Small-Sided Game — 4:30 PM
Seven versus seven on half a pitch. Demien's team: Eze, Gallagher, Trippier, Guehi, Mings, Ramsdale. Opposition: Rice, Henderson, Foden, Grealish, Walker, Stones, Pickford.
Rice was the difference on the other side, not because he was doing anything spectacular but because the positions he occupied between every pass made every player around him better without any of them needing to ask. The space he held in midfield made Henderson's job simpler and Foden's job simpler and every attacking move ran through a structure that didn't require organisation because Rice provided it automatically. Demien had watched that on television for two years and understood it intellectually. Watching it from fifteen yards away in a training game was a different thing.
