Slump Buster

I’ve got my new computer, and I’m back blogging again!

I haven’t posted any blog posts this month, but that doesn’t mean a lot hasn’t happened.  We’ve ended our losing run, strengthened our chances of finishing in the medals and I had my best game all season.

Before I talk about those things though, I will state the obvious: my option for the rest of the season has been picked up and I’ll be a VPS player for at least the rest of this season.  That’s a relief, because up until August 1 I was unsure if I’d have a job this month and going forward.  I always assumed that VPS would want to keep me, but soccer is a business and the club has to do the best thing for them.  The clubs interests may not have aligned with paying my salary for the next three months.  I’m glad that wasn’t the case though and I get to stay.

I thought about doing a long post about our chances of finishing in the top three before we started our last round of 11 games, but I got too lazy.  Instead I’ll do a brief synopsis of what I was going to write.  I figure that we’ll need 50 points to guarantee a place in the medals.  Based on the 33 points that we had coming into our last 11 games, we needed 17 points to get there.  Essentially that means that we need five wins.  I came up with these estimates based solely on how teams are performing this year.  I didn’t look at the historical numbers needed to finish in the top three, I just looked at the teams close to us and their individual situations.  Jaro just sold their best midfielder; TPS is in a terrible slump at the moment; IFK Mariehamn had their two top scorers hurt, their best player sent back to Turkey and their best current attacker inexplicably buried on the bench; MYPA and KuPS are both really good, but seem too inconsistent to imagine either of them getting the 20+ points they’d need to finish over 50.  Everyone else is too far down the table I think.  The good thing about those numbers is that we only have to worry about ourselves.  That’s a big advantage, and a luxury I wish we had at Haka last year.

Since I waited so long to write this post, I can confirm that last weekend we got our first of those five wins.  We beat FC Lahti who, under the guidance of my former coach Juha Malinen, have been playing some of the best soccer in the league during the second round of 11 games.  They also beat us 3-0 a few games ago so they had a lot of confidence coming in.  I didn’t start the game, but I came on after only six minutes after a head injury to Atte.  That caused a bit of a shakeup in our lineup, as we were already quite short on defenders.  Jesper had to play in the back and he did a really good job in my opinion.  I came on and played my best game all year, due mostly to my increased movement.  Over the past few weeks, I’ve had just about everyone I talk to about my game tell me that I was playing too passively; That I was standing when I should be running, or that I was passing when I should be shooting or dribbling.  Those words finally have started to stick in my mind.  I had those words in my head when I attacked a defender and played a pass to Atte that led to him assisting a goal against Mariehamn, and I had it in my head for both goals I scored against Lahti.  I won’t say much more about the game, besides that I was really happy with how I played and how the team responded to going behind early.  We were in a really bad slump, but still showed that incredible team spirit that I always talk about.  According to the experts before the season, we had the 11th most talent, yet here we are with a medal a realistic goal.

In off-the-field “news”, Celia came to visit me for the past week.  It’s always nice to have her around.  She really makes life bearable in the absence of my family.  We didn’t really do much, but just being around her is good enough for me.  I even managed to not bankrupt myself like I did when I last visited her in London!  I like playing for VPS, but I really wish that Vaasa was a bigger city than it is.  Exactly the same as it is now, just with 10x as many people and all the attractions that come along with a population of that size.  I kind of avoid having people visit me because I just assume they’ll be bored.  It’s not a swipe at Vaasa, just saying that if someone was gonna travel all the way to Scandinavia I’d like them to have more to do than there is in Vaasa.  Or maybe I just don’t know the city as well as I should!  And any boredom she might feel here is balanced out by the overwhelming number of things to do in London.  I’ll be going there either early next month or in October, depending on if/how much time we have off during the international breaks.

That’s all for now.  We head to Turku next to play TPS.  This is a really big game as TPS could well be our biggest rival for third place this year.  A win for us would put us 12 points clear of them, though they’d have two games in hand.  Regardless, a win for us would make it very difficult for them to catch us as they’d have to win 6-7 of their last 11 games and have us implode.  A loss on the other hand would possibly take our destiny out of our hands.  We’re making our final preparations now and we’ll see how it goes!

No meme today since I don’t have any saved yet on my new computer.

Return of the Yank

I’m back motherfuckers!

 

(Sorry for the language, that’ll probably be the only f-bomb I’ll drop this entire year.)

 

Almost five full months after I became a free agent, I have signed with my new club VPS in the Finnish Veikkausliiga.  It is a one year contract, or really a 7-month contract to be exact since it only runs until the end of October 2013 and pays 1300 euros a month + a club provided apartment.  There is also a team option on the contract after four months, so if I disappear around August 1 you’ll know what happened!  If you were wondering, this contract means basically two things:

1. GITS is back in effect. (You don't get that because you didn't play for the Harrisburg City Islanders in 2011)

2. The blog has (barely) survived the winter and will live on another year.

 

That’s about all I’m gonna write for today because I’m quite sure that absolutely nobody will be reading this blog post.  I’m sure that after a month of not posting anything nobody checks this blog, so I might as well put a few up before they start getting long-winded and whiny like you guys are all used to J.

 

Now before I go today, I’ll mention that I spent the better part of this winter collecting hilarious GIFs to put as my memes.  Unfortunately, I have no clue how to save a gif and transfer it to this blog so for now you’ll have to just deal with regular memes.  Til next time!

 

The meme:

Backslide

They just couldn’t stay away!

The cat’s already out of the bag for many, but I’m happy to announce to the rest of you that I’ve signed a contract with FC Haka of the Finnish Veikkausliiga.  The press release is up at www.fchaka.fi.   I’ve already put the value of the contract in another post so I won’t go there again, but the contract is for the rest of this season (October 31).

Haka vs. Inter Turku

For my long term readers, you will remember that club name.  That’s because when I started this blog I was actually planning on playing with Haka.  I thought that my European adventure would start at Haka.  It didn’t, but I’m here now and happy for that.  I’m now quite happy that I took the opportunity to talk to Sami Ristila (the head coach) when I left in February.  At that time, I told him that I enjoyed my time here and would happy to come back if he ever needed me.  Fast forward four months, and he needs me.  Well, he needs strikers so hopefully that means he needs me.

For those wondering, the ankle is fine now.  I was able to do a proper training yesterday and it felt good, so I think that injury is behind me.  It will still need a bit of time before it’s as good as my other ankle, but there’s nothing that my ankle limits me from doing right now so it’s no problem.

I signed my contract officially yesterday and I will be available to play come our next match on Sunday.  I still haven’t gotten clearance from the federation yet because I can’t get anyone from Enkoping SK to email over a release letter.  It’s annoying because the letter would take literally 30 seconds to write.  Even more annoying is the fact that my contract is finished with ESK and I can’t understand for the life of me why I need anything from them.  My leaving ESK was cordial, but it still seems weird that I must rely on them for anything to be available for my new club.  It would be like me breaking up with my girlfriend, then asking her to write me a letter saying we’re broken up before I can date anyone else.  I’m sure it will get done in the next few days, but I wonder how this process gets done with players who leave their club under less-than-ideal circumstances?  Like what if your contract ended and then you went and trashed the club in the papers?  Would you then have to come begging back to that club for a release letter?  It all seems quite strange to me.

Back in Valkeakoski, the city where Haka plays, I’ve been spending most of my time as a vagabond.  I was staying in a hotel, but the entire freaking place got rented out by a Russian hockey/skating club.  They’re not using every room, mind you, they just booked every room so they could have the whole hotel to themselves.  What a Russian thing to do.  I don’t even know what that last sentence means.  Anyway, I got booted from the hotel where I was loving life and now I’m sleeping on the couch of one of the goalkeepers.  I really don’t want to be an inconvenience though, so I decided I’d spend most of my day in the town.  Kris Bright, a fellow new signing and striker, is essentially in the same situation.  Our brilliant plan has been essentially to just live at the stadium until we get our housing situation sorted.  In the stadium there is a nice room with a huge, custom built sofa that could seat like 20 people, a big screen tv and wireless internet.  So we’ve just been sitting here eating food, watching the Olympics and Skyping people.

There’s really not much more to say at the moment.  I’m not quite settled so there won’t be so much more to say until then.  We’ve got double training the next few days and I should be into an apartment by the end of that.  At least I hope I am.

Now here’s today’s meme!

Can I get a high five for getting a contract? No?

Farm Livin and Ankle Healin

I’m now with (hopefully) my new team.  I say hopefully because there are a couple things preventing me from signing the contract at the moment.  I’ll get to those in a second.  If you’re a bit confused as to who I’m signing with, don’t worry: I haven’t revealed the club just yet.  I don’t want to jinx anything until it’s done!

Like I said earlier, there are a few problems, one significant the other minor.  The minor one is a paperwork issue, but we have ten days before the next game I’d reasonably be available for so that’s not a huge issue.  It will get done, it’s just taking an unnecessary amount of time.  The significant problem is my ankle; it’s still 100% now three weeks after the initial injury.  The club knew about my ankle before I got here and it didn’t discourage them from making an offer, but now having seen me in two trainings they are worried that the injury may be more than a rolled ankle like I believe it is.  For this reason they want to structure any contract with a clause that allows them to terminate it at essentially any time.  This seems reasonable enough, but I don’t like it one bit.  It opens up Pandora’s Box.  If six weeks from now I pull my hamstring and have to miss four games, will they just release me?  It would be a dick move, but financially prudent for the club and perfectly legal under a contract with the clauses they’re asking me to put into the contract.  I don’t want that obviously.  Even worse, there could be a situation where I’m essentially here on trial waiting for my ankle to heal.  After two weeks, for any reason, the team could decide not to take me and then I’m in the awful situation of being out on my ass with two weeks to find a team and sign.  The only realistic way for me to do that would be to go to the lowest level possible where I could immediately wow the staff and get a quick offer.  Obviously that’s not the ideal situation.  I could very well end up stranded in Europe without a club in the autumn.

With all that said, I’ve spoken with the coach and he’s made it clear he wants me here and wants me playing.  He respects my ability and will give me every chance to prove my fitness.  He stressed that as long as I can play 100% that the contract is firm and I have no need to worry about anything other than getting completely healthy.  I mean, he could technically be lying but I just don’t think he would do that.  I don’t feel like anyone would do that, to be honest.  The staff has decided to only put me through very light training for 3-4 days to see if the ankle makes a big improvement.  If not, then I’ll have to get a scan to make sure there isn’t something significantly wrong with the ankle.  If that comes back positive (the wrong result) then there will be no contract for me anymore.

Anyway, I left Enkoping on August 1 so I’ve been at my new club for three days now, more or less.  I’m staying at a hotel at the moment, but the first night I was in a very different setting.  I stayed at what was effectively a B&B quite a ways away from the club’s city.  There was no internet there, which is why I didn’t post anything the past few days even though a lot happened.  There were farm animals and all that, but it was actually really comfortable for a city boy like me.  I won’t talk about it, I’ll just put the photos and videos I took.

I’ve had a couple of trainings with my new team.  They were actually both on Thursday.  In the morning it was just a handful of guys + the ‘keepers + some junior teamers.  We did some passing work and then some finishing.  It was pretty basic, but I was really happy to be able to test the ankle in that environment rather than with the whole group.  It felt the best it has since I hurt it.  I scored some good goals and was happy with my mobility.  Even at 80-90%, I’m a bit quicker and a lot faster than the majority of players.  I could easily play and contribute in a match right now.

The afternoon session was for the whole group and was light.  There was a big difference for me though.  My ankle was significantly more restricted and it showed.  My lateral movement was effectively zero and even movements that didn’t cause pain still looked awkward because I was overcompensating for the ankle in everything I did.  I did alright in the early possession drill, but by the end of training when we played 6v6 to goal I was unable to do anything.  I couldn’t run past players because of the small space and beating a player was out of the question because of the ankle.  I probably looked a bit like some kid who won a contest and got to train with his heroes for a day.  I’m not worried about it though because I know I can be an important player for this team as soon as I’m 100%.  The ankle is not a problem unless I get tackled there.  But every athlete is one wrong step or a bad tackle away from being injured so in that way I’m not in a much different situation than anyone else.  With ice packs and rehab I've improved more in the last two days than the previous two weeks.

Hopefully I can sort everything out and sign officially.  Then I can tell you all where I am now!  All I can confirm at the moment is that this team is in a higher league than ESK and that I’m no longer one of the old guard.  There are plenty of guys in this team who make me seem like a spring chicken at age 25!  I also don’t think I’m giving too much away to say that I’m still in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland).  I’ll give some hints as the days go by if I haven’t made things official.

That’s all folks.  But of course I can’t leave you without a meme!

Three Little Birds

Bob Marley fans will get that title.

I was offered a contract today.  I haven’t signed it yet and I’m incredibly scared of the offer going away for some reason so I won’t mention the team just yet.  However I’m traveling tomorrow to go sign the contract so I should be able to let you guys know soon enough.  The contract is for a net sum of $1500/month.  Of course I won’t be paid in US dollars but that’s the equivalent amount.  I will also be given an apartment, so my only real expense will be food.  Maybe I can work out a deal with a restaurant once I arrive.

This offer means that my time in Enkoping is definitely over.  I pretty much knew that before, but it’s kind of hitting me now.  While I wasn’t in Enkoping for long, I did make a few pretty good friends and I will miss them.  I will see them in the future, but it’s a bit weird to know that some of the other guys I will never see again.  The same way there are plenty of guys from my Harrisburg and Crystal Palace Baltimore teams that I will never see again.  I guess it’s just part of the job.  My teammates are really just co-workers, and if one of us changes jobs then that’s it.  We just go our separate ways.  It’s a part of this life and I just have to accept it.

I can’t say I’m too sad though.  I’m going to a good opportunity and success at this club could mean really big things for my career.  I expect that I will have success, but then again I would expect that even if I was going to La Liga or the Bundesliga; I have a confidence that can never be destroyed.  It wavers sometimes, but nothing/no one will ever take my self-confidence.  That will never happen.

That’s enough with the mystery.  I’ll be traveling tomorrow but maybe I can get a post up in a few days once I’ve sorted everything.  Please send happy thoughts my way, because if this offer comes off the table between now and the time I can sign it then I will be really down in the dumps.  I wish I could sign the contract right now, but it will have to wait at least until tomorrow afternoon.  As soon as I get to the new club I will try to sign the contract before they realize I’m not any good!  Haha the reveal of the team is coming in the next post!

And last but not least, today’s meme.  It's actually a photobomb, but it sums up how I feel right now.  No need to dwell on the semantics.

Peace Out Sweden: It's been real...

My time in Sweden seems very much to be coming to an end.  I have a trial scheduled for later this week in Finland and nothing after that.  I’m a bit wary of that because my ankle is still not so good.  If that trial doesn’t work out then I honestly don’t know what I’ll do.  I guess I’ll just email every team in Europe until someone responds, but even then I have no idea where I’d stay in the interim time.  London I guess.  But as of now I have 32-33 days to find a team, impress them and sign a contract.  That’s really not a lot of time.  It gives me the possibility to have three, maybe four trials if I’m lucky.  I’m already stressed about that; I can’t imagine what I’ll be like if things are the same in two weeks.  Even if I don’t find a team, I’ll still probably try to stay in Europe and get a job, likely in England because of the language, as a newspaper reporter or something (I have a degree in journalism).

Ok, tangent--------------------------------

For Americans who follow soccer, it is common knowledge that England is the highest paying country for soccer.  It is also common knowledge that it is almost impossible for Americans to get a work permit, because those who apply for a work permit to join a soccer team must pass rigorous guidelines which I won’t outline here.  All you need to know is that I have a better chance of having a baby (like me actually having the baby) than getting a work permit to play in England.  But there’s always been something that I’ve wondered:

Can I get regular work permission in England (like a green card equivalent), then use that to qualify to play in England? 

I don’t see any reason to deny me to play for a League 1 or League 2 team if they want me and I already have active work permission in England.  On top of that, it seems a bit unlikely that at that level anyone would even notice.  At the same time, a League 1 team in England could pay salaries of like 6000-10,000 pounds a month.  That would be a sizeable raise for me without being an unreasonable raise in quality of play (from the highest I've played I should say.  It would be a big jump from division 1 in Sweden).  I mean the top attacker in League 1 last year was 36-years-old.  That doesn’t discourage me from thinking I can play there.  So my point is that if I don’t find a team by September 1, then maybe I’ll go to London, stay with Celia (I haven’t run this plan by her, in case you were wondering lol) and work at a newspaper.  There’s like 100 of them in London anyway and I’m good at writing news stories.  Much better than I am at writing stream-of-consciousness blogs J.

End of tangent-----------------------------

I trained today with ESK since I didn’t have anything else to do.  I’m pretty much just killing time until I leave Wednesday.  I paid Robert for his bike, which was stolen while I was in London.  That sucked, paying for a bike because it got stolen a week before I was leaving.  I could have kept that money in my pocket by keeping the bike at my house when I went to London rather than leaving it locked up at the train station.  Oh well, you live and you learn.  There’s criminals everywhere, even Enkoping.

Tomorrow I will train again and then I’m off to Finland.  I’m looking forward to telling you where I’m going, but nothing is 100% clear at the moment.  Developments are happening all the time and for that reason there’s no point in trying to look too far into the future.  Maybe I’ll do the trial this weekend or maybe I’ll sign tomorrow for another club entirely.  Or maybe everything will fall through and put me back at square one.  The last scenario is by far the worst for me, but would probably make for the most interesting blog.

No pictures because I’m literally sitting in Enkoping wishing I had more money.  I’ll put a meme instead.  A USA-themed one because of the Olympics.  It's from the hilarious Comedy Central show "Workaholics".  Enjoy!

Well, At Least It's Not Raining...

Well I’ve got news, but unfortunately it’s not good news.  Not necessarily negative, but certainly not good.  I flew back to Sweden Thursday and met with ESK’s GM on Friday morning.  We had a very brief chat in which he told me that the club has no money and that they would not be offering me an extension.  Of course, that lack of money didn’t stop them from signing two new players, but what do I know?  This was unexpected, but not an unwelcome development for me.  I had resolved to leave ESK quite a long time ago and I’ve been able to secure a few trials.  Speaking of which…

Yesterday I started my first trial, with Vasby United of the same league as ESK.  Today it ended.  More on that in a bit.  As you may recall, I mentioned that Vasby and IK Sirius were the best teams in the league, though Vasby is in the bottom half of the standings and has very little chance of being promoted to Superettan this year.  To train and trial with Vasby though is still a good opportunity.  They are a club with resources and ambition, so it’s a good place to train and play, even if they aren’t going to likely win the league.  There’s a big problem though.  My ankle.

My ankle has been bothering me ever since I injured it in my last game with ESK two weeks ago.  I was only able to go for a jog a few days ago, but the ankle is at about 70% right now.  I can get through a training, but I’m certainly not impressive.  This is a big problem because I have to stand out in order to get a contract offer from Vasby.  They already have 22-23 players contracted so they won’t be signing anyone just to do it.  That said, obviously I got the trial because Vasby has seen me play multiple times and was interested.  That’s what made it so strange when after training today the coach asked to speak with me.

I had just played very well in training despite my ankle being injured.  We did all small sided stuff, and the only time I could really show was as an extra player in a 6v6+1 game to goal at the end.  In this drill I was brilliant and created goal after goal, though I didn’t score any myself.  That’s because as the all-time offense player, I tended to stay in the middle of the field.  That way, if the team I was with suddenly lost the ball, then I wouldn’t be in a position where I’d normally be counted upon to defend.

My point is I played at the highest level I possibly could considering the ankle.  And the coach knew about the ankle via the physio.  So you can imagine my surprise when he told me that I would not be continuing my trial.  He told me that I was more of a 2^nd striker, not a “#9” which is what they are looking for.  That’s fine, in fact it’s true, but how would he know that?  I had only trained for two days and we never played on a full-size field.  In small sided games, there really isn’t a way to play as a #9.  There’s no space to create and you end up playing with a lot of interchangeable midfielders.  In addition, they’ve seen me play at least twice, and every time they will have seen me playing as a winger.  What made them bring me in to train?  And if they wanted me to be a #9 and not a winger, then why not tell me?  You just see me play great then say, “Well, he’s good enough but we’ve already got 5 wingers.”  I don’t get it at all and I feel like this trial was a total waste of my time.  I am not a #9 in the traditional sense.  I can play as a center forward in a 1 forward system, but I cannot play as a big bruiser and ball winner.  I can play the position using my speed and intelligence to keep the center backs occupied, much like I did in college.

I know I mentioned that I loved my time in England with Celia.  Now, I feel like I left too soon.  I assumed that I’d be offered a contract extension from ESK and even if I didn’t accept it, I figured I’d still perhaps be forced to train the last couple days of the month or be fined.  That’s why I left London when I did.  I could just as well have had my meeting with the ESK GM on the phone and not done the Vasby trial until my ankle fully healed.  Nothing would have been different.  In fact, things may very well have been better because I could have shown myself properly when I actually had the trial.  Or sorted out what they were looking for before I arrived.  Instead, I ended up stuck in Enkoping, paying ridiculous money to take a 90 minute each way public transit journey to trial with a team while I’m effectively injured.  If I was going to waste my money, I’d buy the Olympic swimming competition tickets for the very top where you can’t even see the pool.  Not take a train and two buses to suburban Stockholm and back.

Lastly, I’ll go a bit off topic and talk about the Olympic Games.  I have always been a huge fan of the Olympics, in part because track and field always seem to be a big event and I’ve always been fast.  I remember watching Michael Johnson break those world records (200m, 400m) in Atlanta and how crazy my dad went over that.  He ran track in high school and college and admired Johnson’s ability.  My pops also ran with Edwin Moses in high school.  Moses went on to become the greatest 400m hurdler of all time.  I’ve met Moses.  Maybe meet isn’t the right word because I was a baby, but I’ve been in his presence.  I dreamed of running in the Olympics long before I dreamed of playing in the World Cup.

The way things are going at the moment, I have half a mind to just go back to London and soak up the Olympic atmosphere and spend more time with Celia.  I could still sort out a contract after the Games were over.  But I know I can’t do that.  I have to suck it up and make things work.  I’ll be going to Finland next week for a trial and we’ll see what happens.  It’s already been setup and confirmed, but I’ll wait until I’m actually there before I reveal the club.  It’s just easier that way in case anything happens in the interim.

Those of you who have stuck with me for 1150 words deserve a treat, so I’ll tell you an amazing story.  Maybe not amazing, but definitely strange and perhaps funny.  It took me four hours to get home after training today with Vasby because the public transit is much less frequent, meaning I had to wait 45+ minutes two or three times on the way home.  During one of those stops, in Balsta, I was sitting on a bench about 50 yards from the bus stop at like a bus station café, though it was closed.  Whenever I travel I read so I had my kindle out and was reading Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s autobiography.  There were probably five people in sight.  Out of nowhere some lady comes around a nearby corner kinda quickly and brushed my hair with her hand.  It caught me off guard because I didn’t see her coming and wasn’t expected any contact at that moment, so I looked up towards her (she had taken one or two more steps at that point and was about five feet away) and you’ll never guess what she did.

She, in a comedy cartoon style, put one foot like six inches off the ground and farted.  It was the weirdest thing ever.  It sounded like a trombone.  Then she looked around for a second like she was going to sit but instead just walked away.  Keep in mind, we’re not talking about like some adolescent girl.  This woman must have been in her late-30s.  She looked kind of trashy though, so maybe she was drunk or something.  I just figured you’d enjoy that little insult right at the end of my day.  It reminded me of a Family Guy clip:

London in Pictures

I’m back after a week out.  I had a wonderful time in London and did too much to even begin to cover in this blog.  Instead, I’ve decided to put a bunch of photos from the trip and put captions on a few of them.  I hope you enjoy!

In contract news, I have a meeting tomorrow with one of the top people at ESK.  I’m keeping an open mind for that, but I’ve also had opportunities put forth to me in both Sweden and Finland so I’ll have to take a good look at those.  I don’t want to name clubs just yet because if I re-sign with ESK then they will be irrelevant anyway.  If I can’t agree terms with ESK, then I will take a few trials pretty soon.  I’ll let you know more as I learn more.

And now: London in pictures!

Natural History Museum of London

Bald Eagle: America!

Nice looking Underground station

Hyde Park

Celia and I on the Thames (pronounced Timms) River

Tower Bridge, NOT London Bridge

20-story tall photo of the Royal Family.  No idea why it's in black and white.

double decker bus!

one of the Olympic mascots

Cutty Sark ship and museum

Crystal Palace Park.  Nice looking park full of incredibly trashy people.

Lundun

'ello gubna!

That was my written attempt at a british accent.  The reason for that is because I'm in London!  I'm visiting Celia for the week and taking in one of my favourite (see what I did there?) cities.  So far things have been fun.  Celia had the day off from work so we went towards the city center and visited the Natural History Museum of London.  It was nice, but also a bit hit or miss.  There were really cool exhibits like the one about dinosaurs or birds, but then there were real flops like the fish exhibit or the bug exhibit.  All in all, not so bad. I had a good time.  We had planned to go to a planetarium, but Celia's childhood memories failed her and we went to two museums that didn't even have a planetarium!  We ended up looking like big dummies, but oh well, we kinda are.

Bald Eagle. America!

Celia looks a bit like the Dodo.

The Natural History Museum of London.

Dodo

After the museum, we went to a cake shop that Celia swore was amazing.  Of course as we started to walk there it began raining.  Typical London.  Anyway we got there and the cake was actually really good, so she was right about that.  I haven't had cake since I came to Europe so it was a really nice treat.

As for my ankle, things are improving slowly.  I can walk more or less without a limp now and the swelling is mostly gone, but I still can't run at all.  The pain is mostly now in my leg just above my ankle, so I'm not really sure how to fix that other than just rest.  I bought a compression sleeve for my ankle and a reusable ice pack to things should start to heal faster.

Lastly, I spoke with my Swedish agent and he has a couple of teams that are interested in me.  I'm not clear on how strong the interest is, but it looks like I will be able to continue to play in Sweden if I choose to do so, even if it's not with Enkoping.  I'm set to have contract talks with Enkoping when I return to Sweden in a week, but they have hinted that I will need to take a pay cut and I'm not interested in that.  I can barely get by with what I make now.  I've also got one or two potential teams based on contacts that I have made in Sweden and I'm pursuing those myself.  I'll be sending out a few emails while I'm in London to get that sorted.

In case you were wondering, tonight is a drinking night!  Celia is a 'party girl' so I'm gonna get to see her acting partyish.  Wish me luck in my first night out in London!

Seventh Time in Stockholm

So I spent all of yesterday in Stockholm.  By all of the day I obviously only mean 2pm-11pm because, c’mon, I don’t even wake up until 11am.  The trip was my 7^th to Stockholm since I arrived in Sweden back in March, but only the 3^rd time I went specifically for leisure.  The Swedish agent I work with got me a couple tickets to an Allsvenskan match between Djugarden (who could use me, btw) and IFK Norrkoping (who needs a bit of everything), so I headed down to Stockholm to visit around for a few hours before the game.

Djugarden and a bunch of geese who were full of themselves.

Now, originally my plan was to do a bit of shopping before the game.  Unfortunately, I never considered the fact that you can’t go into a professional sporting event with shopping bags, so those plans got canceled.  Instead, I decided to walk around areas of Stockholm that I hadn’t discovered yet.  This plan also backfired, because my ankle was still awful.  It was no longer the size of a baseball – now it was a tennis ball.  Still, I soldiered on and for two freaking hours I walked around downtown Stockholm and vicinity.  Among the highlights were a few randomly placed parks, Djugarden and a very odd military clothing store called ‘Indiana Store’.  Djuagrden was interesting mostly for the geese-looking birds who had absolutely no fear of humans.  In fact, they seemed to have a sort of contempt for people who dared wander into their path!  The lone lowlight of the day was the fact that I was walking with a severe limp, and I’m pretty sure people mistook me for homeless.  Between the limp, the hair and the fact that I was wearing a long sleeve button-up shirt despite the relatively high temps, I don’t blame them.

Indiana Store.  Apparently Indiana is synonymous with the military!

Stockholm Stadion: Home of Djugarden.

I met up with Daniel Alund, who is spending his midseason break in Stockholm, and we had a bite to eat before heading to the Djugarden game.  Djugarden play at a really old stadium, but despite that it was an enjoyable place to watch a match.  In the video you’ll notice the poles holding up the roof.  If they annoy you in the video, then multiply that by 1000 and you get the feeling I had during the game.  The game itself was pretty good; Djugarden dominated much of the match but gave up a late goal and tied 1-1.  The wing play from Djugarden was average in my opinion, but then again the oldest winger was 23-years-old so they can be forgiven for not being the finished product.  I took a video of the teams walking out for the lineups.  The stadium only holds about 12,000 people and wasn’t full, but when the fans got singing and chanting it was a pretty good atmosphere in there.  A little Yanks Abroad side note: One of the Djugarden players is a winger from UVa.  His name is Brian Span.  He played the entire second half as a replacement for the starting winger who got hurt.  He did ok, but didn’t see so much of the ball.  He’s been criticized before for his defense, but from what I saw he did quite well defensively.  He also would have scored had he not slipped as he was shooting.  The grounds staff put way too much water on the field and it caused a lot of players to slip during the match.

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For those who care, I don’t think that there is much chance of me returning to ESK after the midseason break.  I have not been offered anything, and reading the papers it seems like the club is not intent on re-signing any of the three players whose contracts are up this month.  They seem instead intent of getting older players on loan who can be like “team fathers” for our younger players.  I think I’ve earned an extension, but that’s not up to me.  The club has to do what it thinks is in its best interest both financially and sportingly.

On the other hand, I’ve finally got some interest from my emails.  I got nowhere emailing top league teams, so I started emailing 2^nd division teams in Scandinavia and I’ve now gotten a couple of responses.  Perhaps I will be starting a trial soon!  Also, I’m supposed to speak with the Swedish agent any day now about potential options in Sweden.  Unfortunately for me, none of my good performances in Division 1 came when scouts were watching, so it’s not easy for him to find me something.  That said, one of the specific teams he and I discussed will surely be signing at least 2 attacking players next month, so I believe there’s a chance for me in Sweden still.

Random park in Stockholm.

I don’t know when my next post will be.  I’m going to London on Thursday and I don’t know exactly when I’ll be returning.  I haven’t bought my return flight yet.  The last time I flew into London without a return ticket I was held in custody of the airport for five hours because my situation seemed like a lie to them.  Long story short was that my little “interview” at the customs stamp area didn’t go well (ie. She didn’t believe that as an unemployed person I was just going to England for 7-14 days without a plan.) and my holding cell interview went even worse.  This is pretty much how that went:

Officer:  “Who are you staying with?”

Me: “Celia Moran.”

Officer: “Where does she live?”

Me: “I have no idea.  Somewhere in the south.  I was gonna call her from the train station.”

Officer: “So you have an international phone?”

Me: “Nope.”

Officer: “Then how were you going to call her?”

Me: “I dunno.  Payphone?”

Officer gets up and leaves the room.  He comes back 10 minutes later…

Officer: “So the customs agents tell me you play football, but you currently have no club?”

Me: “Yup.  I’m staying with Celia until I get a call from my agent.”

Officer: “Oh yeah?  Who is your agent?  How will he contact you?”

Me: “Email.  And his name is Farrukh...”

*ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE*

I was in holding for another 3-and-a-half hours after that lol.  Let’s hope my next trip to London Stansted airport isn’t so eventful.

And how could I forget, the daily 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/