USA 4, Uruguay 2. Need I say more? Well of course I do. We came out with great intensity and determination and it resulted in our first goal, 4 minutes into the game. Stephen Elias pressured their keeper into a bad touch, stole the ball and put it in the back of the net to make the score 1:0 for the USA. 4 minutes later, Jake Rozhansky scored our 2nd goal on an assist from Alec Weiss at the 8 minute mark. USA 2, Uruguay 0. From the 8th minute on, Uruguay was trying to disrupt our rhythm by dirty play (not unusual for them or any other South American team in this tournament). It was so blatant, but the referee was not protecting our players. They were always late on tackles and kicking and punching off the ball. They had one player, who got a yellow in the first half and another in the second half, but was allowed to continue playing, until his coach pulled him off for a substitute towards the end of the game. Uruguay actually had some very talented players, but they never tried to play, just dive all over the field and play very dirty soccer. So, the first half ended with the USA 2, Uruguay 0. At half we stressed keeping our composure and not getting caught up in all their dirty play. The second half begins and we start finding our rhythm and flow right away and in the 50th minute, Evin Nadaner scored on a nice run with a great assist from Oliver Eisen to make the score 3:0. 8 minutes later, in the 58th minute, we struck again with Elijah Lichtenberg, who had come on for Kovi Konowiecki, finding the back of the net off an assist from Jake Rozhansky. At this point I started making substitutions in order to not get any of our players hurt and to rest them as much as possible for the semi finals tomorrow. Josh Haberman came on in goal for Max Kurtzman, Benji Issroff replaced Evin Nadaner, Lance Dotzman came on for Jake Rozhansky, Sam Friedman for Stephen Elias and Will Cohen came on for Aaron Franco. Those were our 6 allowable subs. With about 10 minutes remaining they scored their 1st goal and 5 minutes later they scored their 2nd and final goal of the game to end the game with the USA 4 and Uruguay 2. Now it is on to the Semi Finals for the second consecutive Maccabiah, which is another first for our Men's Open Soccer Team in going back to back semi finals! Now we are fighting for a spot in the finals and our opponent is Israel, who defeated Argentina today in penalty kicks. Israel is very good and they are the under 21 National Team. This is going to be a great test for our team, but I believe in them to find the way to get back to the Finals once again and go for Gold one more time. We had a very good regeneration session immediately after the game in the pool and now, after lunch, they are resting in their rooms. We will go out again for a team dinner this evening. These are our Team Doctors and our team trainer, left to right, Kyle Southall, trainer, Dr. David Rubenstein and Dr. Michael April. They have been invaluable to our guys and I am deeply appreciative for their help at our games and training and especially for keeping our guys fit.

So until tomorrow evening, please keep us in your thoughts and hopefully, we will be reporting a great result after our game at 4pm, back on our old friend from 2013, the grass postage stamp field at Bait Vagan. Take good care, Coach G from Jerusalem