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 9: Stockholm Saturday!

Whatup crazy kids!  I had quite a day yesterday in Stockholm.  We had a match, watched the Euro Championship matches then had a night (and day) on the town.

The reason I was in Stockholm for the third time in a week was that we were playing against Vasalunds.  This marked the fifth time in nine games that we were playing the team currently in first place in the league.  In fact the only team we’ve played that wasn’t in the top 5 was our only win against Akropolis.  Anyway, we got killed 5-1.  I was available on the bench, but wasn’t used.  The game was awful and we were on the back foot the entire time.  Vasalunds scored in the 4^th minute then continued to pressure the rest of the half, though they didn’t create many more great chances.  In the 22^nd minute, we scored completely against the run of play.  We cleared a ball to our attacking midfielder Ernesto, who played a really great through pass to Erik who scored a great goal with his left foot.  That was a great moment for us, but our happiness only lasted until halftime, because the second half started with them scoring again.  From that point, it was only a matter of how many they would score and by the 70^th minute it was 5-1.  Vasalunds continued to press, but our guys showed some good pride and prevented the scoreline from getting even worse.  We even had a goal wrongfully (in my opinion) disallowed for offsides.  Long story short, it was a forgettable game.  The fact that I didn’t play just made things all that much more disappointing for me.

After the terrible match, we were in need of a fun night.  So Daniel, Robert, Joel and I took the subway from the stadium to Gamla Stan (Old Town) to watch the European Championship matches.  After being initially turned away from O’Leary’s, the same chain of Boston-themed restaurants you may remember me going on about while I was in Jakobstad, Finland, we looked for another place to eat and watch the games.  However during our search, we ran into Kevin and his pops who incidentally owned the O’Leary’s we were turned away from.  After a quick phone call, we were in a booth at O’Leary’s with no wait.  VIP service!

Most of you will be unfamiliar with the various areas of Stockholm.  For you, I will explain a bit about Gamla Stan.  This area is a small island that makes up the very center of Stockholm.  I have done no research to support this next claim, nor do I intend to, but I think Gamla Stan used to be the entirety of Stockholm.  That may or may not be true, but considering that the only thing connecting current day Gamla Stan to the rest of the city are bridges, then there must have been some time when the island was the whole city.  Well, Gamla Stan is tourist central in Stockholm.  It is the location of the Royal Palace as well as the Nobel Museum and many other historic sites.  Amazingly though, among all that history and tourist attractions are hundreds of apartments that people still live in.  This leads me to the next part of my story where we visited Tom’s house to watch the 2^nd game of the night after we left O’Leary’s.  Tom lives in Gamla Stan and was gracious enough to host us for the match.  We had fun watching the game and drinking a little bit, then we went out to a club.  We snapped this picture in the subway station on our way.

L-R: Philip, Daniel, Tom, Me, Joel, Robert, Heradi

There’s not much to say about the club.  It was really more of a lounge feel but with much louder music.  One thing I absolutely do not like about Sweden and Europe in general is that most clubs only play house music or some sort of house/dance music hybrid.  I haven’t been going to clubs for too many years, but I’ve been to enough to know that I prefer rap/hip hop clubs to house music.  It’s just my preference in music.  I find it easier to dance and enjoy myself when my favorite kind of music is playing.  For that reason, I spent the majority of the evening hanging out with the guys in one of those huge curvy sofas that clubs have watching drunk Swedes dance and being peer pressured into taking just one more drink, one more shot, etc.  I’m not saying I didn’t have fun because I did, it just isn’t my ideal nightclub.  I don’t know if my ideal nightclub even exists in Stockholm.

We left the club at around 2:30am and were faced with a dilemma: no public transportation to Enkoping was leaving until 4:49am.  That meant we had two hours to kill in 50 degree weather and with nowhere to stay and nothing to do.  So, like the majority of Stockholm it seemed, we went to McDonald’s.  That only took up so much time so we just kind of walked around aimlessly.  Finally, we stopped at some steps and decided to just hang there until the train station opened.  For the story I’m going to tell you, you need to know that at 3:30am in Stockholm in the summer it is as sunny as the middle of the day.  That’s not an exaggeration: sunrise is around that time in the summer.  Anyway, we’re standing at the top of these steps when a really drunk (or on drugs) guy starts walking up.  There were about 40 steps total, and maybe ten steps from us the guy stops and decides he’s going to pee.  It’s the middle of the night, so this kind of thing isn’t the most unusual thing in the world.  However, it was sunny outside!  There was no cover of darkness that would usually protect someone doing something so stupid.  When this guy started peeing, we all kind of looked at each other (Me, Daniel, Joel and Robert) like, “Is this guy serious?”  He must have noticed, because he turned around and started aiming his pee at us!  We ran away to wait for the train a bit further down the street, but not before the guy walked up to us and uttered some nonsense along with a buddy of his who rambled on about leaving 60,000SEK somewhere and having it stolen.  I could tell by his eyes that the second guy was on drugs.

3:50am in Stockholm.  About to get peed at.

About five minutes into our waiting for the train station to open, a guy came up to us and offered us a ride.  When he heard that we needed to go 60km to Enkoping, he was shocked.  Once he came to grips with that, he made his offer: 300SEK per person to take us.  It would only cost half that to take public transportation so we denied.  However, after a bit of haggling with him and another guy we agreed to pay 200SEK per person.  That led to us getting a ride to Enkoping in a 2001 Audi A4 with some guy who was clearly not a taxi driver at 4am.  I fell asleep and when I woke up we were going 100mph on the highway.  I felt like I was going to die in an awful car crash.  Fearing for your life: the fitting end to yet another terrible matchday.

The season has been awful so far, but now we go into a stretch of matches against teams that aren’t in the top five of the league.  If we’re going to survive in this league, then we have to get results against the teams in the bottom half of the table.  We’ll train for a week then go for some points!