Back to Reality

I’m back after a nice four days in London with Celia.  I had a good time and wish it was longer, but then again I spent most of my money and now I’m in the poorhouse.

Celia

 

No matter what anyone tells you, holidays are a professional athlete’s favorite time on the calendar.  The games are obviously fun (sometimes), but they’re also really hard work.  Our weekly time off typically comes on Mondays or Wednesdays and we rarely get more than one day off at a time.  Because of this, most professional soccer players never really get a chance to take a break.  I know a lot of people probably sneer at that sentiment and think that playing a game for a living can’t be that hard, and they’re right; playing soccer is an awesome profession.  But if you had to run and jump for two hours almost every single day you would see why 4-5 days of not doing that would be welcomed.

 



me at the market. bottom right for those who don't see it.

I’ve been to London about a half dozen times now, and every time I go I discover some new things I like.  I’ve never been in the city when the weather’s been bad, so that’s helped.  At this point, I’ve seen just about every tourist sight there is except Buckingham Palace which has irregular opening dates.  This trip was more about hanging with Celia and seeing parts of London that the locals visit.  Celia has a fascination with outdoor markets which, no offense to anyone reading, must be a white people thing because it doesn’t appeal to me at all and no other of “my people” happened to be around at any of the markets we visited.  On the flip side, I bought something called a Tastecard for 30 pound and used it to get half off on essentially all of our meals.  Unfortunately, having the Tastecard encouraged Celia and I to eat at restaurants for lunch and dinner every day and I ended up spending a fortune even though Celia paid for almost half the meals.

 

Of course, all good vacations are inevitably destroyed by the trip back home.  And it doesn’t help when home is in small town Finland.  I actually like Vaasa quite a bit, but no one can deny that there is nothing more somber than a flight from a place like Stockholm or London into Vaasa.  No one is getting on that plane with a smile.  Leaving Tampere to go to London was like a carnival atmosphere at the departure gate.  Coming home was more of a funeral march.  It didn’t help that Karsten, Grant and I booked a return journey that featured 3 flights.  It also didn’t help that two of them were delayed, meaning that we had to stress our connections and didn’t arrive until about 1:45am.  And then, as if SAS knew that I wrote a blog or something, my bag didn’t arrive and I was forced to go through the ordeal of reclaiming my lost luggage that didn’t conclude until about an hour ago (3 days after I got back).

 

But enough about me; the real long-term winner of my trip by a mile was Anthony Dafaa.  My favorite roommate’s life got infinitely better because while I was in London I bought a Playstation 3.  I’ve been pleading with Anthony for months to split the cost of a PS3 with me and he has denied every time.  He claimed he didn’t really want a PS3.  Well, now that we’ve got one there’s only one gamer in this household, and it’s not the same as the house’s blogger.  I don’t say this to condemn Anthony because I like him a lot, just to note that he was the real winner from my vacation.  And he also now has his own controller, given to him by his brofriend J.

 

Well I guess that’s about it for now.  We’ve now come back and had two days of training and things improved dramatically from Monday to Tuesday.  I think we’re ready to play and I’m also pretty sure that we’ll have just about everyone available for selection.  It’s been a long time since we’ve had a fully healthy squad, but we’re slowly getting there.  The break in games definitely came at a good time for us.  We play against FC Lahti, who just hired my old Haka coach Juha Malinen.  That kind of sucks for us, since the hardest type of team to beat is one who just hired a new coach.  Every player will want to prove a point.  We’ll just have to counter that and step our game up even more.  I’m pretty sure we’ll be a better team than Lahti, but whether or not we’ll be good enough to win tomorrow is up to us.  A thank you in advance to any of the Geezers who make it out to Lahti on a Thursday night.  It’s far away but those guys and gals have gone further so maybe they’ll be there!

 

The meme and GIF:

 

Matchday 13: The Great Green North

Lulea

It’s legitimately hot today.  At least in my room it is.  You see, there doesn’t seem to be air conditioning anywhere in this country.  Instead every place has really big windows.  You rarely see the double hung type windows that seems to be on every house in America.  Anyway it’s hot and I have no A/C, so I’ve been forced to open both my windows and my curtains.  This, for better or worse, has caused me to see some things that I’d rather not know were happening right outside my place.  One positive thing is that I saw the greatest thing anyone could possibly see in Enkoping: an old man walking a cat.  Maybe I’m in the minority, but I’ve never ever seen a person walk a cat.  What joy is there for either party?  The guy was forced to just drag the cat along, and the cat seemed like he had no interest in being outside.  Maybe because it’s actually hot outside.

We played our 13^th game yesterday and tied, 1-1, to Lulea.  Lulea is 800km away from Enkoping and less than 100km from the artic circle.  Look it up on a map, it’s comically far north.  I have absolutely no idea how they can afford the travel to play in this league, but then again, it’s not much different from every single team in USL and NASL and they make it work.  I played perhaps my best match of the season and assisted on our goal.  I also drew three yellow cards (one of which was a stone-cold red, no question) and ran the left back into the ground.  He got a cramp in the 70^th minute and had to leave the game.  I’ll get to my performance in a minute, but first my impressions of the team.

I thought that the game yesterday was ESK at near our best.  Before I go further, I need to mention that Siggi didn’t make the trip up north because of an illness he’s been fighting all week.  Also staying home with Siggi was our philosophy of near-constant pressuring.  The majority of that burden is carried by the front four players in our 4-2-3-1.  The result is that when we actually get the ball those players have no energy to run and create goal scoring chances.  In Lulea though, we played a much calmer style and were able to have much more possession than we typically enjoy.  Per Ake (our assistant, who was the head coach for the game) did very little yelling during the match and more or less allowed us to sort out our own problems in the match.  The result was that we figured them out and became stronger as the game went on, rather than just running more, working harder, defending harder.  We struggled for the first 30 minutes and they scored around the 30^th minute, but after that it was more and more in our favor.  We still insist on playing too many long passes, but I’ve given up hope of that changing without a change in personnel and that seems unlikely. 

Area next to the stadium

I can’t be sure, but I think I felt the liberation of playing without the pressure from Siggi the most of anyone.  I was picked as the Man of the Match for my performance.  When I went to the bench a month or so ago, Siggi pretty much told me that it was because I didn’t do enough defensive work.  As a result, a lot of the running I’ve done in subsequent games has been “show running” where I run real fast and real aggressive to nowhere in particular.  It’s cynical, but my minutes went up every game I did it.  In Lulea, I did the defensive work that the game dictated and no more, giving me the energy to make the hard runs that drew all those yellow cards.  In addition to assisting our goal, I could very well have scored on two other occasions.  The first was from a penalty kick that we earned with 15 minutes remaining.  As soon as it happened, I went and got the ball and walked to the spot with every intention to take the shot.  I would never have taken a penalty in a tie game were Siggi there, since I know that in the event that I missed, he would never forgive me.  In the Great Green North though, I had no problem stepping up.  Why not?  I was full of confidence.  Another player took the penalty and had it saved.  That’s fine, no worries there, but I would have shot to the other side because I prefer to take penalties to that side so I think I would have scored.  The second opportunity, and the one that made me a bit upset, was deep into stoppage time.  A long cross or shot was caught by our ‘keeper who played a brilliant quick punt to our striker.  Lulea was pressing to score and had left only two players back.  I took off sprinting down the field and caught up to make it a 3-on-2 counterattack.  The defenders committed to the other two player so all I needed was an easy pass to be one-on-one with the goalie.  Instead, the striker shot from about 25 yards and was saved.  It was the last play of the game.  I had just sprinted 80 yards in the 93^rd minute and gotten myself wide open only to never get the pass.  I was upset.

Today is my day off and the most interesting thing I’ve seen is the guy walking his cat.  I’ve also started to pack because it seems that I will need to be ready to go on short notice anytime after our game this Saturday.  If it’s not for a trial, then it will be to visit Celia in London.  I can say for sure that I won’t spend my 10 days off in Enkoping though.  No word on a contract extension so I have to look for another place to play.  I will be talking with my agents in Sweden and Finland a lot more in the next few days and weeks to figure something out.  As soon as I know something I’ll be sure to put it here so you know too!

Another (depressing) Loss and Celia Visits

EDIT:  I've added a link to the match highlights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVOd12SysNg

Hey everybody, I’m back.  Sorry for the delay, but my very pretty friend Celia came to visit for few days so I didn’t want to take the time I normally would to write the blog.  We went to Vasteras and also became sadly familiar with Sweden’s public transportation system.  In news you may actually care about, we played our fourth game and sadly suffered our fourth loss.  Let’s recap:

I’ll start with the match because that’s what most of you will care about.  Normally I don’t go much into games, but I will talk a bit about this one.  We lost the game, 4-2, to IK Frej.  I’ve now played three games this season, and they’ve been against the teams in 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd of the current table.  And guess who’s in 4^th? None other than our next opponents, BK Forward.  The first two games were probably deserved losses, even though we had chances in both.  The past game though hurts a lot because I think we should have won the game.  We were winning the match 2-1 with about 25 minutes remaining but then got a red card and pretty much fell victim to that.

The reason the loss to IK Frej was so depressing was that it was entirely avoidable.  I rarely blame a referee for a loss, but I have to pin this one on the ref.  He handed out 7 or 8 yellow cards to us in addition to the red card.  IK Frej had maybe one or two.  He also ejected Siggi in the first half.  Even I got a yellow card, the first of my professional career and only the third or fourth I’ve ever received.  I don’t know if the ref had a bad week or maybe he broke up with his girlfriend because he seemed very eager to show that he was in control.  He called fouls at a pretty equal rate between both teams, but only our players received cards.  As a result it made it very difficult to commit to tackles since by halftime most of our team had cards.  It changed the way we played and made the game more difficult for us than it needed to be.

On another note, I actually played pretty well yesterday.  I created the first goal with a free kick that hit the crossbar and was headed in by Kerim Mrabti.  The picture on the right is my free kick hitting the bar.  I also played a less significant role in the 2^nd goal.  I lost possession of the ball, but sprinted back 30-40 yards and nipped it away, which sent the left back, Robert Kjellman, forward.  He ran forward about 30 yards then sent in a great low cross that Erik Andersson finished really well.  Those two goals gave us 1-0 and 2-1 leads.

Aside from the crazy referee, the loss sucked because we had such bad luck.  When we were up 1-0 I made a good run to the endline and laid the ball back to Daniel Alund, but his shot from about 10 yards hit the post.  He had the keeper beaten and was literally six inches away from putting us up 2-0.  Unfortunately from that same passage of play IK Frej took the ball down the field and scored to tie the match 1-1.  Later, when we were up 2-1 but down a man we did a good job of holding our lead for maybe 5-10 minutes.  We were keeping an okay amount of possession and doing a good job keeping them away from our goal.  When they finally did get a chance they hit the post, only for the rebound to hit our goalkeeper and go in the goal.  It was a terrible bit of luck.  Ironically, had the shot been on target our ‘keeper probably would have saved it.  Later, with the score 2-2, I had a good chance from a corner kick, but my header hit first the goalie, then a player on the line before being scrambled away.  The goalie knew nothing about the save; he just threw his hands up at the right place at the right time.  The pic above shows the play.  The guy on the post with his eyes closed ultimately made the save after the goalie deflected my header.  All of these factors I mentioned worked in unison to deny us any points from the match.  The fourth goal came with the last kick of the ball while we had our whole team pressing for a goal.  It made it 4-2, a very harsh scoreline based on how the match was played.

Moving on from soccer, my friend Celia came to visit this weekend.  I initially met here years ago in Baltimore when I was playing for CPB.  She was studying at a college there at the time as part of a student exchange program.  We kept in touch and have seen each other a few times since then.  Last year she visited me in Harrisburg while she was vacationing with her friends in the US and then a few months later I visited her in her hometown of Sway, England.  I’ll use this opportunity to throw in a picture or two of me in London.

That's me punching a bust of Hitler.

Anyway, Celia was only here for like two days, so there wasn’t so much we could really do.  I went to get here in Vasteras which is the closest city to Enkoping with an airport.  Unfortunately once I got to Vasteras via train, I learned that there were no airport shuttles running.  That meant I had to take the city bus to the closest stop and walk the rest of the way.  The closest stop was over a mile away!  Once I got Celia at the airport, I had to pay 200SEK to go back to the train station, even though the airport shuttle would have only been 50SEK.  Since there were no shuttles running, I was forced to pay the taxi price.  Anyway we spent a few hours in Vasteras before finally heading to Enkoping.  The next day I wanted to show Celia the town so we walked into the city center and found that some sort of festival was happening.  Actually it was more like a huge flea market with a carnival at the end of it.  Still, it was great that so much was going on.  Celia is living in London now, so I’m happy that Enkoping showed a little hustle and bustle while she was here.  The carnival was notable for one ride, which scared me to even look at.  Why anyone would get on a ride like this when it was installed literally a day earlier is beyond me.  It did lead to a big crowd watching though.  Sadly, there wasn’t much more to Celia's visit since she was here for such a short time.  We did learn however that bus tickets to Vasteras are twice as expensive as train tickets, even though the bus takes twice as long to get there.  I assume the train system must be subsidized to allow their prices to be so much cheaper.

In my final piece for today, I’ll mention that I’ve started the “classYfication" of my room.  I bought some wallpaper and that’s going up now in a quite cheap way.  I don’t want to buy wallpaper glue so I’m just taping the wallpaper up with the tape you use to tape ankles along with some clear tape.  Laugh if you want it’s working well!  I also now have a working stove AND sink-gate is over after roughly two weeks.  Still no shower, but I bought a shower sponge that I can use to clean myself easily from the sink.  It’s not ideal, but my place is getting better everyday!  I've also been paid, so that's great.  Less than I wanted but more than I expected so I can't complain.

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.

Hanging at the Poorhouse

You know, one unique thing about Sweden and all of Scandinavia really is that the sun stays out much longer than anywhere else I know of.  I mean outside of the artic circle.  As it were, I am writing this at 9pm and it’s still light out.  It’s cool now, but I think that once the sun stays out all night I won’t like it so much.  Maybe the first night that the sun stays out til midnight I’ll do a video and post it here, who knows.

In other news, at my apartment (which I now lovingly call “The Poorhouse”) now has a working stove!  This is very big new in my world, as it opens up dozens of new things I can eat.  Up until now, the only hot food I’ve been eating has been prepared in the microwave or at a restaurant.  Now I can cook just about anything.  I still don’t have an oven, but a stove is great.  I’ll be buying some pasta and pancake mix soon!

Unfortunately the stove is still only one of many things that need fixing.  I still have no shower (or sink, remember.  Sink-gate is now into day 10 with no end in sight.), no cable and no lock on the front door.  The only silver lining I see in all of these problems is that it gives me a really strong case for reduced rent.  If they cut the rent to, say, 2000 SEK then I will happily live the upcoming months with no in-house shower and I’ll be able to just buy cable if I want.  Honestly with the 2000 SEK savings I could probably buy a shower head and install it myself.  I just need to get settled.  If I’m going to stay at my current place then I need to decorate the place and make it more homely.

I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this yet, but I love houses and decorating houses.  I’ll give you some time to question my manliness……….

Anyway I went out the other day to look at stuff for my room and found a lot of cool things.  The real find though was the greatest store in Enkoping and possibly Sweden: M Kladhuset.  This clothing store is the first legitimately cut-price store I’ve seen in this country.  It is similar to a TJ Maxx in America.  The store has a hilarious collection of products, from all sorts of clothes to paintings to air fresheners to sewing needles.  I actually bought some sewing needles and thread and sewed up a rip in one of my jeans.  I know, I’m amazing.  If you want me to sew some of your clothes, let me know.  But be warned, you may not like my prices!

Back at the Poorhouse, I have been watching Netflix like it's my effing job.  Right now I'm powering through season 1 of How I Met Your Mother.  I just finished 2 seasons of Ancient Aliens (they butcher the phrase "clear evidence", btw) and I've also started watching a british show called "Luther".  I have 10 hours a day of complete downtime so I've been zooming through shows, not to mention watching soccer games online from nearly every continent on the planet.  For all the bad things at the Poorhouse, my TV-watching setup is pretty awesome!

That’s all for now.  Training has been going well, so I’m happy.  The sun is just now setting so that seems like a hint for me to wrap it up.  The next game can’t come fast enough but until then I’ll be training and exploring a bit more of Enkoping!

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.

--------------------------------

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!

The Literal Poorhouse

Hey everyone!  It’s been a few days but I’m back.  The club had Wednesday off, so I decided to do one of my famed video updates!  I hadn’t done one in a while so I figured I’d show you my “apartment”.

As you can see, I don’t exactly live in luxury.  I’ve been brushing my teeth in the kitchen sink, which I think is a surefire sign of poverty.  At least the Swedish standard for poverty.  The only other thing I did on my day off was watch the Real Madrid vs. Bayern Munich Champions League with a bunch of they guys.  Bayern won, but there’s no question that Madrid will win the return leg and go to the final (where they’ll play Barcelona, even though Barca also lost.)

Thursday was pretty interesting because I spent the entire day with Siggi, Daniel and Fabian.  In the morning we had a finishing session at the training ground.  For the last 30 minutes or so of that session we had a number of finishing competitions, with Siggi (much to his delight) being crowned the overall champion and me coming in 2^nd.  When the session was over, I planned to go home and rest before the team training in the evening, but instead I was invited to lunch with the guys.  Siggi offered to pay for my lunch because I was the runner-up in the finishing competition.  In reality, I know that he was just being nice because he knows I’m currently in the poorhouse.  I’ve been here for exactly 40 days and I haven’t gotten a paycheck yet so I’ve been living on the money I had when I came over to Europe almost three months ago.  I don’t spend a lot so it’s ok, but it’s still a bit stressful to only have $100-200 to your name in a place that is not your home.  Siggi knows that so he helps me out.  The other guys realize this too and offer to pay for me all the time, but I typically refuse because I don’t really want a handout.  I have money, I’m just trying to save it rather than spend it on clothes and meals.  Surely that’s not so crazy?

Anyway we went to lunch at K14, which is kind of a de facto team restaurant.  I’m pretty sure we get special rates there and it’s the restaurant where the club wanted me to pay 3000SEK (kronor) a month to have lunch and dinner.  I refused so I’ll (hopefully) get that money in cash on payday.  If I don’t get that money there will be one upset cookie.  After about an hour and a half at K14, they guys wanted to go shopping, so we went around Enkoping looking at the most Swedish looking clothes on the planet.  Daniel, Fabian and I went to a 2^nd hand clothing store, but realized it was only women’s clothing and left quickly.  At this point I thought we must be heading home, but instead we went to Café Wickman.  We weren’t hungry; our sole stated purpose for going to Café Wickman was to look at hot girls.  Keep in mind that this plan came directly from the coach.  We spent some time at the café then finally, mercifully, headed home.  Training was uneventful, but I was a beast and did well.  It was after the training that was interesting.

Siggi decided that we would watch a video of our match after training.  As has been noted many times in this blog, I do not speak a word of Swedish.  As such, any meeting held is really just a time for me to sit quietly with my thoughts while everyone around me communicates ideas with each other.  The only point I really picked up on was that Siggi really wants us to press our opponents.  I’ve never really been of the whole pressure school of thought on defending, simply because I don’t believe it’s effective.  People see it work for Barcelona and think anybody can do it.  You hear all the time, “It doesn’t take skill to pressure”.  Well yeah that’s true, but you DO need skill to actually have enough of the ball to have the energy to chase whenever you lose it.  Barcelona can press because they have 70% possession, they don’t have 70% possession because they press.  What that means is that if you have the best midfielders on the planet then of course you keep the ball so much that when you lose it you have energy to get it back.  If you’re not stringing 20-30 passes together at a time then it’s going to be difficult to constantly press.  You end up in a sort of track meet where you run like crazy to win the ball, then run like crazy to attack in the five passes you typically make before losing the ball.  I can do this somewhat because I’m quite fit at the moment, but for most players on this team it’s very difficult if not impossible.  Maybe Siggi rectified these problems with his comments in the meeting but I don’t know.

That’s all for now.  Today is April 20 and for some God awful reason it’s snowing.  We were supposed to have a small group of us do a morning training, but that got canceled because of the terrible weather.  Hopefully we can get some good work done tonight despite the weather.

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!