Rough Summer

Hey everyone.  I’ve gone over two weeks without posting so I have plenty to write about.  I won’t talk too much about the games in general because they’ve both been pretty awful and I don’t do that much anyway.  I will however talk about my role in those games since…well since that’s what I feel like talking about.

A picture of me...with mismatched socks.

Tomi was injured, so for the last three games I spent most of my time as a striker.  It went so well that after the KuPS game we signed another striker J.  My time was less and less frustrating with each minute I played up there, but I still had some issues.  I’ve gone over them, but it is annoying when you make runs that would kill teams and don’t get the passes.  In the HJK game I finally got some and caused a lot of danger, but didn’t score.  I guess that’s just the nature of filling in for a player that is the exact opposite of me.

One advantage of being the opposite of Tomi though, is that when we play together as strikers we work really well.  We played together during the second half against HJK and caused them a ton of problems.  We both had decent chances to score even though we were playing the top team in the league in good form.  When we play together, we always have multiple ways to attack the defense.  I almost always run behind the defense, and Tomi almost always shows in front of the defense.  While our individual runs may be predictable for defenders, when they happen at the same time they are pretty difficult to stop.  Even though HJK scored two goals on us in the second half and we didn’t score we still played quite well I thought on the attacking end.

Going back in time a bit, after the Inter game (which was really depressing) we went to a little team get together at a fishing resort about half an hour away from Vaasa.  Usually after a second consecutive defeat no one wants to look at each other, but I think the fishing trip was good for us.  There are so rarely times for a team to all get together outside of training, and that can be contentious because training is competitive and we’re not necessarily there to be friends.  I will say that I was on a roll and caught two fish in about ten minutes, but due to my ridiculous fear of anything that lives in the water,  Nikki had to dehook both fish for me.  When he refused to help if I caught another, I just took my fishing pole and went back to the lodge.  Jarno eventually won a hat for catching the biggest fish while I jealously looked on.

I’ve been doing a lot more at home now that we have whole weeks between games.  It’s given us more time to just have days to relax and hangout with one another.  For example, Steven Morissey came over to spend a day with Anthony and I.  The three of us had a really good chat about just about everything.  We talked about the games, life in Europe and life back home, our careers and everything in between.  While I won’t go into any specifics, I was really interested in hearing about Steven’s reasons for choosing to sign with VPS over other clubs.  His reasons said a lot to me about him as an individual and his character.  I gained a lot of respect for him after that visit.  Also, he cooked for us!  That makes him a winner in my book.

I’ve talked about a few things, but by far the most interesting thing has happened: a team party at my place.  We had just lost to HJK and needed to recharge our batteries, so Anthony and I hosted a beer pong tournament at my house.  Long story short, beer pong involes throwing ping pong balls into cups of beer.  If I tried to explain in any more detail I would be writing for hours.  Anyway, we started off on the wrong foot by having everyone show up an hour late.  Then we got to playing.  For some reason just about everyone took their shirts off.  I don’t have anything to add, I just thought that was really strange.  I kept my top on.  The host team (Me and Anthony) dominated the competition in group play with a perfect 4-0 record.  Unfortunately, after getting iced by having a bye into the semifinals, we lost and didn’t take home the title.  As the night went on, things got a bit “party-like”.  A few guys got into a spirited argument over who loved Finland the most and in the ensuing conversation my laptop got knocked off a table and the screen was broken into pieces.  That’s part of the reason that this blog post took so long to get published.  The good news is that I know how some free money from certain individuals to go out and buy a new laptop.  They’ll be happy to know that I’m getting essentially the cheapest new laptop in existence, the Samsung Chromebook 3.  I’m gonna buy it through Amazon and it’s only about 300 euros.  Of course I’ll be spending the majority of that money, but the money pledged by the people who broke my current laptop will help.

That’s about it for me.  I had a lot of stuff happen, but in the end I didn’t really get talking too much about any of them.  We play MYPA in our next game on Friday.  It’s at 8pm for some reason, I assume so that MYPA can travel to Vaasa the day of the match and save a bit of money on hotel costs.  That could be totally wrong though.  This is a big game because I feel confident that MYPA will be next to us in the final standings.  This game is a proverbial “six-pointer” in our individual battle for placement.  Winning or losing this game could be the difference between, say, 3^rd or 4^th at the end of the season.  Come out and support us!  We could really use the win. 

The meme: