Happy Days

Hello!

 

It’s been a few days now since our draw with HJK.  Things have been going well with me, as this game was something of a coming out party for me.  For the first time since I got to Finland I’m starting to be known a bit.  Of course I’m by no means an established player in this league, but I can guarantee that our next opponents know my name now.  Another cool thing is that I was interviewed for a magazine that covers the league (I’m not 100% sure of the name so I won’t put it just yet).  It’s always nice to be appreciated.  Between the trust that the coach showed me, the appreciation from the fans during the match and now some media attention, I’m quite happy with how the last week has gone.  I’m too cool for school now.  I’ll be walking around Valkeakoski with sunglasses even if it’s raining! J

 

A few days ago the team was tasked with running a clinic for local children.  Since I don’t speak a word of Finnish, I was teamed up with Santu (one of my teammates) and given the easiest station which was just letting the kids play a regular match.  The kids were great and didn’t cause any problems.  Some couldn’t have been less interested, but it was still fun for all involved I think.

A few of the stations from the clinic.

posing

New goalkeeping style

 

After the clinic we had training which was just a football tennis tournament and some stretching.  Me and my teammate Obi were the worst team.  We lost every game.  To be more precise, I am the worst football tennis player of all time apparently.    I couldn’t even get my serves in by the end of our last game.  All I can say is that Obi lost the football tennis player lottery when he got paired with me.

 

Another thing that happened at that training was that I was given a new nickname by the coach.  I’m a bit reluctant to reveal what it is because over the years I’ve been given many nicknames and come to hate all of them.  The only nickname I’ve ever liked it “GITS” and I gave that to myself so it doesn’t count.  Also, GITS means “Give it to Seabrook” so it’s not so much a nickname as a catchphrase.  Anyway, the nickname the coach gave me is “Forest Gump”, or “FG” for short, because I just run run run!  Some might take offense to having a nickname that only mentions running in a team game with a ball, but I don’t mind at all.  I mean, it is true that when I play I do a lot of running, so why not embrace it?  No team would want a winger nicknamed “Garfield” or “Sloth”!

Notice the right winger?

 

I’ve also started betting again and I’m once again cementing my status as worst bettor of all time.  At this point, I’m close to making bets that I think will lose just to keep my losing streak going.  Then I would be able to have great stories about how terrible I am at betting and be able to laugh about.  Ironically though if I try to pick loser, then I’ll likely win a bunch of bets but probably not a lot of money.  Then I won’t have either a good story OR much tangible winnings.  As you can see, I have a life full of real problems… ;)

 

As for the next game against KuPS, I don’t know how things will go.  I think I will start, but I’m not sure.  That decision is up to the coaching staff.  It might depend as much on how we think they’ll play as how we want to play.  At our club we really are a bit spoiled for choice at the winger position, so we can tailor our flank players to succeed against just about any setup the opposing team throws at us.  We have pacey wingers, technical winger, wingers who come inside and wingers who stay wide.  We have wingers that score goals and wingers that make assists so every week it’s a battle to win or keep your spot.  Since I’ve been here, we haven’t started the same two wingers in back-to-back games, so that tells you a lot about the competition for the position. 

 

I don’t know anything about KuPS except that they play in Koupio (sp), wear yellow and have an American central defender, though I don’t know him.  If I play I’m sure we’ll know each other by the final whistle.  We have today off, but tomorrow the preparation for our next game gets serious.  It’s really a must-win for us so the stakes are high!  I’m ready!

 

The meme:

My New Apartment

No more living at the stadium!

I moved into my new apartment today.  It’s very nice and I’m quite pleased with the living situation.  The apartment is a bit far from the town center, but it’s only a 10 minute bike ride so I can’t complain about that either.  I’ll put pictures up soon, but I haven’t taken any just yet.  I’ll wait until I’ve put my stamp on the place a bit!

I might be going on a bit about my new apartment, but I can’t stress how much having a place provided by the club helps the player.  If I had to search for my own place I’d be lost.  Now I can just relax and focus on playing my best.  Right or wrong, I went on for weeks about how much I didn’t like my place in Sweden, and that money came out of my contract!  I don’t think that it affected my play, but who knows?  Here I have one less distraction.

Speaking of distractions, now that I have a place I’m forced to sort some things out and they are not easy.  First, I need a bike because it takes 30 minutes to walk from the stadium to my place.  I have one now that’s being borrowed, but I’ll need to find one of my own very soon.  I went to a store today to look at bikes and the cheapest I found was over 200 euros.  I also need some pots and pans, light fixtures and an internet stick, since I can’t get broadband internet service anywhere without a two year contract.  For those reasons, I might still be effectively living at the stadium for a few more days while I sort things out.

I've been spending quite a bit of time walking around this past week, but I don't think I'll be doing too much walking anytime soon because it is incredibly cold outside.  Last night walking home it was 9 degrees celsius.  Today in the middle of the afternoon it was 14 degrees celsius.  I thought this was summer!  If this is what August feels like, then God help me when October comes around.  It won't be as bad as it was last February (-27), but at the same time the games won't be indoors!  There will probably be some miserable days in a few months.

In soccer news, I finally got my paperwork sorted.  For over a week, I waited for my previous club ESK to provide a release to the Swedish FA.  Essentially, all I needed for ESK to do was acknowledge that my contract had expired.  This process would take five minutes, but for some reason the club waited until today to do it.  As a result, Haka and I have been freaking out trying to get this done.  If you're wondering what the form was, it was an International Transfer Certificate (ITC).  This form needs to be filled out for any player movement between countries.  It's a simple form and just matches things up so that nothing can possibly get lost in translation, more or less.  It would be a bigger deal if I had been bought, but since I was a free agent it was nothing more than a formality.  The fears about the ITC turned out to be for nothing though, since ESK got it done.  I’m ready to play my part in Sunday’s game!

I had a bit of media attention a few days ago.  The local paper, VS, interviewed me and Kris about coming to Haka.  It wasn't much, but it's nice to be in a place where the club means a lot.  In Enkoping people cared, but it's hard to have the same passion for a 3rd tier team as you'd have for a 1st tier team.  There seems to be a bit of excitement about the arrival of us new players.  We're all strikers so I guess that adds to the excitement.  Nothing better for a fan than a new striker who they haven't seen miss yet!

I kind of hate to say it, but that’s about all for now.  I’ve spent the last two or three days almost entirely at the lounge area of the stadium watching terrible Olympic sports with Kris.  Now I can use my free time to liven up my place!

And of course, today’s meme:

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/

Offsides in Jakobstad

February 15:

My first League Cup match with Jaro was today.  I played the second half, which is understandable since I have only just arrived last night.  I didn’t play great, and I was extremely tired for the last twenty minutes.  Every time I’d look at the clock, only two minutes would go by.  I’d say to myself, “wait ten minutes this time,” then I’d look up again and it’d be another two minutes.  It was terrible.  Yesterday I had two training sessions with Haka.  At the end of the first session, Sami kept a few of us behind to do about 45 minutes worth of finishing crosses.  That required quite a bit of running.  The second session was pretty rigorous itself, and then after it was over we ran fitness.  The fitness was 5x4minute runs.  This would be simple if you did it by yourself, but in a group setting you can’t allow yourself to fall behind and the last 90 seconds of each run is just awful.  My point is that I wasn’t tired in the match tonight because I’m lazy or out of shape, but rather because I did running yesterday that I would never have been asked to do if the match tonight had been on my schedule yesterday.

Despite this, in the first 20-25 minutes I was in the game, we played great and scored two good goals.  That took the score from 1-1 to 3-1.  I didn't score, but I still played ok and in the end I helped the team on both ends of the field.  I doubt I showed enough from my performance tonight to win a contract, but I did show some important attributes.  I showed off my speed, though I was called offside a lot.  Part of that was me mistiming my runs, part was my teammates not yet realizing how fast I am and part of it was the assistant referee getting a decision or two wrong.  I also worked my tail off, and even when I was obviously very tired I still chased when I was supposed to and generally gave every ounce of energy I had for the team.  I think the coach acknowledged and respected that.  Of course, working hard doesn’t get you a professional contract, so in the upcoming trainings and match I’ll need to show a bit of skill and earn a job!

One cool thing about Jaro that is different from Haka is the media attention.  Maybe it was because our matches were on the road, but no reporters spoke with any of the Haka players after our two League Cup matches.  After playing one half with Jaro though, I had three reporters asking me questions.  It wasn't big time or anything, but it always makes you feel good when people want to interview you.  Anyway, I found this picture from the match so here it is: