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 7-9: So many games

It’s been quite a long time since I posted here, and boy has a lot happened.  Now if you’ve been wondering why I’ve written so little this month there is a simple answer: life just hasn’t been that interesting.  We’ve had games twice a week for the last month and we’re continuing on the same pattern.  That pretty much means that I have no life.  I can’t go out to bars or even the beach because I have to constantly recover from the previous game and prepare for the next one.  I could write about what’s been going on in the games, but honestly I think people have their own opinions and don’t much care about how I feel.  Besides, when you’re in the game it’s a bit difficult to be objective about the performance.  I’ve talked a lot about our games in my recent posts and will do some more again today, but in the future I’ll go away from that.  Anyway that’s the recap as to why I’ve been away.  I’ll try and post more frequently in the future!

Sonera Stadium

 

I think the last time I posted was after our loss to KuPS a few weeks back.  Since then we’ve played a Finnish Cup game against JJK (loss), away to Inter (draw), away to HJK (win) and away to MYPA (loss).  Now I know people are most interested in hearing about the HJK game, so I’ll spend the most time on that, but first I’ll go over the other three games briefly.  I’ll be mostly referring to my individual performances because it’s my blog and I feel like talking about myself.

 

The Finnish Cup quarterfinal against JJK was an absolute disaster.  I thought that we were totally dominated for most of the game and my performance was the worst of the season thus far.  I can’t explain why, but I just couldn’t get a foothold in the game at all.  My passes weren’t crisp, I gave a lot of balls away and generally just didn’t help VPS to win in any way.  I worked reasonably hard and had a handful of good moments, but that’s not good enough in a cup match with everything on the line.

 

Later that week we traveled to Turku to play Inter.  In contrast to JJK, I thought this was my best performance of the season.  Not to toot my own horn (which means I’m going to toot my own horn), but I felt like I was the most dynamic player on the field.  I say dynamic and not best player because even on my best day I’m never the most skillful player on the game.  My influence comes from being active and dangerous, which I was against Inter.  If you watch the highlight video you will see that 4-5 straight clips are my contributions.  In other words, for about a 30 minute span in the second half I did everything exciting.  It didn’t lead to anything so that’s a concern, but I was quite pleased with that game.

 

The biggest game so far in our season though was clearly our win in Helsinki against HJK.  They are the perennial power in the league and have an outstanding home record, even though they lost their previous home match to TPS.  We came in as big underdogs, but I wasn’t sure why.  We clearly have a good team capable of winning any game in this league and we have the league’s best backline and goalkeeper.  Add Anthony in with that group and I think our defensive-thinking players stack up with any group in the league.  When you have that sort of defense you are capable of having great success no matter what league you play in.  We started the game poorly though, and after nine minutes we were losing 1-0.  Things only got worse from there and we were lucky to get through the first 25 minutes without giving up more goals.  From about 30 minutes on though, the game was very competitive.  We made a few half chances for ourselves in the last ten minutes of the half and went into halftime with a bit of confidence despite being down a goal.

 

Jyrki before the HJK game.

The second half was much better for us, with our ball possession getting better and the game being played more and more in HJK’s defensive half.  I was told at halftime that I’d be coming on early in the second half for Tomi Ameobi and I was to play as the striker.  I thought that this was a great idea since HJK had substituted one of their stoppers and put in a guy who looked like he was 45-years-old.  There was no chance in hell that guy could do anything to stop me running for breakaway after breakaway.  However, Tomi’s play at the end of the first half and first few minutes of the second half earned himself more time and I came on instead for Jesper as the left winger.  The move turned out to be correct, as while we were changing the sub card Tomi scored the equalizing goal.  I like to think that, much like Lionel Messi, the mere suggestion of my substitution motivated the team to play better, but I don’t think I can take any credit for the first goal.  It was a good move to get the ball wide and crossed in, and then good composure by Tomi to settle himself and hit a good shot.  We were lucky to get a deflection for the goal, but who’s to say that Tomi’s initial shot wouldn’t have gone in anyway?

 

After our equalizer I was really proud of how we played.  Instead of going into a shell and just hoping to get a draw, we played even more aggressively and put pressure on the HJK players.  Ironically, the same external pressure that I complained about in my last post came on the HJK players in that game.  The crowd, instead of spurring their players on, starting to boo and hiss at them anytime something went wrong.  You could just look at some of the players and know that they were more worried about making a mistake than actually making a big play.  We VPS players on the other hand fed off that energy and forced HJK into mistake after mistake.  Finally, in a play that really sums up how good our team can possibly be, we scored a goal.  The play started with me, Antti and Anthony on the left side of the pitch.  HJK had the ball and was trying to go down their right side.  Antti stepped up to pressure the ball and I did the hard running to cover him in case he didn’t get the ball.  Then Anthony ran over and made a great tackle to win the ball and start us going up field.  Antti picked up the ball and ran 60 yards with it, drawing three HJK defenders.  Instead of working together and doing a bit extra work, all three of the HJK guys just kind of jogged alongside Antti assuming that one of their teammates would make a play.  Instead, Antii found a gap and slipped the ball to Jarno, who unselfishly played the ball over to Sebastian (who had sprinted 70 yards to get there, by the way) and “Seba-star” scored his first goal of the season.  It was a great counterattacking move that was worthy of winning a game like that.  When the final whistle came, I learned that this was VPS’s first victory away to HJK in 51 years.  I was surprised by that, but then again Sonera Stadium is not an easy place to win games.

Going for a run the day after HJK.

 

Heading to MYPA.

Three days later, we played MYPA and got killed 3-0.  There’s a lot of things you can say about that game, but I’ll only mention a couple.  First, MYPA is a really good team, much better than I thought they were.  They were fresh after a 9 day break between matches and we were playing our 4^th game in like 11 days or something.  Second, I think that the HJK win meant so much to some of the players and staff that we could never get ourselves mentally ready for the challenge that MYPA posed just a few days later.  While beating HJK wasn’t a big deal to me (I’ve played them twice now without losing), it was a very big deal to a lot of guys in this club.  It was the kind of win that you need to have a week to refocus, but we only had three days.  Hence we didn’t even start playing against MYPA until the second half.  By then, it was 2-0 and there wasn’t much that we could do.

 

The brofriends on the bus.  There were plenty of open seats but they sat together.

Tomorrow we play our hated rivals Jaro.  I don’t really have any ill will toward them, but if VPS hates them then I guess I gotta hate them, at least tomorrow.  I’ll be interested to see how physical or nasty this game gets.  Maybe a physical game will suit me since I seem to be the dirtiest player in the league at the moment.  I get called for two or three fouls every single game despite not playing any differently than I did when I was in America.  I think I was called for maybe 10 fouls in the entire three years I played in the US.  Meanwhile apparently nothing that happens to me is a foul anymore.  Against MYPA I got crushed three times and only once was anything called.  One of the three times I got elbowed in the eye and the foul was called on me.  Maybe tomorrow’s game will be one of the few that my normal playing style isn’t considered rough.  I hope so.

 

The meme and GIF:

 

 

 

Matchday 22: Trip to Vaasa

Well, that didn’t go to plan.

Vaasa when I was there in February.

I played my second game (of my 2^nd stint) with Haka yesterday against VPS and we lost, 2-1.  If you remember, I said here that I would start the match.  In fact, if you don’t remember then stop reading right now and go to a doctor because I’m pretty sure you have Alzheimer’s.  Anyway, things didn’t go exactly the way I expected and I was relegated to a place on the bench.  No one likes going to the bench, but I understood.  We have a lot of quality attacking players in the squad and we can’t all play at the same time.  If we did, we’d lose every game 5-4.  We’d probably win a lot of new fans, but not so many points.

The game itself was strange.  We gave up a goal within 45 seconds, and I still have no idea what happened.  I know that the goal itself was the result of our goalie having his pass blocked by the opposing striker, but I don’t know how that situation could possibly have occurred.  After that things didn’t get much better and we were on the back foot for at least the first 25 minutes.  VPS then scored a 2^nd goal and things looked like they  could get ugly.  At that moment I was thinking about how impressive VPS looked.  During my time in Finland I’ve seen every team play in person and no 25 minute span was any better than their opening.  But then Sami, proving why he’s the coach, made a brilliant substitution that changed the game.  A substitution that I wouldn’t have thought to make in a million years.  We took off one of our wingers and put in a defensive midfielder, even though we were down two goals.  This seems like a defensive sub, but in reality it turned the whole game around.  Within five minutes we had created two clear chances and scored one of them.  VPS didn’t know what the hell was happening.  We went into halftime full of confidence.

Now before I go into the 2^nd half, I want to mention again just how impressed I was with Sami’s tactical switch.  People who have followed this blog will know that I love tactical discussion.  I love analyzing a game based on how each team’s tactics affected each other.  That said, whenever I am on the bench I try to put myself in the coach’s head and think about what I would do to change the result on the pitch.  To be honest, I had come up with my own plan, which was to switch our customary 4-3-3/4-2-3-1 into a 4-4-2 to match VPS’s 4-4-2.  It would have defined everyone’s role much better and allowed us to turn the tide a bit.  Sami didn’t do this.  I don’t want to reveal what he actually did because I don’t want to give anything away to the opposition, but trust me it was brilliant.  I’m not just saying this because he’s my coach and I want brownie points or anything.  I’m saying it because it is the truth.  Once Sami made the change VPS had no response and the game became balanced and even saw us dominate portions.

The 2^nd half was much better from us.  We passed better than we did against Honka in our last game and we created some good chances.  In the time I was in we hit the post, I had a chip go just over the bar (I should have done better) and I would have had a 1-on-1 with the keeper but I was taken out.  The foul was a textbook sending off, but the defender only got yellow.  I was upset that the referee didn’t follow the rulebook, but then again you don’t want to argue for a player to get a red.  It’s just tacky.  The ensuing free kick from 20 yards out went just a foot or so over the goal.  A few minutes late the game was over and we went home with nothing.

She's literally more likely to poop
on herself than say my name.

I don’t think many people consider what it’s like for a team that has just lost a game on the road.  Nobody is happy, and even if you had some reason to be you can’t show it.  For instance, if I had gotten on the bus and had an email that said that my niece spoke my name for the first time (she’s 11 months so that’s not really likely) I couldn’t just go around spreading the good news.  Instead, I have to sit in my seat on the bus in silence like everyone else.  In addition, there’s guys on every team who feel a need to show just how mad they are about a loss.  It’s not ok for you to know you’re upset; these people need everyone around them to know they’re upset.  There doesn’t exist a losing locker room where someone doesn’t kick over a trash can or throw a water bottle in disgust.  I suggested shortly after the game that we should go back out and do a cool-down.  I clearly didn’t judge the temperature of the room correctly, because it was clearly too soon for level-headed ideas on preparing ourselves for our next match.  Ten minutes later though the idea was brought up again and a dozen guys went out to cool down.  I guess that makes me a prophet.

Another staple of the return trip of a lost game is the showing of the match dvd on the bus televisions.  Of course no one wants to watch themselves lose and most people aren’t in the mood for critical analysis of their play anyway, but for those who are it can be constructive.  This particular video though was incredibly annoying as it would randomly jump back 15 seconds every few minutes.  As a result, it took over two hours for the game to play out.  After that, we sat in near-total silence until we arrived back in Valkeakoski.  Fans may take losses hard, but they’re at home watching their favorite tv comedy an hour later.  Our job almost requires us to obsess over our losses which can be quite stressful.  Being on a losing bus sucks.

On the flip side, being on a winning bus is the greatest thing ever.  The coach effectively becomes a party bus.  This is the bus I was on when I was playing in Harrisburg.  We had just beaten the Rochester Rhinos to earn a place in the final the next week:

 That’s why you gotta win.  I’ll be back after our next game on Wednesday.  Hopefully I’ll have a video as awesome as the one above!

The meme:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

London in Pictures

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

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

And now: London in pictures!

Natural History Museum of London

Bald Eagle: America!

Nice looking Underground station

Hyde Park

Celia and I on the Thames (pronounced Timms) River

Tower Bridge, NOT London Bridge

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

double decker bus!

one of the Olympic mascots

Cutty Sark ship and museum

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

Lundun

'ello gubna!

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

Bald Eagle. America!

Celia looks a bit like the Dodo.

The Natural History Museum of London.

Dodo

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

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

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

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

Soaked in Stockholm and Team Talk

I'm the king of alliteration.

You know, since the day I got here people have been telling me about summer in Stockholm.  People say, “Just wait until June.  Stockholm is so nice at that time,”.  So being the dutiful foreigner I am, I waited until June and then visited the capital.  I went to watch Neven and the Serbian national team face Sweden at Rasunda stadium.  Unfortunately, summertime Stockholm didn’t quite live up to its billing.  When I arrived, it was a bit chilly but nice and sunny.  However, in the hour it took me to walk from downtown to Neven’s hotel to get the tickets, the weather started to change.  It actually made the walk more pleasant at first.  The overcast skies prevented me from sweating during my walk and I even saw some cool stuff like a bridge rising for a ship.  However, shortly after this video the rain came. 

Me standing under a tree in the pouring rain.  You can't see the rain because my camera is my US cell phone and it can only do so much.

It was awful.  I had no umbrella because trusty weather.com said that there was a 10% chance of rain all day.  I also had no idea where I was since I have no gps on my phone here.  My US phone has gps, but that doesn’t work in Europe so I had to wander in the rain looking for the nearest metro station.  After about 30 minutes of looking in the rain, I just gave up and walked back to downtown on the exact path which I came.

Once back downtown I did some cool stuff.  I visited the palace and royal treasury (sorry, no pics from the palace, they're not allowed), then sat down for lunch at my favorite restaurant (McDonald’s) before heading to the stadium for the match.  The game itself was actually pretty bad, but I enjoyed it a lot.  I got to see one of my favorite players in the world, Zlatan Ibrahimovic.  He’s one of my soccer idols and I can only dream about having his talent.  Also, Neven scored for Serbia so it was pretty cool to be in attendance for that.  The general play though was kind of sloppy.  Both teams were finishing a long camp and had one eye on the future: Sweden on the Euros and Serbia on sandy beaches around the world.  It didn’t help that after a day of storms the geniuses at Rasunda decided to water the pitch just before kickoff.  As a result the play was very choppy and all the goals came from set pieces.  Sweden won, 2-1.  I took a few pictures before my phone died on me.  For that reason I don’t have any pictures of after the match, when Neven came over and talked to me and the guys who came to the game with me.  He was even generous enough to give me his jersey, something I had not even thought to ask for.  I really appreciate that he did that and I hope I can make it over to Germany for one of his club games.  That would be pretty awesome.

While I was getting rained on in Stockholm, back in Enkoping the team got together and had their crisis meeting.  Apparently I was wrong on the attendees: it was players only.  Some stuff stays in the locker room, but what I can say from the reports I got is that the players believe things can and will get better and that our problems start on the practice ground.  We haven’t been pushing ourselves hard enough in training to prepare us for the games.  It was agreed that our lack of intensity in training was a big reason why we were having trouble dealing with the pressure and intensity that comes in the matches.

Curiously enough, after that team meeting, instead of training the boys went next door to a miniature golf course.  I actually think that that decision was a good one.  We have a lot of young players who may be a bit burdened by this season we’re having.  It is important that we do some things together that don’t have the shadow of a 1-7 record hanging over it.  I think that a team function would do wonders for us at this point.  If we were a BPL or Serie A team, the manager would have taken us to Cyprus or La Manga or somewhere to get away from it all for 3-4 days.  Then we could come back to our hometown ready to start fresh again.  I don’t know if the people who decided do miniature golf were thinking that way, but hats off to them for that decision.  It also made me feel better about missing training.  I probably did more aerobic activity by walking 4-5 miles than any other player on the team that day.

Yesterday’s training was a bit higher intensity than usual.  It was also a bit of a fitness session, though that term used here pales in comparison to what it would mean in USL.  I hope the team meeting has a positive impact on how we train from this point forward.  It was also the National Day of Sweden, which is something like US’s Independence Day, just that Sweden never had to declare independence from anyone.  I spent the day doing a whole bunch of nothing, and I loved it.

Our next game is Saturday afternoon against Vasalunds.  They’re currently in 2^nd place in the league so it should be a difficult game.  As always, I think we can win it if we’re confident and play to win.  The teams in this league are so similar in talent that your mind can go a long way towards whether you win or lose.  If the game tomorrow is 1-1 with 20 minutes left, then I would bet that the team that more believes it will win will find the winning goal.  If that situation comes up and we’re thinking that we should just hold on to the tie, then we’ll surely lose.  The inverse is also true.  Hopefully we’ll get the win and move from the bottom of the table!

Bad Timing

I have terrible timing.  Today is the first time in my professional career that I will miss training because of a previously arranged trip to Stockholm to watch Serbia-Sweden.  I’ll get to that later though.  The reason my timing is especially bad is because I found out yesterday that the club is having what I would call a crisis meeting after training tonight.  Personally, I hate non-player-induced meetings of any kind, but if the powers that be think that this is the way to turn things around, then I have no problem with that decision.  Unfortunately I won’t be there.  I’m sure I will get the information tomorrow anyway, which is probably the way I would have gotten the info anyway since I wouldn’t understand the meeting itself as it’s in Swedish.

Moving on, and I don’t have much time because I have to catch a train, the reason I’m going to the match tonight is because my old friend Neven Subotic is playing for Serbia.  Some of you may recognize that name from a post I wrote a week or two ago about Yanks Abroad and some of you may know that name just from generally following soccer.  The point is I hadn’t seen this guy for six years and he contacted me more or less out of the blue and said he was in Sweden and that we should meet up.  So Celia and I went to Stockholm and had lunch with him, then he went to do some team stuff and Celia and I explored Stockholm.  I have pictures but I still can’t get my phone to load them so it will be a few days before they’re up. [edit]: phone and computer are talking again so now I have a few photos.

Celia

Neven

That’s all for the update now.  I’ve been pretty boring since Celia has been here, so there’s no real stories to tell.  I’ll put some pictures up from the match tonight as soon as possible and also give you an insight from the crisis meeting, or at least as much as I can say in a public space.  See y’all!

I copied some pictures from facebook from the last game (at least the parts I was in) so I’ll post a few since I haven’t put any pictures up in a few days.  I hope you like them!

This is the pass that got me my first assist!