PRESEASON IS OVER!

Today is the greatest day of the year for most soccer players.  It’s not April 15 for every player, but for me and my team it is the last day of preseason!  The team has long since gotten out of preseason mode, but there’s something extra special about knowing that the real games are starting and I can start to achieve the goals I set forth for myself when I left America 10 weeks ago.

Enavallen, ESK's home stadium.

I won’t do a recap of preseason since this blog itself is the recap, but I will list my stats from my time in Finland and Sweden.  In Finland, I played six games totaling 297 minutes and didn’t score any goals or make any assists.  I did however, help create three goals.  I know this isn’t an actual assist, but it’s better than a “Valderrama”, which is when you’re in the stadium when a goal is scored and you’re inexplicably credited with the assist.  Obviously Finland wasn’t the best time for me and the stats probably reflect why I ended up moving to Sweden.  I’ve been here for seven games and played 390 minutes.  I’ve scored 4 goals and assisted 5, as well as helping create one.  Hopefully I will be able to continue my rate of scoring during the season.

As for the game tomorrow, there’s really only two things on my mind.  First, my immigration papers need to be resubmitted Monday morning and accepted in order for me to play Monday night.  If that goes well, then I hope to get a decent amount of playing time.  I’ve scored or assisted in every match where I’ve played over 30 minutes, so I would hope that I get more than a ten minute cameo.  If that’s the case though, then I’ll do my best to play a good ten minutes.  I want to start, but for now the bench will have to do.  I thought that I had done enough to start, but then again I thought the same thing in Harrisburg and that didn’t work out so hot.  We’ll see what the future brings.

That’s all for now.  The last two days have been incredibly uneventful so I won’t rehash them.  I will say that I’ve been learning a bit of Swedish and everyone on the team has been impressed!  Maybe someday soon I’ll impress you all with my foreign language exploits!