That's me being excited about my hat trick by the way. It's not some random naked homeless person. I have pants on so everyone just calm down. It's 11:50pm and I don't wear shirts at those kinds of hours. Back to the post.
That’s right, everyone’s favorite Swedish lower-divison
player scored a hat trick! It was a
left-foot, right-foot, header hat trick as well. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever done that
before.
Anyway, as good as the match turned out for me, it didn’t
start well. I wasn’t in the first XI and
only came on when the right back got injured.
We put me in as a winger and moved one of the wingers already on the
field to right back. That was right
around the 35 minute mark. At the time
the score was 0-0 and ESK hadn’t had any chances. The first thing I did was carry the ball past
the outside back and cut back a pass that was cleared for a deep throw-in. We scored immediately from the throw-in to
lead 1-0. I scored the second goal from
a header a few minutes later and we went into halftime 2-0 up. The picture is from another game but you get the idea.
The second half was a slaughter. I won’t go through the goals, but long story
short I scored two more and assisted another in rout to the big win. I hope that I have given the coach a lot to
think about as to who will start in two weeks in the season opener. Today was our last training match so there’s
no more time other than training to prove that you’re worth a starting spot.
After the match everyone was very supportive. All the players and coaches knew that not
scoring was weighing on me a bit. My
terrible miss in Turkey had kept me up at night wondering if all the players on
the team were talking amongst themselves about how much I suck when I’m not
around. It was really nice to see the
reception I received when I scored my first goal. It was a team genuinely happy for me to
score. The celebration wasn’t like it
would be in a league or cup game, but definitely more than the other “celebrations”
from the match. Every player made the
effort to come personally congratulate me for the goal and that was a big deal
to me. Not that I absolutely needed the
pat on the back, but to show that the team was pulling for me to score. To me, that means that they see value in me
and believe that I may just be the thing they need to be the best team
possible. Back to the point though after
the match Siggy (the head coach) personally congratulated me for the hat
trick. That felt good because he’s the
decision maker and his opinion of my play is more important than anyone at the
moment.
After the match I stayed at the stadium for about 80 minutes
to wash and dry my clothes. I hadn’t
properly done my laundry since I arrived in Europe. I had been able to throw things like
underwear and socks in the wash with training gear at various clubs, but the
shirts and shorts were being washed for the first time in two months. Everything is super fresh now! Once that was done, I made my way over to the
townhouse rented by Robert, Daniel and Fabian, something that has become a bit
of a daily occurrence over the past week.
To my surprise, when I opened the door the only person I saw was
Siggy! He was just lounging in their
living room watching an Allsvenskan match.
This wasn’t just any match though, it was Elfsborg vs. Djugarden. Siggy coached Djugarden in 2007 and 2008 and
some of the squad are still his players, so he took a special interest in the
match. Djugarden lost, but Siggy’s mood
was still good because of the resounding win earlier in the day. In fact, Siggy was in such a good mood that
he made me a deal. He told me he would
buy me dinner. In fact his quote was
(and this isn’t kid-friendly) “Every hat trick gets you a dinner. Two goals gets you lunch, and one goal gets
you fuck-all!” Siggy gets his English curse
words from England. He played there for
many years. In fact he spent three
seasons at Arsenal (yeah, that Arsenal) and they paid 400-something thousand
pounds for him. That was in the late 80’s so
he must have been a big time player.
Anyway we went to a thai food place which was very
good. Then an hour later we went to
another restaurant for a few drinks.
Only Fabian had a beer though so it was kind of pointless to go
there. I’ve noticed that Swedes love to
linger places. In Turkey, all the guys
would stay in the cafeteria for an hour for each meal. I typically was in there for 15 minutes. The same was true at the restaurants
tonight. Between the thai place and the
second restaurant we were out for three hours.
It was good though, I got to know Siggy a bit more and I enjoy the
company of Fabian and Daniel.
I’m home now and I’ll be going to bed soon. Today was a good day, but I need to do some
work to be a starter. There’s better
places than Enkoping where I could sit on a bench. I’m here for the opportunity, but it will
only come if I’m playing so I need to get firmly in the XI. Siggy suggested today to me that I should
work a bit on my fitness and told me to go for a 10km run tomorrow. They call that a mile, so it was funny when
Siggy said, “go on a long run tomorrow, like maybe a mile.” I had to clarify that he didn’t mean 1600m
but 10,000m. Big difference. So tomorrow I will do that then head over to
Daniel and Fabian’s place to watch AIK vs. Mjalby. AIK is one of the favorites to win the league
and play some of the best soccer in Sweden so I look forward to watching the
match. It should be fun! Til next time guys!
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