Matchday 14: Another Loss

We played our last game before the midseason break today and lost, 1-0, to IFK Lulea.  Just like last game, we played even in the first half and dominated the second.  We still aren’t passing as much as we should be, but that’s not our biggest problem at the moment.  The problem is that we simply cannot score.  We get into seemingly dangerous situations, but often don’t even get a shot off.  In my opinion this ineptitude in front of goal comes from a lack of training finishing during training.  Not shooting drills that have no pressure or defenders and simulate long distance shots that we’ll never take in the game; I’m talking about games that have pressure, but are designed to create a bunch of realistic chances.  Then, when those come in the game they’re second nature.

Now, I’m not blaming our poor finishing today completely on a lack of training.  There are many contributing factors: some good saves from the goalie, some bad luck and some simple poor shots.  No amount of training is going to stop those three factors from causing misses.  However, we only needed two of our 15 chances today to be a goal, and I think with confident attackers we get those two goals and probably more.

After being the Man of the Match last game, I wasn’t quite as influential today.  I still played well I think, but I was severely hampered by an ankle injury I sustained in the 20^th minute.  I was chasing a through ball and fouled the defender in front of me.  Ironically, when I pulled him down he fell on my left leg, trapping my ankle underneath him.  It hurt like hell, but wasn’t so bad that I had to come out.  My lateral movement was very limited, but I got on with it and finished the half at about 60%.  At halftime, I took a bunch of pain pills and got an awful tape job and I figured the ankle was as bad as it was going to get.  Unfortunately, I aggravated the injury and was forced to come out at the worst possible moment.  Erik made a good steal just inside our attacking half, and me and Joel made good runs.  Erik played the ball through and honestly either me or Joel could have been in, but the ball was a bit closer to me to I got there first.  The goalie came running out, but he was way late.  I took the first touch with my right foot past the goalkeeper.  With literally no one between me and my first goal of the season, I never made it to the ball.  The cut across the ‘keeper was too much for my injured ankle and I fell over in terrible pain.  That was the end of my game.  From potential glory to devastation in one second.

Despite the loss I think we played pretty well, just like I felt after our last two games.  Of course, playing well means nothing without results, but at least we’re moving in the right direction.  To his credit, Siggi didn’t yell like a madman today.  I don’t know if someone finally told him how distracting it is to the players, or if he simply didn’t have much to yell about since we were dominating most of the match.  He was kind of a dick to me when I came off, saying nothing other than, “You should have scored.”  Oh, is that what I was supposed to do?  I thought I was supposed to injure my ankle and come off.  When I said as much (but much less sarcastically), he just turned away, acknowledging my statement with his non-acknowledgment.  Almost like he thought I wasn’t actually injured.  As if for some reason I would just fall over in agony with the goal at my mercy.  I didn’t take the exchange personally though.  I know Siggi is super-intense and the way the game was going (and the season for that matter) didn’t help anybody’s stress levels.

After the match, I was briefly interviewed by the biggest regional newspaper.  He told me that I played very well, which was nice to hear from a neutral observer.  The guy asked me about my contract situation, and I told him that I was out of contract at the end of the month and that I was hoping to get an extension worked out over the break.  I wouldn’t mind staying at Enkoping for the rest of the season, but I seriously worry about what Siggi thinks of me.  It’s not like I’m on some big contract and I can just “Wayne Bridge It” and sit on the bench collecting checks.  I need to go somewhere where the coach values my skillset and considers me an important player.  I don’t get that feeling at all at ESK, even though I’ve been one of our best players the past month or so.  I think that as soon as we get healthy again (and we will) that I’ll be buried on the bench.  I know that Mtaka, Kerim, Daniel and Ernesto are all ahead of me on the depth chart, so when they return to full fitness where will that leave me?  Wherever I play will be based on how much value the team sees in me.  Unless it’s an Allsvenskan team, where I have no problem starting at the bottom and working my way up.  But that would also mean that I’d be earning 3-4x as much at least.  To be clear, this sentiment has nothing to do with ESK in particular.  If I was in the same boat on the first place team in the league, then I would leave and sign with ESK if I thought I’d be significantly more valued here.  The more I play, the more I can show my talents and get offers and/or trials in the winter.

So now the midseason break begins.  I find this to be a very peculiar practice, as there seems to be no reason why we couldn’t just play straight through until the end of the season.  Especially in a lower league, it would give players the opportunity to train/test with Allsvenskan and Superettan teams after the season if we played straight through.  However that’s not the case and I’m sure there’s a good reason why, even if I don’t know it.  If I don’t have any trials, then I will be heading to London on Thursday to stay with Celia for a week!  I’ve been to London once and loved it.  Now, with the Olympics on the way, I think it will be amazing.  The blog might be sporadic since I’m not bringing my laptop.  If there’s no posts don’t worry…I’m still active just not near a computer!

Lastly, I’ve started to go a bit crazy with Memes recently.  As a result, I’ve decided to end each post with a meme or something similar.  This may last for a week or go on indefinitely, but I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!  I'll start with one about the universe.  It's not actually a meme, but it interests me.  I watch 'The Universe' every night on Netflix so I'm kinda hooked!

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2gtqii/:nlsJs!fH:G8!d!1pS/www.techvert.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/26/the-observable-universe/The-Observable-Universe.jpg/

Matchday 13: The Great Green North

Lulea

It’s legitimately hot today.  At least in my room it is.  You see, there doesn’t seem to be air conditioning anywhere in this country.  Instead every place has really big windows.  You rarely see the double hung type windows that seems to be on every house in America.  Anyway it’s hot and I have no A/C, so I’ve been forced to open both my windows and my curtains.  This, for better or worse, has caused me to see some things that I’d rather not know were happening right outside my place.  One positive thing is that I saw the greatest thing anyone could possibly see in Enkoping: an old man walking a cat.  Maybe I’m in the minority, but I’ve never ever seen a person walk a cat.  What joy is there for either party?  The guy was forced to just drag the cat along, and the cat seemed like he had no interest in being outside.  Maybe because it’s actually hot outside.

We played our 13^th game yesterday and tied, 1-1, to Lulea.  Lulea is 800km away from Enkoping and less than 100km from the artic circle.  Look it up on a map, it’s comically far north.  I have absolutely no idea how they can afford the travel to play in this league, but then again, it’s not much different from every single team in USL and NASL and they make it work.  I played perhaps my best match of the season and assisted on our goal.  I also drew three yellow cards (one of which was a stone-cold red, no question) and ran the left back into the ground.  He got a cramp in the 70^th minute and had to leave the game.  I’ll get to my performance in a minute, but first my impressions of the team.

I thought that the game yesterday was ESK at near our best.  Before I go further, I need to mention that Siggi didn’t make the trip up north because of an illness he’s been fighting all week.  Also staying home with Siggi was our philosophy of near-constant pressuring.  The majority of that burden is carried by the front four players in our 4-2-3-1.  The result is that when we actually get the ball those players have no energy to run and create goal scoring chances.  In Lulea though, we played a much calmer style and were able to have much more possession than we typically enjoy.  Per Ake (our assistant, who was the head coach for the game) did very little yelling during the match and more or less allowed us to sort out our own problems in the match.  The result was that we figured them out and became stronger as the game went on, rather than just running more, working harder, defending harder.  We struggled for the first 30 minutes and they scored around the 30^th minute, but after that it was more and more in our favor.  We still insist on playing too many long passes, but I’ve given up hope of that changing without a change in personnel and that seems unlikely. 

Area next to the stadium

I can’t be sure, but I think I felt the liberation of playing without the pressure from Siggi the most of anyone.  I was picked as the Man of the Match for my performance.  When I went to the bench a month or so ago, Siggi pretty much told me that it was because I didn’t do enough defensive work.  As a result, a lot of the running I’ve done in subsequent games has been “show running” where I run real fast and real aggressive to nowhere in particular.  It’s cynical, but my minutes went up every game I did it.  In Lulea, I did the defensive work that the game dictated and no more, giving me the energy to make the hard runs that drew all those yellow cards.  In addition to assisting our goal, I could very well have scored on two other occasions.  The first was from a penalty kick that we earned with 15 minutes remaining.  As soon as it happened, I went and got the ball and walked to the spot with every intention to take the shot.  I would never have taken a penalty in a tie game were Siggi there, since I know that in the event that I missed, he would never forgive me.  In the Great Green North though, I had no problem stepping up.  Why not?  I was full of confidence.  Another player took the penalty and had it saved.  That’s fine, no worries there, but I would have shot to the other side because I prefer to take penalties to that side so I think I would have scored.  The second opportunity, and the one that made me a bit upset, was deep into stoppage time.  A long cross or shot was caught by our ‘keeper who played a brilliant quick punt to our striker.  Lulea was pressing to score and had left only two players back.  I took off sprinting down the field and caught up to make it a 3-on-2 counterattack.  The defenders committed to the other two player so all I needed was an easy pass to be one-on-one with the goalie.  Instead, the striker shot from about 25 yards and was saved.  It was the last play of the game.  I had just sprinted 80 yards in the 93^rd minute and gotten myself wide open only to never get the pass.  I was upset.

Today is my day off and the most interesting thing I’ve seen is the guy walking his cat.  I’ve also started to pack because it seems that I will need to be ready to go on short notice anytime after our game this Saturday.  If it’s not for a trial, then it will be to visit Celia in London.  I can say for sure that I won’t spend my 10 days off in Enkoping though.  No word on a contract extension so I have to look for another place to play.  I will be talking with my agents in Sweden and Finland a lot more in the next few days and weeks to figure something out.  As soon as I know something I’ll be sure to put it here so you know too!

Matchday 12: Different Process, Same Result

We lost again today, 1-0, to Eskilstuna City.  They were terrible and only created a handful of chances the entire match.  We on the other hand dominated the game, though we also only created a few chances.  I came on in the 58^th minute as a striker and had a big chance from a scramble in the box, but the goalie blocked it.  Perhaps I should have scored but I didn’t have much time to really size up the goal and the keeper saved it with pretty much just throwing his arms up.  He did a good job of making himself big and in the end made the save.  Also, for the second successive home game, I put the ball in the net only to have it called back.  Last game I had no idea I was flagged for offsides and neither did the goalie.  Today though I thought I might have been off even though I didn’t see the linesman.  I don’t know if the goalie saw the flag go up, but I suspect he did because I rounded him rather easily.

I won’t go into much detail about the match.  The only thing I will say is that we’ve totally abandoned the passing game we played in the preseason in favor of long balls.  No offense to anyone on our team, but we have no Andrea Pirlo’s in the squad.  For that reason, we can’t be trying to unlock defenses with 40-50 yard aerial passes  from just inside midfield or our own half.  Today our strategy was to breakdown the defense with long passes from one of our holding midfielders.  He would come equal to our backline and then try to play perfect passes to streaking runners on either flank.  It’s the soccer equivalent of calling a Hail Mary every single play.  The problem with playing like that is two-fold.  First, you start off every attack with a pass that has a 30% chance of being completed.  By that logic, you will only retain possession for more than 10 seconds roughly 1 in 3 times you get the ball.  Naturally your players will be forced to chase the ball more and tire out.  The second problem is that the other team simply drops deeper and deeper, making the strategy almost impossible.  That reaction is the equivalent of a defense in football using 8 DB’s when they know your team will do a Hail Mary.  What was a 30% chance becomes too low a chance to really even be considered.

When I came on, I looked to change things a bit.  In the early moments I was successful, linking up with Daniel and Erik quite well and getting that goal that was called back.  Also was a chance where I linked up with the midfield and played a ball that would have put Erik in on goal, but was blocked by a sliding intervention from the center back.  Those were both within 10 minutes of coming on.  Things were looking good.  But then we went back to long diagonal balls and we hardly had another chance.

Training this week wasn’t very good.  We played last weekend, so we had plenty of time to rest but still prepare properly for this match.  Monday was a complete washout because it rained the entire day.  There would have been no way we could have had a decent training in the downpour.  Me and some of the guys didn’t take the day off though; we met at the stadium and lifted weights, while I ran some difficult fitness out on the track since I had only played 20 minutes the day before and needed to do some running.  I did a track-soccer hybrid type workout.  Pretty much that means that I use track distances, but with a soccer rest.  Actually that probably doesn’t help you so I’ll just tell you the workout.  I ran, in order, 200m-300m-400m-200m-300m-400m.  The rest was to job half the distance of the previous run.  So, after the first 200, I jogged 100m and then ran 300m then jogged 150m and so on.  It was quite difficult since my body isn’t used to making runs longer than 60m maximum at a time, but that’s what it takes to get truly fit.  You have to push yourself beyond your comfort zone sometimes.

Anyway, because Monday was rained out the team didn’t get to do anything together that day.  Tuesday all we did was have a intrasquad scrimmage with some filler players from the youth team.  It was largely pointless and afterwards we ran some really difficult fitness, which was even harder for me since I had run so hard the day before.  Wednesday was off (for my birthday, I presume J) and Thursday was a good training, though we didn’t actually work on anything for the match.  Friday was simply a walkthrough.  So, despite the fact that we have been consistently giving up set play goals, we didn’t spend any of our three trainings working on defending set plays.  That’s what made this week of training bad.  We worked hard, but accomplished very little in my opinion.

For those of you who care, I still don’t have my contract situation sorted.  My contract ends at the end of July and I don’t have any offers as of now.  I’ve played in every game I’ve been eligible so far this season except against Vasalunds (a 5-1 loss).  With the injuries we have at the club right now I think that I’ll be offered an extension, I just worry that once everyone heals up that I might get buried on the bench here.  I’ve said it before, but I’m too old to be buried on any lower-division bench. If an MLS team wants to pay me $90k a year and put me on the bench then I’ll happily sit, but for essentially $1200 a month(before tax)  I get here, no thanks.

Lastly, Allsvenskan started back up today after their Euro Championships break.  I like that Allsvenskan schedules games on a stagger because it gives me a game to watch every night during the summer.  I'm excited for the league to be back and running!

Actually I lied, that wasn't the last thing.  To quote one of my favorite shows in America, Pardon the Interruption, a melancholy happy trails to Tom Noden and Philip Zamayeri.  Both of these players have left the team.  Noden's contract was up today and Zamayeri left the team for his own reasons which I don't fully know.  Even if I did know I wouldn't put those reasons in a public forum like this.  I got along well with both of those guys and I'll miss them.  I wish them nothing but the best with their new clubs, whoever those clubs might be!  When you see this photo imagine Boyz II Men's "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye" playing in the background...

Zamayeri on the far left, Noden in the grey sweater in front.

Matchday 11 and Midsommar

We played our eleventh game of the season today against Sandviken IF.  I came on and played the last 25 minutes but we lost, 2-1, in a game where we could have maybe gotten some points.  Sandviken was good, but we created a lot of chances.  They also created a ton of chances.  It was a pretty open game and it was obvious that both teams were playing to win.  Unfortunately for us, not only did we lose, but the two teams down on the bottom with us both won.  That means that we’re last place again.  I took these photos of the stadium before the game.  I am not going to go much more into detail into the match.  As always, you can go onto www.esk.nu and read the match report if you care to.  The one thing I will say is congratulations to Kevin Sharro for scoring his first goal.  For a 17-year-old who started the season as our 3rd string left back, he's managed to play the last four games and now seems to be a regular.  Good for him!

As I’ve mentioned a few times here, the sun barely ever goes down here in the summer.  This has lead somehow to a holiday called Midsommar.  I could tell you the history of the holiday, but I don’t know it.  Maybe Wikipedia can help.  Anyway from whatever started the holiday it has now become a day for Swedes to drink to excess.  We had a game two days after the holiday so we weren’t allowed to drink.  That didn’t stop me from enjoying the day with some of the locals.

I spent the day with Emil Strok and his family and friends.  Emil is one of the players who lives in Enkoping.  He is also from Enkoping so his family was all in town to celebrate Midsommar.  I ended up hanging out with Emil, his older brother Marcus, his neighbor Tobias and another neighbor whose name I can’t recall anymore.  Emil is about a year older than me and his friends were all 27 or 28.  I was so happy to be in a group of people older than me for a change.  When I hang out with the other guys who live in Enkoping I’m always the oldest and it can get kind of weird sometimes.  Well anyway the day was really nice.  I ate a lot of traditional Midsommar dishes: there was fish marinated in like a pickle juice and serve raw.  There was also a homemade potato salad and bread.  Lastly, there was porkchops that were really good.  I love to try new foods so all the traditional dishes were nice, but I still enjoyed the porkchops the best.  We ate everything at a table outside under the sun.  I should have taken a picture of all the food but it somehow slipped my mind.  After we ate, we played a game that is kind of difficult to explain, but it’s a similar idea to the bean bag toss game you see at tailgates in the US.  With the sun still up, we went inside to watch the European Championships game between Germany and Greece before going home.  My first Midsommar wasn’t the crazy alcohol-fest that some people had described it as, but I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Matchday 10: Last My Ass

We tied our game on Monday, 0-0.  I was on the bench again, but I came on the last 20 minutes and did ok.  The point means we're no longer at the bottom of the table!  I’ll get to the game in just a minute, but first I have to tell you that I’m pretty sure that a freaking Chubacabra lives outside of my building where I live.

Now I know what you’re thinking: Chubacabras, while obviously real, don’t live in Scandinavia.  Well then to you I pose this situation.  Yesterday I put out some trash.  Today I walk out and see this:

Game. Set. Match.  Or, to quote ‘How I Met Your Mother’, “lawyered”.

Realizing my goal was ruled offside.

The game last Monday was against Dalkurd.  They were near the top of Division 1 last year, but this year they are firmly in the middle of the table.  They were pretty good and were absolutely the most deliberate of any of the teams we’ve played thus far.  That kind of played to our advantage because it caused us to play a bit calmer than we usually do.  I’ll skip ahead to the 60^th minute, when Siggi summoned me from my warm-up to go in.  As kind of a metaphor for my season, instead of putting me straight in Siggi had a change of heart and had me continue to warm up next to the bench.  It was kind of weird.  Anyway 10 minutes later I came in for Daniel as a left winger.  Now I think I’ve mentioned already that we tweaked our 4-2-3-1 formation a bit to push our fullbacks higher up the field and also push our winger higher and more central so that they play a bit more like strikers.  On defense we’re still 4-2-3-1, but now on offense we look much more like an old school 4-3-3, with all three strikers playing within the width of the 18 yard box.  I point this out only to explain how with maybe five minutes left I ended up in the right side of the box scoring a goal.  A disallowed goal, but a good finish all the same.  Robert, who was playing center midfield instead of his usual center back, played a great deep cross to me between two defenders.  Instead of trying a header from 15 yards, I took the ball off my chest and finished from a half volley with my left foot.  Unfortunately I was whistled for offsides, though I’m quite sure I was not offside.  Attackers never think they’re offside, but in my case I was standing a yard in front of the defender when the ball was played and ran past him as it was in the air.  Our disallowed goal was almost identical to a goal Spain scored against Croatia two hours later, just I shot directly instead of passing.  I'd put a video up but it would surely be taken down by UEFA in ten minutes so you can just look it up yourself if you want.  www.tvgolo.com is the website I use for highlights.

Yesterday we were back to work with a whopping eight people at training, including the goalkeepers.  None of the guys who started trained but instead jogged and did recovery stuff.  Meanwhile, the guys who did train were treated to the hardest freaking training of the year.  Essentially we did drills intended for 10-14 players, but with six guys.  That meant no rotations in high tempo games that would normally feature a 1:2 work-to-rest ratio.  It was difficult, but good.  I’m never one to shy away from hard work and I could use the fitness anyway.

I only slept five hours last night because I had to wake up to watch the end of the NBA Finals game 4.  I’m a big time supporter of the Miami Heat so I want them to win the championship.  Actually, to be fair I’m just a big time supporter of LeBron James, so I’m rooting for him to finally win a championship.  Without getting into it so much, I think that James is incredibly scrutinized unnecessarily.  He’s the best basketball player on earth, but people hate him.  He appears to be a much nicer person than Michael Jordan (who is better) ever was, but people loved MJ.  If you’re not from Ohio and you have a grudge against LeBron James, then that’s a YOU problem (to quote Colin Cowherd).  I’ve got 99 problems but hating the best player in the NBA ain’t one.

Matchday 7 and the motherf'ing Eurovision Song Contest

Hi friends!  There’s much to talk about, so let’s just get to it.  But first I have to say thanks to everyone who reads this blog.  I know my life isn’t terribly interesting, but many of you have continued to come back and read.  I just passed the 1000 pageview mark!  That may not sound like a lot, but since I haven’t advertised my blog in any way I’m proud of that.  Maybe I’ll start to advertise it a bit, but I don’t know.  I kind of like knowing that only people who actually care are coming to my blog.  I’ll try to keep doing things to make this blog interesting.  Just so you know, every time someone visits my blog, my niece Amani smiles!  Moving on…

"Read my uncle's blog!  I love him and want only for him to have success and occasionally change my diaper!"

We lost yesterday to Vasteras SK, 2-1.  I came off the bench for the second consecutive game in the 66^th minute.  I felt much better physically than I did in my last sub appearance and I had many positives in the moments that I had the ball.  Hopefully I can play from the start in our next match.

The game itself was actually pretty good.  We played one of our best games of the season, even though we were missing Kerim Mrabti, who had started every game so far.  That allowed Ernesto Ferreira to step in, and he did a very good job.  It’s been clear to anyone paying attention that Siggi has been itching to put Ernesto into the starting lineup, and now I see why.  Ernesto is our oldest player by far, but he is also probably our smartest.  His introduction brought with it a calming effect on the team.  For the first time since preseason, we were moving the ball from left to right and penetrating the other team’s defense.  Ernesto was instrumental in pulling the strings in the #10 spot.  He was clearly our man of the match and I hope he can continue to be so influential for us.  With Kerim missing due to injury and the fact that our captain Tom Noden had to pull out of the warm-up due to a migraine and didn’t play, we now have only one player who’s started every game: Robert Kjellman.  That’s a pretty extraordinary turnover considering we only have a 22 man squad, and from that three players haven’t played at all.  Anyway, the game was very even with a lot of possession from both sides, but no real attacking threat either way.  There was the odd chance, but the first half was played almost exclusively in the middle third.  Vasteras scored the only goal of that half on a questionable penalty.  They got the ball wide and the winger put in a cross that hit Philip Zamayeri on the arm.  There was no question that it hit his arm, the question was in whether such an infraction warranted a penalty kick.  His arm was tucked in on his body and there was no way he could have avoided the contact.  I don’t like the “ball to hand” rule in soccer, but it exists and this was a textbook example of ball to hand.  In my opinion it should have been a no call.

The second half was a bit different in that we had to chase the game.  By the time I came on in the middle of the second half, we were essentially playing 4-2-4, with both wingers and Ernesto pushed up alongside Erik Andersson.  I came on as a left winger, which was kind of new since I haven’t played there since preseason.  I’ve been used this season exclusively as an option to run behind the defense and put in crosses.  By playing on the left though, I was given more freedom to come inside and play almost as like a 2^nd #10.  For the tactical soccer nuts out there (I’m in that category.  I love analyzing various tactics) I was playing a role similar to the 2 in a 4-3-2-1.  That’s not the formation we were playing, but that’s what I was doing.  I like the role because it combines the two positions I’m best at: winger and withdrawn/2nd striker.  I felt instantly more comfortable than I ever feel as an out-and-out winger.  I was also able to be more dynamic and unpredictable which made me far more difficult to defend.

In other news, I have been getting more boring by the day.  If my life was a tv show it would get canceled at this point.  I hang out with the same people in the same places almost every single day.  And I have no real desire to go out and meet new people in Enkoping.  It’s not a knock on the town, but I’ve already got a handful of really good friends here now and I feel no need to make new ones.  In short, I’m boring, which is why I’m shocked at myself for bringing up the idea to go to Stockholm a few days ago.  Just spontaneously at lunch with Daniel, Linus, Joel and Fabian (look them up on my Meet ESK link.  Fabian’s not on there just yet) I blurt out, “I wanna do something.  I kind of feel like going to Stockholm.”  Daniel, a native of Stockholm, immediately jumped on the idea and was ready to go.  I on the other hand, had already soured on the idea once I considered the time and money involved in a half day trip to and from Stockholm.  I want to visit Stockholm, but not on a tight schedule.  Long story short, I was convinced to compromise on a trip to a “fotball golf” course in Stragnas.  I’ve butchered the spelling of the town since I don’t know how to put the dots over the a’s.  Well, once we got to Stragnas we saw this:

And this:

This fotball golf course was more like an abandoned amusement park.  We played the course anyway and I finished 2^nd.  Daniel won and he was all to happy to let everybody know about it.  I’m glad I went out with the guys.  Sitting at the Poorhouse (my apartment, keep up) wouldn’t have done me any good.

The last thing I’ll talk about before I go is the ridiculousness that is the Eurovision Song Contest.  Now if you’ve never heard of this, then congratulations, your life is better than anyone in Europe.  But also sorry, because now you’re going to hear about it from me.  The Eurovision Song Contest, which I insist must be pronounced “the motherf’ing European Song Contest” in the same way as the Catalina Wine Mixer from the movie “Stepbrothers”, is something that I don’t understand at all but I will try to explain it.  Essentially it is American Idol, just that the people performing create their own songs.  People watch the performances then vote for their favorites.  There are no live judges from what I can tell.  I’m pretty sure that the artists have to be amateurs and cannot have the backing of a music label, at least when they begin the competition.  Each European country has their own competition and declares a champion, then that champion competes at the international level to see which country will have the winner.  Sweden’s representative was Loreen with her song, “Euphoria”.  I really like the song and apparently so does the rest of Europe because she was voted champion!  This was a big source of pride for Swedes, with probably half of all Swedish people I’ve spoken to in the last month have mentioned that Loreen was a favorite to win the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final, a competition of the top 20 countries.  Now I’ve never been a big American Idol fan or any of the similar shows, but at least I understand them.  It’s cool to see someone go from unknown to star in front of your eyes and partially with your help.  This contest though doesn’t seem to have that quality.  I’ve been hearing “Euphoria” on the radio since I got to Sweden.  I am 99.9% sure that Loreen has a recording deal with a music label and that her song is on an album.  That makes this seem more like a vote to see which country has the artist with the #1 song in Europe at the moment.  I don’t see how that could possibly be popular but what do I know.  Maybe only Sweden was interested because they knew they’d win!  Anyway, I can’t talk so much about a song and then not post it, so here you have it: Loreen performing “Euphoria” at the Eurovision Song Contest Finals.  See you guys. 

Matchday 6: You Can't Lose 'Em All!

Sooooooo I’ve got some news.  It’s no big deal but,

WE WON!!!!!! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON!

(deep breath)

WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON! WE WON!

(deep breath)

3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points! 3 points!

I know what you’re thinking: “Jordan, did you guys win?”  Well let me be clear and say that, yes, we…WON!  We won our first game of the season and are finally off the snide.  I’m positive that snide is not the word I want to use there but oh well, it happened.

Unfortunately I’m pretty sure we’re still in last place.

Our game today was against Akropolis.  “Akropolis,” you say, “Didn’t there used to be a bar near your college named that?”  Why yes there was.  Thank you for noticing.  The bar though spelled it Acropolis, so you lose points for not noticing that.  Anyway, Akropolis was the first team all season that I’ve been eligible that we played a team the wasn’t in the promotion zone.  As such we came out and dominated, and within five minutes we were up 1-0.  The game evened out after that, but we held on to win by 1 goal to nil.  I played the last 10 minutes (as a striker, no less) and had a really close chance, but mostly I just ran like a mad man.  I was more tired playing those 10 minutes than at any time during the previous four matches where I played a combined 330 minutes.  We deserved the win, if for no other reason than the fact that we did the two most shocking things in soccer history:

1.       We held a shutout.  I never thought we would do that.

2.       I was subbed in as a defensive change.  Siggi, in all his wisdom, decided to put me in to keep a lead.  I assume it was some sort of Jedi Mind Trick that is above my head.

If ever you doubt that miracles exist, I suggest you think about the fact that I was subbed into a professional match as a defensive change and it actually worked.  Before today, I would have told you that it was more likely that a random bolt of lightning on a sunny day would hit a shot as it was flying into our goal and stop it than me stopping a goal.  But I would have been wrong.

From a tactical perspective, turns out we played a 4-1-4-1, effectively flipping the midfield triangle of our usual 4-2-3-1.  I think it helped us to find good passes in the attacking third, though I don’t think all the players had the same confidence that they had in the preseason.  Thus we hit more panicky long passes than short, crisp ones.  Eric scored our goal and was excellent up front.  He’s really turned into one of, if not our most important player.  Not bad for a guy who didn’t start a single relevant game in preseason.  I predicted to some time ago to a few of the guys on the team that we would make the tactical shift that we did, and now I predict that at some point in the future we will see a lineup with two strikers, either 4-4-2 or 5-3-2.  I know 5-3-2 sounds crazy to you soccer people out there but if we do use that formation I’ll go into detail as to how it could work, especially with the personnel that we have.  It could and probably would work.

Moving on…In the American tradition, I am now going to go out and drink excessively.  A win is not a win unless you celebrate it more than you should.  Also, and I think this is in the constitution of every civilized country in the world, if you have to wait five weeks for your first win then you can drink however much you can afford.  Luckily for you worriers I only have enough money for five (domestic) beers so tonight won’t be so wild and crazy.

I’ll let you know how things go.  Thank goodness we got our first win.  It’s so important for the team moral that we were able to do it.  Now we can go into the next match with some confidence and maybe even a bit of swagger.  I’ll be working this week to get my starting job back, but I think it’s unlikely considering we won.  Coaches don’t like to change the lineups that much after wins.  We’ll see.

Matchday 5 - Still No Points

Valkomen!

See that there?  I’m dropping some Swedish knowledge on you.

We played another game yesterday and lost yet again, 2-1, to BK Forward.  The match was played at an Allsvenskan stadium, the home of Orebro SK.  I played 60 uneventful minutes.  At least they were uneventful for me since I did almost nothing during my time on the field.  This game was the antithesis of our loss to IK Frej; Against Frej we were the better team and deserved more.  Against BK Forward though we were dominated from start to finish and were lucky to have the respectable scoreline that we got.  I don’t really have too much to say about what could have been.  I don’t think that BK Forward was much better than the other teams I’ve played against, but on this day they were simply better than us.  I don’t feel any shame saying that.  In fact, the next time we play the game could go the complete opposite way.  In a league like Division 1, most of the teams seem to be pretty equal.  In our league it seems that, aside from Vasby and Sirius, all the teams are pretty level.  Every team has 3-5 very good players that could find a team in Allsvenskan, but every team also has their weak spots.  I’m just working to be in the former category for ESK, not the latter.

On that note, I will now make excuses for my poor play.  Deal with it.

My last two games have been very different from each other.  Against IK Frej, I was all over the place.  I ran at defenders, gave good passes and even made a few tackles here and there.  Yesterday against BK Forward, I hardly ran at anyone, gave away the ball too much (especially at the beginning of the game) and didn’t tackle anybody.  Essentially my last two games have been my best and worst with Enkoping, speaking strictly of my personal performance.  While personal responsibility plays an important role in any match, but I think that as a winger my performance is much more strongly affected by the performance of the team than almost any other position.  If we’re playing well, like we did against Frej, then I can get into the attack and receive the ball in a position where I can attack.  If we’re not doing so well, then I spend all of my energy chasing on defense.  Once we win the ball, I receive it in positions where all I can do is hold it up and retain possession, not necessarily my strong suits.  Also, because all the other players are tired from chasing, I don’t have many options to pass to when I do receive the ball.  Conversely, I don’t have the energy to go support my teammates either.  As a result, we did a decent job defending against BK Forward, but once we won the ball we just booted it forward to our striker or me or the other winger.  If we actually maintained possession of that pass, there was almost always nothing to do from there but go on a hopeful individual run.  We had our moments, but mostly the match yesterday was just frustration.  We didn’t string more than four or five attacking passes together the whole match.

It’s a shame how things have gone so far, but we only need 4 points to get out of the relegation zone, so things aren’t so bad.  I honestly still believe that promotion is a possibility, but at this point we can’t possibly be thinking about that.  We just need to get our first win or first point and fight our ways to a safe part of the table.  Once we get there we can set some goals for where we want to finish.  I’ll leave you guys with a few random pictures of our locker room.  It’s empty because training was canceled and nobody told me or the equipment manager.  This is the 2^nd time this has happened!  Oh well, that’s life.  Talk to y’all soon!

My locker.  Two lockers, really.  I'm a superstar!

Another (depressing) Loss and Celia Visits

EDIT:  I've added a link to the match highlights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVOd12SysNg

Hey everybody, I’m back.  Sorry for the delay, but my very pretty friend Celia came to visit for few days so I didn’t want to take the time I normally would to write the blog.  We went to Vasteras and also became sadly familiar with Sweden’s public transportation system.  In news you may actually care about, we played our fourth game and sadly suffered our fourth loss.  Let’s recap:

I’ll start with the match because that’s what most of you will care about.  Normally I don’t go much into games, but I will talk a bit about this one.  We lost the game, 4-2, to IK Frej.  I’ve now played three games this season, and they’ve been against the teams in 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd of the current table.  And guess who’s in 4^th? None other than our next opponents, BK Forward.  The first two games were probably deserved losses, even though we had chances in both.  The past game though hurts a lot because I think we should have won the game.  We were winning the match 2-1 with about 25 minutes remaining but then got a red card and pretty much fell victim to that.

The reason the loss to IK Frej was so depressing was that it was entirely avoidable.  I rarely blame a referee for a loss, but I have to pin this one on the ref.  He handed out 7 or 8 yellow cards to us in addition to the red card.  IK Frej had maybe one or two.  He also ejected Siggi in the first half.  Even I got a yellow card, the first of my professional career and only the third or fourth I’ve ever received.  I don’t know if the ref had a bad week or maybe he broke up with his girlfriend because he seemed very eager to show that he was in control.  He called fouls at a pretty equal rate between both teams, but only our players received cards.  As a result it made it very difficult to commit to tackles since by halftime most of our team had cards.  It changed the way we played and made the game more difficult for us than it needed to be.

On another note, I actually played pretty well yesterday.  I created the first goal with a free kick that hit the crossbar and was headed in by Kerim Mrabti.  The picture on the right is my free kick hitting the bar.  I also played a less significant role in the 2^nd goal.  I lost possession of the ball, but sprinted back 30-40 yards and nipped it away, which sent the left back, Robert Kjellman, forward.  He ran forward about 30 yards then sent in a great low cross that Erik Andersson finished really well.  Those two goals gave us 1-0 and 2-1 leads.

Aside from the crazy referee, the loss sucked because we had such bad luck.  When we were up 1-0 I made a good run to the endline and laid the ball back to Daniel Alund, but his shot from about 10 yards hit the post.  He had the keeper beaten and was literally six inches away from putting us up 2-0.  Unfortunately from that same passage of play IK Frej took the ball down the field and scored to tie the match 1-1.  Later, when we were up 2-1 but down a man we did a good job of holding our lead for maybe 5-10 minutes.  We were keeping an okay amount of possession and doing a good job keeping them away from our goal.  When they finally did get a chance they hit the post, only for the rebound to hit our goalkeeper and go in the goal.  It was a terrible bit of luck.  Ironically, had the shot been on target our ‘keeper probably would have saved it.  Later, with the score 2-2, I had a good chance from a corner kick, but my header hit first the goalie, then a player on the line before being scrambled away.  The goalie knew nothing about the save; he just threw his hands up at the right place at the right time.  The pic above shows the play.  The guy on the post with his eyes closed ultimately made the save after the goalie deflected my header.  All of these factors I mentioned worked in unison to deny us any points from the match.  The fourth goal came with the last kick of the ball while we had our whole team pressing for a goal.  It made it 4-2, a very harsh scoreline based on how the match was played.

Moving on from soccer, my friend Celia came to visit this weekend.  I initially met here years ago in Baltimore when I was playing for CPB.  She was studying at a college there at the time as part of a student exchange program.  We kept in touch and have seen each other a few times since then.  Last year she visited me in Harrisburg while she was vacationing with her friends in the US and then a few months later I visited her in her hometown of Sway, England.  I’ll use this opportunity to throw in a picture or two of me in London.

That's me punching a bust of Hitler.

Anyway, Celia was only here for like two days, so there wasn’t so much we could really do.  I went to get here in Vasteras which is the closest city to Enkoping with an airport.  Unfortunately once I got to Vasteras via train, I learned that there were no airport shuttles running.  That meant I had to take the city bus to the closest stop and walk the rest of the way.  The closest stop was over a mile away!  Once I got Celia at the airport, I had to pay 200SEK to go back to the train station, even though the airport shuttle would have only been 50SEK.  Since there were no shuttles running, I was forced to pay the taxi price.  Anyway we spent a few hours in Vasteras before finally heading to Enkoping.  The next day I wanted to show Celia the town so we walked into the city center and found that some sort of festival was happening.  Actually it was more like a huge flea market with a carnival at the end of it.  Still, it was great that so much was going on.  Celia is living in London now, so I’m happy that Enkoping showed a little hustle and bustle while she was here.  The carnival was notable for one ride, which scared me to even look at.  Why anyone would get on a ride like this when it was installed literally a day earlier is beyond me.  It did lead to a big crowd watching though.  Sadly, there wasn’t much more to Celia's visit since she was here for such a short time.  We did learn however that bus tickets to Vasteras are twice as expensive as train tickets, even though the bus takes twice as long to get there.  I assume the train system must be subsidized to allow their prices to be so much cheaper.

In my final piece for today, I’ll mention that I’ve started the “classYfication" of my room.  I bought some wallpaper and that’s going up now in a quite cheap way.  I don’t want to buy wallpaper glue so I’m just taping the wallpaper up with the tape you use to tape ankles along with some clear tape.  Laugh if you want it’s working well!  I also now have a working stove AND sink-gate is over after roughly two weeks.  Still no shower, but I bought a shower sponge that I can use to clean myself easily from the sink.  It’s not ideal, but my place is getting better everyday!  I've also been paid, so that's great.  Less than I wanted but more than I expected so I can't complain.