Charlton Athletic U18s defender Nathan Asiimwe spoke to Valley Gold for Academy Notes after the recent 3-2 win at home to Colchester United.
The young full-back who joined Charlton when he was 8 years old, signed for the Academy at U9 level and hopes to make a breakthrough to become an academy graduate. He describes himself as athletic, making constant runs forward to aid his team in attack, but feels that recently he has become more technically competent make him more well rounded. He told Valley Gold:
“We made an extremely slow start, and we weren’t showing the aggression we needed for the press to be successful, so Colchester were able to get out almost every time for the first 25 minutes. We were also not able to string long sequences of passes together without a loss of possession. It was just overall very sloppy, and we went 2-0 down within 15 minutes.
“Colchester’s two goals came from errors, their first was after 10 minutes when a pass from James Beadle to Tolu Ladapo was intercepted exploiting that we were out of shape, and countered quickly to score. Their second goal occurred within two minutes of the first, Jason Adigun got caught dwelling on the ball for too long in our own half, and the Colchester striker dispossessed Adigun through on goal. James Beadle managed to save the striker’s shot, however, another Colchester player reacted quickly for the rebound despite our efforts to get men behind the ball.
“The game was pretty flat with us only managing to get in a couple of half-chances, but in the 25th minute, I received the ball in a wide area, cut in on my left foot and put a ball in for Miles Leaburn to head in the back of the net. The equaliser came from a few seconds of pure quality from Toby Bower, as we had won a central freekick as a result of the Colchester striker handballing it on the edge of his penalty area in the 35th minute. Bower bent the ball over the Colchester wall with too much pace for their keeper to get across to it. The first half ended 2-2.
“The second half was better from Charlton as we were retaining more of the ball and creating more chances, the bringing on of Tyreece Campbell, Ryan Huke and Karoy Anderson definitely helped.
“For some reason, we just couldn’t capitalize until in the 83rd minute when we worked it forward onto Tyreece Campbell who was able to turn and get a shot in on the edge of Colchester’s box, the shot was saved but the ball was still in a dangerous area. I was the one who reacted quickest to get to the ball and chipped it over the keeper in an attempt to get it back to Leaburn, but the ball deflected into the net off a Colchester midfielder for an own goal.
“We did well to defend compactly and not do anything silly in possession for the remainder of the game to see out a tight 3-2 victory.”
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