Party People and Where's the Beef?!

S’up. 

I'm so gangsta. 

It’s been three days since I posted last, and I actually have some stuff to talk about!  Not important stuff, mind you, but random biased opinion!  If you were expecting more then you have comically overvalued my commitment to journalistic integrity.  This blog is more or less a gossip column about people you don’t care about.  In short my target audience is people who want to know about the European soccer experience so badly that they’re willing to sift through the boring tidbits of my daily life to get to some useful information every few days.  Today isn’t that day my friend, but I think you’ll be entertained all the same.

On my contract situation, I still don’t know anything.  ESK haven’t spoken to me about anything so I assume that decision will come later.  Meanwhile, I sent my Swedish agent an email today just to set up a time to meet.  I asked him to put out feeler for me, while passive aggressively suggesting who those feelers should go to first.  We’ll see if he comes through.

Now I wrote about the game and how it didn’t go so well and why I thought that was.  Well, after the game we decided that the only way to sort things out was to…go and get really drunk.  And we did; at least I did.  I was reintroduced to the idea that if you drink 7 beers while sitting down, then when you stand up you will feel like you drank 100 beers.  I was also reintroduced to the awful taste of hard alcohol, clear and dark.  Lastly, I learned that when Enkoping parties, they party as a community, so if you get really drunk expect to see every single person you’ve ever met in the city all at once.

The night started not long after the game.  Most of the team met at one of the guy’s house and played drinking games on the deck.  It was nice to hang out with the team.  I saw some guys who I never expected to see outside of training like Mica Tuhkanen, so it was nice to hang out with those guys.  After a few hours, we went to the city center.  There was a concert with the artist Laleh (the one who won the Motherf*cking Eurovision Song Contest) and a Swedish rapper named Timbuktu.  We got there after the concert was over, but we STILL had to pay 250SEK to get in!  Essentially, they put a fence up around public space and charged me $40 to get in, and like a chump I paid it.

Me and "the gang" looking exactly how we felt.

Once inside though, we had fun.  We went to a club-type place and danced for like an hour.  I took this picture inside the club and it pretty much explains how things were going at the time.  The girl’s name is Lina and along with her sister, Stina, is kind of like a new member of the gang.  It used to be Me, Robert, Fabian and Daniel, but now Fabian’s gone (he moved to China to work with his brother’s company) and has been replaced by Lina and Stina.  Lina wasn’t invited to the photo but popped in anyway!  Also you may notice the new face in the back: that’s Robert’s brother, Mattias.  Mattias played for ESK last year and since then has made incredible upward progress to the Atletico Madrid reserve team.  He has even had 1^st team offers in the top two leagues in Spain.  Living in Madrid, he knew how to party and thus was in much better shape than me.  I wanted to go home, but I got peer pressured into going over to Emil Strok’s house to drink some more.  On the way I made this video.  Please note that there is nothing to be learned from this video.  I didn't really see any reason to put it in the blog other than the faces that Joel and Robert make starting at 0:50 of the video.  Enjoy! 

Twenty minutes after the video, me and a couple of other guys gathered on Emil's balcony around this:

Tequila, whisky and vodka.  WHY???

Needless to say, that was bad news.  I went home and got in bed.  Two hours later I woke up and puked.  Then I slept for another 8 hours and woke up early Sunday evening.  Eggs and bacon saved the day.

The next day at training I got my pay for the month of June. 

*warning*  If you don’t like listening to my moaning and complaining then the post is over for today.  If you’re like me and take joy in hearing about the tedious problems of other people’s lives, then I’ve got a treat for you today….

So I get my pay for June and I start looking at the receipt (or whatever they call the thing that says where all your money has gone that you aren’t receiving directly) and I see:

Taxes – 2850 or so

Rent – 4000 (I still don’t have a shower or cable.  I gave up on those dreams weeks ago.)

Restaurant – 1500

Wait, what?

I haven’t gotten a single meal from a restaurant since I’ve signed my contract, and three months later they’re still deducting the money from my check?  Sensing my opportunity I chased after the guy who gave me the money and asked about the mystery deduction.  He sent me to Stefan and we had a conversation.  It wasn’t an argument and I don’t want to say things got heated, but they were contentious and perhaps a bit combative.  I pretty much was arguing that since I never have gotten a meal from a restaurant that I should get the money reserved for the meals.  Stefan told me that the club didn’t have the money to do that and that I needed to go to the restaurant.  My response was that’s fine, but I should still get the money for the food I didn’t receive in April, May and June.  Not to mention that the restaurant wasn’t even open in June because it had a fire.  His response translated roughly to, “tough titties.”

The club, he said, doesn’t have any money so the meal plan is the only possibility.  Not taking the meals is not possible because presumably the club can’t spare the 1500SEK each month.  But wait a second…didn’t two players just leave the club?  Surely their combined salaries were over 1500SEK.  How would we have survived if they had stayed?  The answer is simply the business of soccer:  If you are wanted then there is always money.  If you’re not a priority then money is always tight.

That’s not actually a big problem for me.  I know that there are a handful of players at this club who would NEVER have had to have the sort of conversation I had with Stefan.  But then again, what have I done for this club?  I’ve been here 15 weeks and we have 4 points.  I haven’t scored a goal in the regular season.  I understand that I’m not gonna be able to convince the people at the top to pay me the money, even though it is rightfully mine.  I just wish they wouldn’t hide behind the “We have no money” line.  I would bet that 2-3 new players get brought in in August with all the money ESK doesn’t have.

I’ve ranted enough.  There’s not much to report from the last two days of training other than the fact that we have about 13 healthy bodies at the moment.  Should make for an interesting trip to Lulea this weekend – the only game we have to fly to.

In case you were feeling kind of down for any reason, I leave you with delightful photobomb:

Matchday 7 and the motherf'ing Eurovision Song Contest

Hi friends!  There’s much to talk about, so let’s just get to it.  But first I have to say thanks to everyone who reads this blog.  I know my life isn’t terribly interesting, but many of you have continued to come back and read.  I just passed the 1000 pageview mark!  That may not sound like a lot, but since I haven’t advertised my blog in any way I’m proud of that.  Maybe I’ll start to advertise it a bit, but I don’t know.  I kind of like knowing that only people who actually care are coming to my blog.  I’ll try to keep doing things to make this blog interesting.  Just so you know, every time someone visits my blog, my niece Amani smiles!  Moving on…

"Read my uncle's blog!  I love him and want only for him to have success and occasionally change my diaper!"

We lost yesterday to Vasteras SK, 2-1.  I came off the bench for the second consecutive game in the 66^th minute.  I felt much better physically than I did in my last sub appearance and I had many positives in the moments that I had the ball.  Hopefully I can play from the start in our next match.

The game itself was actually pretty good.  We played one of our best games of the season, even though we were missing Kerim Mrabti, who had started every game so far.  That allowed Ernesto Ferreira to step in, and he did a very good job.  It’s been clear to anyone paying attention that Siggi has been itching to put Ernesto into the starting lineup, and now I see why.  Ernesto is our oldest player by far, but he is also probably our smartest.  His introduction brought with it a calming effect on the team.  For the first time since preseason, we were moving the ball from left to right and penetrating the other team’s defense.  Ernesto was instrumental in pulling the strings in the #10 spot.  He was clearly our man of the match and I hope he can continue to be so influential for us.  With Kerim missing due to injury and the fact that our captain Tom Noden had to pull out of the warm-up due to a migraine and didn’t play, we now have only one player who’s started every game: Robert Kjellman.  That’s a pretty extraordinary turnover considering we only have a 22 man squad, and from that three players haven’t played at all.  Anyway, the game was very even with a lot of possession from both sides, but no real attacking threat either way.  There was the odd chance, but the first half was played almost exclusively in the middle third.  Vasteras scored the only goal of that half on a questionable penalty.  They got the ball wide and the winger put in a cross that hit Philip Zamayeri on the arm.  There was no question that it hit his arm, the question was in whether such an infraction warranted a penalty kick.  His arm was tucked in on his body and there was no way he could have avoided the contact.  I don’t like the “ball to hand” rule in soccer, but it exists and this was a textbook example of ball to hand.  In my opinion it should have been a no call.

The second half was a bit different in that we had to chase the game.  By the time I came on in the middle of the second half, we were essentially playing 4-2-4, with both wingers and Ernesto pushed up alongside Erik Andersson.  I came on as a left winger, which was kind of new since I haven’t played there since preseason.  I’ve been used this season exclusively as an option to run behind the defense and put in crosses.  By playing on the left though, I was given more freedom to come inside and play almost as like a 2^nd #10.  For the tactical soccer nuts out there (I’m in that category.  I love analyzing various tactics) I was playing a role similar to the 2 in a 4-3-2-1.  That’s not the formation we were playing, but that’s what I was doing.  I like the role because it combines the two positions I’m best at: winger and withdrawn/2nd striker.  I felt instantly more comfortable than I ever feel as an out-and-out winger.  I was also able to be more dynamic and unpredictable which made me far more difficult to defend.

In other news, I have been getting more boring by the day.  If my life was a tv show it would get canceled at this point.  I hang out with the same people in the same places almost every single day.  And I have no real desire to go out and meet new people in Enkoping.  It’s not a knock on the town, but I’ve already got a handful of really good friends here now and I feel no need to make new ones.  In short, I’m boring, which is why I’m shocked at myself for bringing up the idea to go to Stockholm a few days ago.  Just spontaneously at lunch with Daniel, Linus, Joel and Fabian (look them up on my Meet ESK link.  Fabian’s not on there just yet) I blurt out, “I wanna do something.  I kind of feel like going to Stockholm.”  Daniel, a native of Stockholm, immediately jumped on the idea and was ready to go.  I on the other hand, had already soured on the idea once I considered the time and money involved in a half day trip to and from Stockholm.  I want to visit Stockholm, but not on a tight schedule.  Long story short, I was convinced to compromise on a trip to a “fotball golf” course in Stragnas.  I’ve butchered the spelling of the town since I don’t know how to put the dots over the a’s.  Well, once we got to Stragnas we saw this:

And this:

This fotball golf course was more like an abandoned amusement park.  We played the course anyway and I finished 2^nd.  Daniel won and he was all to happy to let everybody know about it.  I’m glad I went out with the guys.  Sitting at the Poorhouse (my apartment, keep up) wouldn’t have done me any good.

The last thing I’ll talk about before I go is the ridiculousness that is the Eurovision Song Contest.  Now if you’ve never heard of this, then congratulations, your life is better than anyone in Europe.  But also sorry, because now you’re going to hear about it from me.  The Eurovision Song Contest, which I insist must be pronounced “the motherf’ing European Song Contest” in the same way as the Catalina Wine Mixer from the movie “Stepbrothers”, is something that I don’t understand at all but I will try to explain it.  Essentially it is American Idol, just that the people performing create their own songs.  People watch the performances then vote for their favorites.  There are no live judges from what I can tell.  I’m pretty sure that the artists have to be amateurs and cannot have the backing of a music label, at least when they begin the competition.  Each European country has their own competition and declares a champion, then that champion competes at the international level to see which country will have the winner.  Sweden’s representative was Loreen with her song, “Euphoria”.  I really like the song and apparently so does the rest of Europe because she was voted champion!  This was a big source of pride for Swedes, with probably half of all Swedish people I’ve spoken to in the last month have mentioned that Loreen was a favorite to win the Eurovision Song Contest Grand Final, a competition of the top 20 countries.  Now I’ve never been a big American Idol fan or any of the similar shows, but at least I understand them.  It’s cool to see someone go from unknown to star in front of your eyes and partially with your help.  This contest though doesn’t seem to have that quality.  I’ve been hearing “Euphoria” on the radio since I got to Sweden.  I am 99.9% sure that Loreen has a recording deal with a music label and that her song is on an album.  That makes this seem more like a vote to see which country has the artist with the #1 song in Europe at the moment.  I don’t see how that could possibly be popular but what do I know.  Maybe only Sweden was interested because they knew they’d win!  Anyway, I can’t talk so much about a song and then not post it, so here you have it: Loreen performing “Euphoria” at the Eurovision Song Contest Finals.  See you guys. 

A social life is born and Contemplating my memoirs

Hey guys!

For the first time in weeks, I actually have some things to talk about.  I’m really excited about my blog actually being entertaining again.  In the last 72 hours I’ve gone out socially for the first time in Enkoping, been offered a job and excelled at training.  Hopefully I’ll start playing really well and then the blog will be interesting for soccer reasons, but until then you’ll have to settle for hearing about my social life.

First you should know that I’ve been doing quite well in training.  I still make my fair share of mistakes, but having the confidence of my peers and time to work on my game has helped me a lot.  This is really the first week that I’ve not been worrying at all about playing time or if I’ll earn a contract or anything else.  I’m just going to training and focusing on improving.  I think playing as a winger is helping that process, because I have so much to learn about the position.  It’s always easier to work hard to improve when you know you need it, as opposed to training the same thing that you’ve been doing for 10 years.  It’s been paying off.  We had a intrasquad scrimmage with the teams evenly split between starters and reserves and I scored two goals.  My team won the game 2-0 so of course that will loom in Siggi’s head when he selects the team for our game Wednesday.

In life things have started to become more fun in Enkoping.  I’ve kind of come to accept my apartment as the place that I will live for at least the next three months.  I think I’ll go to IKEA (obviously) and get some stuff to spruce the place up.  Ironically, getting stuff from IKEA will make my place feel more like (my US) home.  As of right now, the only thing I have on the walls of my room are some newspaper cut outs and an enormous American flag.  Not to mention the green sheet acting as a curtain.  I give you all my word that by the end of this week there will be some changes around here.

Anyway yesterday training was very simple.  We just did some finishing drills and some 5v2 and called it a day.  We training in the morning since it was Saturday and no one had any schedule conflicts, and it was fun because there were a lot of people around.  They were they for their own various reasons, but it was nice to train in front of a crowd.  You’ll be happy to know that my team dominated the finishing competitions, but perhaps unhappy to know that I contributed absolutely nothing to the cause.

After training, I went home and immediately cracked open a beer.  It’s been quite a while since I’ve had any alcohol of any kind, so with the following day free and 5 days until the match I felt safe in having a couple beers that have been in my fridge since a week after I got here.  Then I went over to Fabian’s house and hung out with the guys for a few hours.  Fabian and Siggi had bet on a series of matches and for once they actually won, for a jackpot of 20,000 SEK so they were in a great mood.  Also in a great mood (and completely hammered at 5:30pm) was a big sponsor for the club.  We saw him by chance because Fabian offered to buy drinks at K14 since he won so much money.  I don’t know the sponsor’s name, but I wouldn’t mention it anyway.  He was hilariously drunk and after two minutes of talking I was offered a job!  Whether or not the job actually exists is up for debate, but I’m sure if he does offer something then it will be not-so-difficult and have good pay.  A nice combination if you ask me.  After a few minutes at K14 we went back to Fabian’s before we headed to the house of some of their lady friends.

-Sidebar-

If you ever happen to be with a group of college-aged Swedish guys who are about to go over to some girls’ house, then bring something to read.  Something that will take time, like a textbook on String Theory, because the guys you are going out with WILL take a minimum of 90 minutes to prepare.  I’m convinced that Fabian, Daniel and Robert are all secretly competing in some sort of reality-fashion design tv show.  I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that they take so long to get ready because they are actually creating and sewing their outfits on the spot for when we go out.  It would actually make the 90-minute time frame pretty impressive.

-end of Sidebar-

So we get to the girls’ place and we’re having a good time.  I was enjoying myself even though I didn’t understand 90% of the conversation.  One conversation I did understand (because it was in English) was a hilarious exchange in which Daniel tried to convince us that incest (yes, incest) shouldn’t be illegal.  Amazingly, this wasn’t the first time Daniel had brought this up, which made the conversation even funnier.  He wasn’t defending incest, just saying that it shouldn’t be against the law.  If a brother and sister love each other, he posited, then they should be able to be together and get married.  Of course we all saw no place for civil discourse and immediately wanted to know if Daniel had a sister and what she looked like!

The time spent not understanding the rest of the conversation was a bit depressing, not least because I felt kind of like a chaperone.  None of the guys are within 2-3 years of me and the girls were probably the same age.  Now I’m no saint; I have no problem being romantically involved with an 18- or 19-year-old lady.  I’m a pretty stand up guy, but the law is the law and if I’m on the right side of it then I have no moral objections.  I figure I’m something like Bill Clinton: the more you know, the less of a saint I become.  That said, there was a pretty lady who seemed quite interested from that group of girls and then a couple more at the bar/club we went to afterward.  I didn’t go home with any girls because that’s not really my thing, but I will say this: I still got it J.  Even with the hair of a caveman I still got it!

As is customary after a late night out, I got up ungodly early this morning (9:30am.  Shocking, I know).  I went to McDonald’s with the guys, which has been a dream of mine since I got to Enkoping but where I’ve never gone since it’s a solid 30 minute walk from my apartment.  In Sweden the colors for McDonald’s are green and brown.  They still have the classic red/yellow signage, but the facility itself looks more like a Whole Foods than fast food joint.  A funny thing I’ve noticed about McDonald’s in Sweden(Gothenburg, Stockholm and now Enkoping) is that the cashiers are universally college-aged girls.  It’s kind of like in the absence of Hooters, hot girls just decided to give Mcdonald’s a go.  After Mcdonald’s, we all went to Café Wickman for what I affectionately call “birdwatching” .  This is when you set up shop somewhere and admire all the pretty girls that walk by or come into the establishment.  Feel free to use that term, btw.  You think you won’t use it, but you will.  My gift to you. 

That’s all for now folks.  I have a game in three days so I don’t know if I’ll get to a post before then.  I’ll have you know that I’m very close to starting my career autobiography.  It’s a mental battle in my head because the task is so daunting.  I’m trying to decide now if I want it to be 5000 or 50,000 words.  I could literally write 100 pages on my time between my last college game and now.  It’s a hell of a story that goes from Tampa -> Denver-> Bradenton, FL -> Baltimore -> DC -> Austin, TX -> Saigon, Vietnam -> An Giang (Nam)-> Can Tho (Nam) -> Indianapolis -> Tampa -> Ave Maria, FL -> Orlando -> Wilmington, NC -> Harrisburg, PA -> Gothenburg, Sweden -> Valkeakoski, Finland -> Jakobstad (FIN) -> Myllykoski (FIN) -> Enkoping.  That doesn’t even include the great non-soccer-related stories in Charlottesville, VA (2-3 hilarious stories); Philadelphia, San Antonio, Stockholm, London and dozens of road trip stories.  I put a picture up from the very early days of my Baltimore adventure.  As you can see, my autobiography could go on for quite a long time.  I’m just concerned that most people don’t really care about an unabridged account of the last 3 years of my life.  I’ll probably publish the short(er) version and keep the longer one for when I’m famous and write a book that people actually will pay money to read!

Til next time.

ESK Kickoff Party and Paperwork Problems (Again)

It’s Friday the 13^th!  I Hope your luck is good today!  Yesterday was the kickoff party for ESK.  Pretty much every club has a day like this, where you go to some place before the season and spend some time with the people who most make the club successful.  I should be clear that these are fans and sponsors, not people actually employed by the club.  Of course the employees have more to do with the club being successful than fans, though the fans and sponsors do provide most of the money that the club uses on my and my teammates’ salaries.  This event was a dinner for ESK, but with Harrisburg and CPB we had lunches for the same type of event.

I know I’ve made this clear, but it’s worth mentioning again:  I don’t speak a word of Swedish.  I’m trying to learn but right now when a Swedish person speaks to other Swedish people I have no idea what they’re saying.  That said, the kickoff party was about two hours of Swedish people talking to other Swedish people.  Obviously that’s normal and I don’t expect them to all speak English because one person doesn’t understand Swedish.  However, when this situation occurs (It also happened at a team bonding event in Turkey), I’m left feeling like Charlie Brown listening to his teacher.  I pretty much heard two hours of “womp womp womp, womp wompwompwomp.”  The saving grace was that the season ticket holders sitting at the table with me spoke fluent English so we were able to talk to each other and enjoy the dinner.  We introduced the team for the year and played some guessing games with songs before calling it a night.

In training before the kickoff party, we began to work on tactics.  This was a bit strange for two reasons: first, it was a bit strange that now was the time we decided to talk about tactics, four days before our opening match and, second, the tactics themselves are more or less the opposite of how we’ve played every other game.  We’ve been working on attacking as quickly as possible.  We want to get the ball from our defenders to the goal in as few passes as possible.  It’s not necessarily a counterattack because we plan on having more of the ball than our opponents, but it is a counterattack mentality.  I don’t want to give away too much of our tactics on the off chance an opponent might read this, but it’s definitely something different and it’s rubbing some of the team the wrong way.  We played a full field scrimmage for the first time since I’ve been at the club and by the end seemingly every player was frustrated or upset for one reason or another.  I guess it’s just that time of year when people are eager to get on the field and play.  Speaking of which….

I was on the 2^nd team today in the scrimmage.  I’m not sure what changed between Tuesday and Thursday but I am no longer in the starting lineup.  Maybe I can get the spot back by the time we play on Monday but I’m not counting on it.  I’m just hoping I get in the game, because I don’t see Siggi putting me in if we’re winning.  He has one or two other guys who are more defensive-minded that can play as a winger.  I would think that my performances in the preseason will warrant some playing time, but I thought the same thing in Harrisburg and was frozen out of the team after the first game.  If not for the curse (maybe I’ll elaborate someday), I would not have played more than five games for the City Islanders despite the fact that I clearly brought value to the team.  I fear that history could repeat itself here and that’s very frustrating.  Since I’ve been here, ESK has scored 19 goals in 7 matches and I’ve scored or assisted 9 of them.  You would think that contribution would be on the field.  I don’t pick the team though so I’ll do whatever I’m told whether that’s starting or coming off the bench or sitting in the stands.

Speaking of sitting in the stands: regardless of what Siggi has planned for me I might have to miss out on the first match because of paperwork issues.  You might remember that I had some anxious moments on transfer deadline day getting everything sorted with the Swedish FA to play this year.  Thankfully all of that came through no problem, but now the Swedish Immigration Office has lost my papers and cannot/will not grant me work permission at the moment.  Without it, I can’t play any games for ESK.  Since presumably the office won’t open again until Monday morning, it is unlikely I will have time to resubmit the forms and have them cleared before kickoff at 7pm.  That means that I will almost surely not take part in the season opener.  What a bummer.  Fabian’s doing everything he can but he’s only human.  If he could do immigration’s job for them he probably would have, but instead their incompetence (we sent the forms in weeks ago) is costing me and the club.  I guess US government offices aren’t the only ones that are terrible at their jobs!

We’ll see how it goes.  This post is too long to put another player profile up so I'll do it next time.  Until then enjoy your weekend and I’ll let you know how it turns out!

Hat Trick Hero!

Hey guys.  Just noting that yesterday would have been my 2^nd payday at Haka.  $2300 ($4600 total) down the drain.  Awesome.  Today we played a match against a club called Silkejbo or something like that.  They are in division 2, which is one league below ESK.  We won the game 7-0 and I scored three goals.

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!

What the H is TMS?

Hey guys I’m back.  I wish I could say I was calm, cool and relaxed but to be honest I’m in full-fledged panic mode.  As you know, I signed a contract with Enkoping SK earlier this week.  However, the deal cannot be finalized until various forms are filed with the appropriate entities.  As far as I know, all of these forms need to be submitted by the transfer deadline, which is today (the window is open until the end of the last business day in March).  All the forms have been done, but apparently I need my old club, the Harrisburg City Islanders, to confirm something called TMS (transfer matching system).  I’m not sure of the importance of TMS, but it has been explained to me as a way for FIFA to officially track all player movement worldwide.  It seems pretty straightforward, but the Islanders have said that they are having problems with the system and won’t be able to complete their end of it until next week.  Of course, next week might as well be two months from now because if the TMS confirmation isn’t completed by the end of business today I will be ineligible until the summer.  Since my contract is only for four months, being forced to sit out the first two might be a dealbreaker.  That would also mean that I’m SOL for finding any team since no transfer window will be open.  My only hope would be to train with some club and finance my way from now until June 1 (and I'm not sure but I think the summer window might not open until even later in Sweden).  Also ESK could honor the contract and just wait until June before playing me, though that seems unlikely to me.  I don’t even think I’d be eligible to sign up with an American club, but I’m not sure of the rules.

Other than this little TMS crisis there’s not much to report.  The team here trains at 5:30pm, as most of the players are still in school.  I didn’t mention before but the team here is very, very young.  At 24, I’m the 4^th oldest player in the squad.  We have a couple 17-year-olds, and probably a half dozen 18- and 19-year-olds.  The team here really reminds me a lot of the teams I played with at the University of South Florida (USF for all the non-cool kids who don’t know the lingo).  We’re young, technically very good, but naïve.  One of the guys (Dillon, a 19-year-old starting center back) has grown fond of something I supposedly say a lot in training.  I quote, “This isn’t (radio edit) Barcelona.  Cut that Barcelona (radio edit) out.”  I didn’t think I said it more than once, but if I said it more it’s because there’s truth to it.  As good as the players are here, they maybe don’t have the maturity to know that it can’t be pretty all the time.  If you have Xavi, Fabregas and Iniesta as your central midfield, then okay you can be pretty all the time.  But if you’re in the Swedish 3^rd division, there are times when you must just hoof it up the field and go from there.  Don’t get me wrong, I like to pass as much as the next guy, but nothing annoys me more than a scoring chance for the opposition that could have been avoided by just clearing the ball from danger.  Especially when the danger comes from a team pressing and leaving me 1v1 with an outside back or winger.  In that situation, the best and easiest play is to put the ball into space and let me go get it.  I’m guessing that a lot of these guys are not too far removed from youth teams where they could get away with anything.  Also, the jump from division two to division one is a pretty big one so maybe the level of competition will dictate that they play simpler this year.

I’m off now to the grocery store, but since my first payday isn’t until April 30, I’m kind of living in poverty.  I’ve been lucky enough to mooch dinner off of my teammates the last couple nights but at some point I need to cook for myself.  I’ve been living this past week off of corn flakes, milk, bananas and bread with jam.  I bought chicken, but at 30SEK a pop I can’t afford it every night sadly.  I hope to one day soon look fondly back at a time when $4 chicken felt like a luxury.  I guess it’s kind of like college off the field as well as on the field.  Oh well, maybe one of you have a recipe for cooking and eating newspaper?  If so that recipe would be worth its weight in gold!  I’ll be back in touch soon.  Fingers crossed that the whole TMS thing sorts itself out.  I think it will since there’s no dispute between the clubs.  It should be pretty straightforward.

Just this second, Fabian (I don't know his official title, but in the US he would be a general manager) has come to the apartment and told me that I'm going to the Swedish FA offices in Stockholm with ESK's chairman in 30 minutes to finish up paperwork.  He doesn't think the TMS situation will be a problem, but I can figure everything out there.  Wish me luck!