K016 day two thoughts

There wasn't really as many goalkeeper battles going on today as yesterday. Given Calzada for Terrassa is only 20, he put in a strong performance and made some key stops. Seems like there are quite a few young goalkeepers in the elite level of domestic national leagues going by the age of some of the teams' starters! Stockmann didn't have much to do but pulled it off well as needed, showing the importance of concentration and quality rather than quantity, especially behind a strong defence. Stubbe for Berliner put in the day's best performance, aided by some lucky bounces (ball hitting crossbar etc.), winning the man of the match award for the game. Trenches did ok but perhaps could have been a little better at times. Vanasch did ok but felt it didn't reflect his recent level for club and country. van der Essen didn't really have anything to do for Amsterdam and will be interesting to see how he copes when facing stronger opposition (at least teams that can break through Amsterdam's defence more regularly and get some shots on to test him...)

Other than that, Potton seems to have upped his ante as opposed to previous rounds, like say against Rotterdam last year or so ago. Totally dominating on short corners (which any goalkeeper wanting to be considered elite should!), he was making save after save, with some strong stops and keeping his team in it. Not much else you can ask of a goalkeeper really and a hard loss to swallow. Considering his performances at club level of late or based on previous games where things have creeped in to his game, to be critically honest, I haven't always been a massive fan or seen him in say the top 5 in the country. I had wondered why Harris left so early given his own success in Euro Hockey action and in previous Euro games, Potton failed to 'up' his level, but today proved any critics wrong. He is a goalkeeper that can play at this level but patchy inconsistencies in games or over longer time spans, which I'm sure he can work on, on a critical level, does bring into question things for analysis of the creme de la creme.