Game report : NE Xamax - Etoile Carouge  0 : 0		Att. 4'100.
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Hi guys.

Though I attended those preceeding two home games (Basel in Cup and Baden)
I - obviously - didn't make it to write a report. I must plaid guilty for
compulsive lazyness.

I must say to the discharge of the 22 actors of that evening that I have
had seen worse games in some past seasons. But damn, I couldn't say which.
Therefore you definitely won't regret the shortness of this report ;-).

The motto of carouge's brand new trainer - ex-Kriens Jochen Dries -
might've very well been 'compact and steady in defense, maybe we'll get a
chance'. And they made it, without any extensive use of the defensive
roughness I would remember from the Kriens games I saw. Which weren't
_that_ rough anyway. But that somewhat poorly poetic description resumes
fairly well what happened on Carouge's side. And if their defensive line
made a tremendous job on filling the empty spaces, the offense (i.e. David
Orlando, who wasn't the worst of them) didn't have much weight in the
battle. On the opposite, Goalie Rapo did a great job, and Jane Bugnard,
which I already did much appreciate by the time he was playing on Lugano's
left defensive side, was definitively the best Carougeois that evening.

If Xamax clearly dominated the game, and might have deserved a tiny bit
more than a single point, it would be definitely unfair to qualify what
the Stelliens have acquired as a 'Hold-up'. Xamax's defense mostly took up
on their adversairs, thanks to good performances of Rueda and Hamman - the
other 'between defense and midfield' players, Rothenbuehler, Jeanneret and
Martinovic could've done much better than that -. Though Wittl and
hard-working Perret didn't do their life's performance, the main problem,
and the score says it all, is the offensive effectiveness. If Halili did a
fair job (twice headed dangerous balls, but Rapo was imperial), I didn't
see much Gazic, and Chanlot's performance was very simply a catastrophy.

Hopefully Isabella will soon recover from his injury, and that new russian
guy, Maslov, might be qualified to play next week-end in Basel.

I HATE this computer who hangs every 4 minutes for no reason at all. But
really none. Since I want ot finish this for the dawn, I better quit now.
Will be on holiday for a week or two, so do expect reports from the two
forthcoming rounds.

Keep enjoying football.

Laurent.

Laurent Weber, Zurich Switzerland - lweber@worldcom.ch -
http://home.worldcom.ch/~lweber
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