Maccabi GB's Under 16 Football squad continued their preparations for July's European Maccabi Games with a friendly against Norwich City Academy's Under 15/16's in Suffolk
In the squad's first game since October, GB went down 5-1 although manager Joel Nathan and coach Scott Shulton came away with plenty of positions, and they believe that their troops are capable of bringing home the gold medal in a couple of months.
With two boys unavailable due to injury the other 16 put in a disciplined performance carrying out the instructions and game plan given to them pre match.
Maccabi GB went 1-0 up through Sami Zerovabeli when he tapped in after some good work from Michael Kenley.
Norwich equalised with a shot from the edge of the area after being awarded a very dubious free kick.
MGB did not let their heads drop and nearly went into the break with the lead when Kenley hit the bar with a wonderful strike from outside of the box.
The start of the second period was to be the only blemish on the performance as they did not seem awake from the restart and conceded two goals. However, to their credit they bounced back and once they got their rhythm started playing just like they did in the first period and started causing Norwich problems again, but Norwich scored a fourth just before the end of the period.
For the third and final period, MGB changed their formation from a 4-4-2 to a 3-4-3 and they adapted superbly and even though they did not score they caused Norwich no end of problems.
It was only general fitness in the end that allowed Norwich to score a fifth and final goal.
During this period Josh Samberg pulled off a great double penalty save to cap an assured performance in goal.
Manager Joel Nathan said: "Even though we lost to a very good academy team, I thought the exercise was very worthwhile. It gave the boys a taste of how a professional club academy team perform and the standard they need to reach and to say our boys were not outclassed is an understatement.
"Before the game we explained to them how we wanted them to play not only today but also in Vienna.
"It will not be natural to most of them but will be needed for an international tournament. Scott and I are now looking forward to getting stuck in over the next two months as we haven't really seen a lot of them while they finished their normal season with their clubs."
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