions league goal and finalised the qualification spot together with Bayern.

The ligue was also at a crucial stage when we were up against Auxerre who had been contained in the second place on and off for the last few rounds.

SMC — Auxerre  1 — 0  (Pedro Leon)

They way the match unfolded there was no question about who was the better team. All in all Auxerre only managed to get off 3 shots and only 1 hit the target, we on the other hand fired off 25 shots. But our aiming was perhaps even worse as we only hit 5 on target but they way we played we truly deserved the 3 points. Pedro Leon was one of the lucky guys to get it on target and he was also the only one to hit the back of the net as he scored in the 51st minute. We are topping the league by about 6 points at this stage.

PSG — SMC  2 — 0

Our first loss of the season came against a strong opponent at least. It was fair as PSG had to great chances and converted them both so there’s not much to be said. Otherwise we played a decent game but couldn’t create the chances to score.

CL game #5  Bayern — SMC  2 — 1 (Figueroa)

At this stage it was only about who would win the group and for me that would be a great opportunity to get a better knockout fixture in the draw, but then again looking at the top teams of the other groups it wouldn’t really matter. Having said that we would still like to win this game just to not get into a slump of form after that PSG defeat. Ivica Olic wouldn’t allow that though as he scored both Bayern goals and the second one came late in the game when we had hopes of hanging on to a 1-1 draw.

Toulouse [To Lose] *chuckle* — SMC 2 -2  (Rodriguez, Okaka)

Despite their unlucky english translation the managed to draw this game, but it shouldn’t go unnoticed that they had 5 clear chances on goal but Diego Alves was a warrior between the posts. We on the other hand had no real chances. Rodriguez scored on a ranged effort after Yatabaré headed down a throw in his way, and Okaka’s shot took a lucky deflection of the defender to send the keeper the wrong way. (goal in thumbnail pic.)

That was the last game of November. I’ll let you have the League table at this point and some player stats from my team. Enjoy!

Until next time,

Majk