It was the best of both worlds for Bill Elliott on Friday night.
His Chattanooga Football Club soccer team won a match by a healthy margin yet saw things it still can work on and improve.
The 6-2 victory over Quinto Elemento of the United States Adult Soccer Association in front of 2,760 fans earned Chattanooga FC a chance to defend its Hank Steinbrecher Cup championship this evening. CFC (4-0) will face the Chicago Fire of the Premier Developmental League at 7:30 at Finley Stadium.
Elliott and his CFC coaching staff had been preaching about what had been an occasional lack of communication in the defensive third throughout the season. The players hadn't given up a goal in two of their three prior matches, so in their minds there wasn't anything to work on.
Until now.
"I've never had a team outplayed as badly as we were and win the match," Elliott said. "We saw video, we saw them play, we knew they'd be technical, connect passes, but we also thought we could score goals since their style of play would leave them exposed and give us chances we normally finish. Thank goodness we did (finish)."
Elliott said the Kansas team "exposed a lot of things we need to work on."
"And we still managed to win the match, so it's a win-win for me as a coach," he said. "Now we can talk about those things, work on them and hopefully get stronger, but we find out in a win rather than a loss, so that's nice."
CFC built a two-goal halftime lead on scores by Northwest Whitfield graduate David Perez and defender Jon Finlay. That lead was cut in half by Quinto Elemento's Ramone Palmer in the 70th minute, but Luke Winter answered with his first of two goals six minutes later, assisted by Samuel Goni.
Quinto Elemento again trimmed the lead to a goal with a header in the 84th minute, but CFC responded with three goals in the final six minutes, by Winter, Juan Hernandez and Goni.
"They caused us problems - problems we knew we had and things we know we need to fix," Finlay said of the opponents. "We had a lack of communication at times, some mental errors we had. In the first two games, we had a clean sheet. We had some lackadaisical errors today that cost us a little, but I think we'll be all right.
"When you play and you keep clean sheets, you think, 'What do we need to fix?' There wasn't much to fix, but starting today we gave up two goals, so that's two ways to get better, which is good for Saturday.
"We know what we need to fix, the two goals conceded, and how to fix them."
The Chicago Fire put six goals on the board in a five-goal victory over West Chester United. Finlay said the Fire remind him of the Michigan Bucks, whom the Chattanooga club defeated in last season's Steinbrecher Cup championship match, so CFC is ready for the challenge that awaits it this evening.
"They're very similar," Finlay said. "We'll be ready. We'll rest up today, eat well, and be best prepared as we can tomorrow."
Contact Gene Henley at ghenley@timesfreepress.com. Follow him at twitter.com/genehenleytfp.