That’s right, yours truly finally scored my first goal since
I arrived in Europe. We played Enkoping
IS, another (the only other?) club in the town.
I was the only player to start both of the first games to play today, but
it worked out well for me. I played very
well and was probably the player of the game.
We won 3-1. In addition to my
goal I also got an assist and should have had two more. If the other starting attackers were playing
then we would have won 8-0.
My goal was a rebound.
We crossed the ball in and got a strong header. The goalie made a good save, but the rebound
spilled to me and I finished it. I was happy with my performance, but the
game itself was terrible. We dominated
but just didn’t have the composure to create great chances. We didn’t pass enough to open up the defense
so we ended up just banging our head against a wall. Even though we won, by the end of the game
all of our players were incredibly frustrated. This picture was posted on the team's website. The other guy is another American named Tim Ritter. He scored 35 goals last year in the 5th tier and he's definitely good enough to play for Enkoping and be a big part of the team. Hopefully they sign him.
Moving on from the game, the coach and I had earlier planned
to talk about a contract today but he’s sick now so the talk didn’t
happen. Maybe we can figure it out
tomorrow. The wages being thrown around
at the moment aren’t amazing, but they are definitely good by my
standards. I’ve heard through the
grapevine that in Sweden there is a minimum salary for foreign players of
15,000 kronor per month, which is about $2100. If that’s true, then I’ll
happily accept any contract they offer.
I’ve said it many times, but I’m not playing for the money (not yet) but
instead the opportunity. I want to make
lots of money, but I’ve got to start somewhere.
The first stop doesn’t have to pay great as long as the rest of the
stops do.
I’m sorry, but I have to now go on a rant about one of the
trialists here with me. His name is Eric
and he is an absolute nightmare. First,
he arrived here with no money whatsoever.
Not just no Swedish money, but no money at all. That means that I’ve had to pay for
everything for him. Groceries, a sim
card and minutes for his phone and as of tonight a 6-pack of beers. I don’t really mind paying for someone, but
he hasn’t said thank you even once. In
fact, as I type this sentence he’s come into my room and opened up my bag of
candy and helped himself. He didn’t say
one word to me, just walked in and took some candy and walked out. Are you kidding me? Who does something like that? I’ll stop ranting because there’s no reason
to dwell on it. I am 100% sure though
that he will never pay me any money back.
Ok I said I wouldn’t dwell on it but I lied. I have to mention this. Eric has been wearing my coat, gloves, hat
and scarf because he’s cold. That means
that I have no gloves, scarf and a not-so-heavy jacket. Also, Eric has nothing to entertain
himself. No books, Ipad, laptop or
anything. So he just comes into my room
without knocking and sits on the bed and just watches whatever I’m watching on
my laptop. He is bothering me about
going to a bar, but I don’t want to, mostly because I know that I’ll have to
pay for everything. There’s nothing fun
about supporting an adult man that you can’t stand to be around. Now I’m done.
Enkoping SK has the next two days off and then
on Tuesday they leave for Turkey for training camp. The coach wants me to go, but it will depend
on if they can convince the travel company to give them favorable rates since
I’m such a last-minute addition. If I go
that’s awesome, but if not I guess I will just take a vacation somewhere. I’ll have to see what the cheapest flights
out of Stockholm are and then visit there.
Or maybe I’ll take a train to Denmark.
It’s possible I could train with an Allsvenskan or Superettan team
during the week just to stay in shape, but that’s up to the Swedish agent to
find it if I’m not going to Turkey.
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