A Chance to Relax and a PED rant

Finally a break.

 

The home ground.

We’re essentially 1/3 of the way through the season and we are about to take a well earned week off.  VPS has played 10 games thus far, and our 6-2-2 record is good for 20 points and the joint top spot in the league.  That said, we’re only 4-5 point above 8^th place so it’s a bit too soon to be putting our name on the trophy.  If I’m being honest, these first ten games really have not been the greatest soccer that VPS has ever played.  We’ve only really dominated one game (RoPS) and the rest of our wins have only come by one goal, some in borderline miraculous circumstances.  I’ll take the points though, and if we manage to continue at this rate then we’ll probably win the league.  But then again that’s a really big IF and the league still has a long, long time to go.  What’s for certain though is that we’re gonna have to get a lot better in every aspect of our game.

 

The last two games have been fun.  We won both and against Jaro we had a great crowd.  The Jaro game was especially nice because the atmosphere was in stark contrast to a lot of the other games we’ve played at home.  The fans were behind us from start to finish, and what do you know we got better and better as the match went on.  It’s almost as if our fan support pushed the team to improve itself! ;)  I took some video after the game, but I got just the ending of our two little celebrations.  You get the point though.  We were very happy to win.

 

 

I also got my first assist of the season so I was happy with that.  I’m a winger so my main job is to create goals, so in my opinion getting assists is more important than even scoring goals.  I hope to get many more as the year goes on.

 

The game against Mariehamn was memorable for only one reason: we won despite playing terribly and without either of our first choice center backs for 2/3 of the game.  Winning while playing bad soccer has kind of become a theme for our club (or perhaps a motif, for those of you who enjoyed English class in high school…I guess what I call English class would actually be Finnish class or Swedish class for most people reading this, but you get the point).  I would prefer that we played better, but I can’t really complain with the results.  Clearly it’s working for us and it seems we don’t need to dominate games to win, which is kind of good news.

Ball in the net against Mariehamn.  Jyrki scored and me and Anthony are happy!

 

If you're wondering what we were saying it went something like, "Keep walking this way so we can catch our breath."  I'm not kidding that's what we were actually saying.

I also got to see my good friend from Haka, Kris Bright.  We both kind of suffered through some really tough times in Valkeakoski and really only had each other (along with Nana Attakora) to talk to during that time.  It was great to see him starting and doing well.  Things aren't going perfectly at Mariehamn, but he's definitely having more success there than either of us had at Haka.  I also saw and spoke with a fellow Yank, my friend Monica Dolinsky.  We both grew up in Indianapolis with similar stories.  She was one of the top handful of soccer girls in the state and I was the same for boys.  We never actually spoke though until after college when we ended up in the same circle of friends.  Now our lives are mirroring each other again, at least in the geographical sense.  She was in Sweden when I was and now she's been in Finland the whole time I've been here.  I hope her next stop is southern France/Spain or something!  She plays on the top women's team in Finland so that's awesome for her.  She also gets to go home for six weeks this summer, so I'm a bit envious!

 

I don’t really have anything else to say.  At least nothing relevant to my life personally or to VPS.  Instead, I’m gonna go off on a bit of an off topic rant.  If you care to know what I have to say then by all means keep reading.  If not, then I’ll be back next week after I return from vacation in London.

 

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At one of our hotels, I watched a debate (from Australia, no less) about performance enhancing drugs, or PEDs.  Now before I go into my thoughts about it I have to say that I have never used any PEDs (at least nothing that is illegal.  I would classify anything other than food as a PED.) and that I don’t know anyone using PEDs.  I don’t think I would even know the signs.  The debate though kind of struck a cord with me because it confirmed in my mind something that I’d already been thinking: PEDs should be legalized.

 

When most people hear someone say this the first thing they think is, “Oh no!  PEDs are bad and shouldn’t be in sports.  They take away the integrity of the game.”  But think about that…every professional athlete takes one thing or another to enhance his/her performance.  I make protein shakes almost every day to help me recover and to increase the effectiveness of my weight workouts.  Protein is perfectly legal and has no side effects that I’m aware of.  Surely no one would say that I am cheating the sport of soccer because of my protein shakes.  So my question is, “why are steroids or HGH or whatever else people are using illegal?”  These are also performance enhancers that when administered by a professional have little to no side effects.  Steroids can give you man-boobs?  Well I see man-boobs every single day so it must not be that awful.  I haven’t done a ton of research, but as far as I know, steroids and HGH have no devastating effects when taken properly.  If you don’t believe that, then explain to me why we give steroids to little kids who have asthma?  Or why steroids are in every hospital in the advanced world?  Every professional athlete would have equal access to these drugs, and if given by doctors then the risk would be minimal.

 

Speaking of risk to athletes, I don’t understand what argument can be made against PEDs that can’t be countered by an argument of things that athletes ARE allowed to do.  For instance if I break my leg tomorrow, I can go to the hospital and get a cocktail of drugs, use state-of-the-art technology and have surgery.  I’ll be back on the field in 5-6 weeks.  Is this natural?  Are the things that doctors would do to heal me not performance enhancing in a way that the body could never possibly do?  Then why isn’t leg surgery illegal?  I would guess there’s a better likelihood of me dying from complications from a leg surgery than from taking FDA-approved steroids on a monitored schedule.

 

The last argument against PEDs and the one that it’s opponents always fall back on because of its emotional appeal is the idea that PEDs ruin the essence of fair competition.  That sport exists to push the body to the limit and reward excellence.  For me, this is the worst argument of all.  Lance Armstrong used PEDs, but he still got his ass on that bike after having cancer and rode it across an entire country uphill.  I would bet that no one reading this blog could match what Armstrong did no matter what kind of steroids they had access to.  Armstrong is still a dick and a bad guy all-around it seems, but in my opinion that has nothing to do with the drugs.  That has to do with his over-the-top competitiveness and pressure to succeed.  The same applies to Barry Bonds, a former American baseball player who never tested positive for PEDs, but surely used them.  Steroids might have helped him gain strength, but there were plenty of guys in MLB that were stronger than Bonds and never hit half as many home runs.  There was clearly hard work and skill involved.  These athletes may have cheated, but only because the rules are stupid.  Armstrong and Bonds were both super athletes before they took PEDs, and both are healthy adults now after taking them.  So why are they so bad?  And before you answer that, consider that Lionel Messi took Human Growth Hormone (HGH) from the time he moved to Barcelona at age 12 until some time recently.  HGH is a banned substance, but since it’s a drug that mimics naturally occurring hormones there is no way to test for it.  Plus I’m sure he stopped taking them before he became a member of the FC Barcelona first team.  Messi is (rightfully) celebrated as a hero, even though he did effectively the exact same thing as Barry Bonds, who is a villain.  There’s a reason why Lionel Messi, who is 5’ 5” tall, has legs like a freaking elephant.  And it’s his inhumanly strong legs which give him his inhuman acceleration and agility.  I would argue that Messi’s athleticism is due in large part to HGH.  He was a great athlete who became the best soccer player in the world thanks in part to PEDs.  No one though would argue that Messi has cheated or that he has become the world’s best player because of PEDs alone.  So doesn’t that kill the argument that taking PEDs ruins the essence of sport?  Did Lionel Messi not work incredibly hard to get where he is?  And has he ruined the game?  Of course not.  But how much more fun would soccer be to watch if there were 25 other Lionel Messis?  How great could Michael Owen have been if he was able to use steroids to recover from all those injuries and HGH to prevent more from happening?  How much better would it be for fans if the greatest players could all play until 40?  These are not just hypothetical questions; they are the reality if we just removed the taboo of PEDs.  Science is at a point where taking things to improve performance are as common as lifting weights or running sprints.  You don’t like PEDs?  Well then stop taking your daily multivitamin or cough medicine when you get sick.  And don’t even think about taking Burana when you sprain your ankle.  That’s cheating!

 

The meme:

London Rants

Hello again.  I know I said before that I would post yesterday, but in the words of the one and only Maury Povich, “That was a lie.”

 

The reason for me not posting yesterday was that I simply forgot.  For the first time since I got to Valkeakoski, I actually spent the day enjoying myself.  It was the first week of NFL football so I watched a bunch of games.  Before that I was preparing for training and then doing some extra fitness work after.  The point is that I said I would do something and I didn’t so I apologize.  But that’s ok, because I’m ready now to go on not one, but two rants.  Buckle up because this is gonna be a crazy ride.

 

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For those who don’t know, this line means that I’m done talking about anything relevant.

 

Last week I was in London and it was awesome.  I stayed with Celia, who is effectively my girlfriend even though we don’t call each other that.  We get along great because she is kind of like a girl version of me and I’m a boy version of her.  That might sound a bit weird, but it makes sense in my head.  I also just really like London.  It’s the only city outside of America in the world that combines the big city experience that I love with English infrastructure.  Stockholm is similar in that all the people speak English and a lot of the necessary signs are in English, but the hustle and bustle is missing as are the cheap prices.  Anyway what I’m trying to say is that London is great.  There is though one thing that I absolutely hate about London: local teenagers.

 

In the past year I have spent a total of maybe 20 days in London.  If I had more free time that number would be even higher.  But whenever I think of going to London, the only thing that gives me pause are the effing teenagers in that city.  English kids aged maybe 15-18 just walk around being dicks to people for no reason whatsoever.  I am a normally mild-tempered guy, but I just want to punch these kids in the face.  And the thing is, they’re everywhere.  Do british kids not have to go to school?  Do they just ride the tube all day annoying strangers?  Most of the incidents are minor, but they add up.  Two incidents in particular though deserve mentioning.  The first happened at a McDonald’s right next to the London Eye.  There were probably 50 people waiting in line and it was all one big unorganized mess.  Right as Celia and I got to the front, four teenagers just walked in and pushed past everybody to the front.  One guy looked at me and said, “Is it alright if we come past you?” and then looked away before I could say anything.  It pissed me off so much, but what was I gonna do?  Do I punch the kid and start a fight in a crowded McDonald’s?  Do I tell a manager?  What could he/she do if I did?  I wish I could say that I at least slapped the kid’s drink out of his hand or something, but instead I just waited an extra two minutes and went on with my order.  That was the first incident.

 

The second incident was ironically also at a McDonald’s, but this one made me much angrier even though in reality it is a much lesser offense.  It was last week and I went to McDonald’s because I love that place and could never see myself not eating there.   I get to the front of the line and there’s this Indian-looking kid working the cash register.  Ok I need to take a brief tangent.

 

*TANGENT*

There are a lot of Indian people in London.  I have a vague understanding of Britain’s past with India so it’s not so surprising, but still there are a lot more than I realized.  I see more Indian people in London than black people.  It’s a really multicultural city, similar to New York but with a different percentage of each minority.

*END OF TANGENT*     

 

Now some people won’t get what I’m about to talk about because in Sweden and Finland the people working the cash registers seem to be exclusively well-to-do, white high school kids.  They somehow seem to love working at McDonald’s and are the kind of people you’d expect to see in commercials.  That is absolutely NOT the case in London or anywhere I’ve been in America.  This dick (I mean kid, the letters not surprisingly are more or less the same) and I engaged in the time honored tradition at big city McDonald’s of mumbling back and forward without making eye contact to get the order.  This means that half the time one person or the other doesn’t fully understand what’s been said.  That happened and I asked the kid to repeat what he said.  He sighed, took a deep breath and said whatever it was he said in an annoyed voice.  Hold on.

 

AM I ANNOYING YOU, RANDOM KID CASHIER AT MCDONALD’S!?  Is it not literally your job to talk to people?  Sorry that I didn’t hear your freakin mumbles but for all he knows I could be partially deaf.  Or maybe I’m just screwing with him to have a laugh.  Regardless, it shouldn’t be a burden on his day that I need him to repeat himself.  That was literally a week ago and I’m still pissed off about that.  Then, when I finally got my meal, this clown had the nerve to put the meal on three trays.  I picked up only one tray and starting going to a table and he started to say, “You’ve got three…” then stopped when he realized I only took one.  This dick (I think we can agree he’s a dick) gave me three trays just so he could smugly tell me I had more than one.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with working at McDonald’s (you’d probably make more money than I do), but if you work there you better not be such an asshole that you can deal with minor inconveniences.  Therefore no British teenager should be allowed to work in that position.  That’s my first rant.

 

My second rant is inspired entirely by the Tate Modern Art Museum in central London.  This massive museum for “art” is located directly across the Thames River from St. Paul’s Cathedral and is very close to all the most touristy stuff in London.  But don’t tell the people there.  They’re all hipsters who are too cool to visit somewhere popular.

 

Now I love museums, and I like art, so I should love a huge art museum, right?  Wrong.  I hate the Tate.  It makes me mad when I go there.  Not because I don’t like the artwork; in fact, most of it is really impressive.  No the reason I hate the Tate is because of the crap that they call “art”.  I’ll give you some examples:

Kids make this every day.

Just a big block of granite with glass on top.

Octagon.  Honestly that's it.

A mirror.  The tag next to it hilariously notes that this piece of "art" is from 1965.

I honestly thought the vents on the floor were part of the art.  That's how non-artsy these things were.  This could literally be at any construction site.

 

 

To once again quote someone, this time Aziz Ansari, “Are you shitting me man!?!?”

 

There is no way any of that is art.  One is literally just a mirror.  I understand that sometimes art can be weird, but there is no way you can classify this as important/relevant/good.  And that’s what annoys me about the Tate. 

 

One thing I think you guys and gals might now realize about this blog is that whenever I take a picture, I look like an absolute idiot.  So as I’m going around taking pictures of the worst things in the Tate it’s not just me there.  People can actually see me taking picture and, here’s the kicker, THEY THINK I ACTUALLY LIKE THIS CRAP!  The hipsters were all looking over and giving me knowing nods, as if to say, “he gets it.”  Ironically, my hatred of hipsters and modern art led me to getting accepted by hipsters at a modern art museum.  That’s the way I spend my vacations.  And so ends rant #2.

 

The last thing I’ll do is show a video of a “living art” exhibition that was happening on the ground floor of the museum, which is a vast open space.  I can’t even explain it you just have to watch.

 

 

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:

First XI and Tangent-Rant

Game number 2 is tomorrow, and I’m excited because I’m eligible to play!  I’m also excited because I’ve been named to the starting lineup, so I’ll have an opportunity to show my stuff!

The last few days have been quite boring.  A bunch of us got together at K14 to watch Barcelona vs. Real Madrid and that was interesting, though the game itself was quite subdued as many of you know.  Since there’s not so much happening at the moment I’m going to use my time here to make a little observation and then go on a rant so bear (bare?) with me.

First for the observation: men in Sweden refuse to wear slacks, but insist on wearing button-down dress shirts and blazers.  It’s like every single day of the year is business casual in this country.  At the kickoff party a few weeks back, I noticed that every single guy there (myself included) was wearing jeans.  There were probably 50 men there and there were no exceptions.  Why do they dress like this?  I don’t think it’s a bad look, but I mean at some point you would think one guy would be brave and complement his blazer with a nice pair of dress pants.  It’s not going to happen though, the style is the style.  I’ll just have to continue living my life in one big H&M commercial.

In other news, Siggi told me today that he spoke with a newspaper in the area and that they might be interested in working with me in some capacity.  It could be that the blog gets reprinted in their publication or I could be doing something that they assign to me or it could all come to nothing.  Regardless of what happens with the paper it was very nice of Siggi to take the time to mention me to them.  He has no responsibility to ensure that I have work outside of the club, but he knows that the money definitely would help and he’s doing all he can to see that I have the best experience possible in Sweden.  I really appreciate that.  The way I’m treated by the club here is very good.  They don’t have a ton of resources, but they help in whatever way they can.  It’s very similar to the Harrisburg City Islanders, and the complete opposite of Crystal Palace Baltimore.

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I put that line there to signify that I will be going on a rant.  If you don’t want to hear my rant, then the blog is over for today and I’ll see you in 48 hours of so.  Trust me, I understand if you don’t want to hear about how awful my life is when I sleep 10 hours everyday and play soccer/watch Netflix for a living.  Honestly I get it.  Anywho…

My apartment-mate (I think I just made that term up, but oh well) is driving me crazy.  For the second time in like four days, I woke up this morning to him washing himself in the kitchen sink.  I’ve tried multiple times to engage him in some sort of communication, but he won’t have it.  Now realize, I’m not talking about us sharing our life stories, just basic cordial communication.  He won’t budge so things continue to be awkward.  When I hear that he’s out in the hallway or kitchen I simply don’t leave my room.  If I have to pee I hold it.  If I’m hungry I wait.  That’s just how it is at the moment.  Now if that was the extent of my problems (and up until today it was) then you’d never hear a rant about it.  I’d still joke about some of the stuff because I’m a humorous person and like to keep things light-hearted, but now two things have rubbed me the wrong way.  The first isn’t a big deal, but the second is a real problem.

First, like I mentioned earlier this morning I walked out of my bedroom and into the kitchen to brush my teeth.  I’ve been keeping my toothbrush in my room instead of the bathroom recently because someone threw my toothbrush away when cleaning up the bathroom.

I’m sorry, but Tangent-rant:

Who throws away someone else’s toothbrush?!  Think about this, have you ever thrown away another person’s toothbrush?  Have you ever even touched a roommate’s toothbrush?  Why in the world would I have a toothbrush in the bathroom if I thought it should be thrown away?!  If I wanted my toothbrush in the trash, I would have put it there.  I wouldn’t just leave it on the window sill next to the toothpaste and razor.  Whoever threw away my toothbrush had to consciously decide that somehow I didn’t want the toothbrush anymore, but I did want the toothpaste and razor.  Only an insane person or a dick would do something like that, and I don’t think any crazy people have been in my bathroom…but then again how would I know?  The lock on the front door doesn’t work.

Ok, back to the original rant.

So I have the toothpaste on my (new) toothbrush and I walk into the kitchen (because the bathroom sink is still on the floor) only to see my apartment-mate washing up in his undies.  That’s all fine and good, better than if he didn’t wash up at all, you know?  But he wouldn’t acknowledge that I was standing there.  Clearly I’m not just trying to watch him wash up.  I said excuse me multiple time and he had to hear me, but no response.  Finally after 20 seconds of just standing there I just barged in and used the sink.  I was a bit perturbed about that but it wasn’t really a big deal.  However the second thing is a big deal.  Tonight I noticed for the second time in as many nights the smell of cigarette smoke.  Last night it was kind of late when I got home from the Real Madrid vs. Barca viewing party so I didn’t pay much attention to the smoke smell.  I just figured it was coming from outside or something.  Today however there’s no doubt that the smoke is coming from my good friend on the other side of the wall.  Now I’m legitimately upset.  It’s one thing to be a dick, and to be fair this guy might be really nice but just doesn’t want to be bothered with me at the moment.  It’s another thing though to have cigarette smoke lingering in the house.  I’m not against people smoking cigarettes, I just don’t want to live with anyone who is smoking in the house.  Yet another reason why I need to move out of this apartment asap.  I’ve been looking, but it’s not easy to find an apartment in Enkoping.  Maybe I’ll go into detail about my apartment search sometime, but not now.  I’ve already made the post too long with my rant and tangent-rant.

Back on topic for the last five seconds, like I said before my first match and the team’s second is tomorrow.  Wish me luck!

Talking Turkey

GOOOOOOOAAAAAAAL!

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.