Slump Buster

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sitting Pretty

It’s been a tense week, but we did alright.  Two games and two draws against teams at the top of the table.  We didn’t necessarily play well for large parts of either game, but then again we rarely play well for large parts of a game and we’re 2^nd in the table so it clearly works for us.  Remember that fighting spirit I was talking about?  It was on full display in these last two games.  Teams that were picked to finish in the medals this year against a team predicted to be fighting relegation.  When the dust settled, we’re still above both of them.

 

Soccer wasn’t the only thing on the agenda this week though.  I, along with the rest of the team, visited the VPS juniors facility and watched the kids play.  A few of the players were coaches, so they were busy boasting about how much their team was gonna outplay the other player’s team and so forth.  I enjoyed getting out in the community because in general I don’t really do anything.  I train, then go home and either blog, play Playstation or watch Youtube/Netflix.  It can get pretty boring, so it’s nice to do something actually useful in the city.  Also, seeing the kids play brought back a bunch of good memories of playing for fun.  Being a pro is the best job ever, but it’s still a job.  For me, it has carried with it the stresses of a job for probably the last 10 years or so.  When I was young my teams all depended on me and now my job has taken me to a foreign country to a town I’d never heard of two years ago.  So it’s refreshing to see a ball roll directly past a kid because he’s more interested in looking at the sky because he heard an airplane.  I miss that! J

 

On Tuesday, it was my turn to answer questions on the facebook chat session that VPS hosts each week.  If you don’t know about it just add VPS as a facebook friend and the information should be there somewhere.  You can actually go there now and see the Q&A session, since I won’t rehash it.  The chat was fun and there were a lot more questions than I expected.  There was mention of my nickname among some fans being, “The Predator”, but I’m really pushing for “Jordan Seabrohimovic”.  I think you have to actually be good to compare yourself to Zlatan though, especially in Scandinavia.

 

I really hate talking about the games because anyone who cares already knows.  With the games coming so close though there’s really not much else going on.  The TPS game was incredibly boring and doesn’t deserve more mention than this one line.  The Honka game however was ridiculous and deserves to be talked about a bit.

 

Honka is a really good team.  They have signed 4-5 top-level talents for this league and have been storming through the league since about round 5.  How a team that lives in the shadow of a much bigger club and that couldn’t pay its players last year is able to go on a spending spree a few months later is open to speculation, but ultimately beside the point.  They dominated the first half, really giving us problems with their counterattacking style.  I can see why they have been so successful:  They have a strong backline that allows them to confidently counter in numbers.  Some teams counterattack with 3-4 players, but Honka was having counter moves of 6 or 7 guys running in all directions.  It was difficult for us to get a handle on, even though we enjoyed more possession.

 

The second half was very different from the first.  Honka predictably ran out of gas to play such an up-tempo counter game, so what in the first half was useless possession by us followed by a dangerous counterattack by them became just a ton of possession for us.  With that possession, and the arrivals of me and Grant Kerr to bring fresh legs and a different approach, we were able to be dangerous.  That pressure finally paid off with our one clear chance and Sebastian made no mistake.  We tied 1-1 for those who didn’t know.  The real story of the second half though, was the referee.

 

Now people who read this blog regularly know that I have a bit of a problem with the referees in this league.  Every game I get called for fouls that would never be whistled in America.  Things that I think are just not fouls at all.  Against Honka though our ref took things to a new level.  Not only did he blow his whistle every single time a Honka player fell for any reason (which was suspiciously often, almost like they were…GASP…diving?), but he didn’t call any fouls in our favor.  The papers mentioned two penalty kick claims that he missed in the second half, but in my opinion it was three.  The handball was obvious.  It wasn’t intentional by the defender, but his hands were away from his body so it has to be called.  It’s not even up to the ref to decide.  It’s as simple a decision as the ball rolling out of bounds.  It doesn’t matter how it got there, the call is ironclad.  The trip of Jarno was also obvious, but the ref was too scared to call a penalty in stoppage time.  The third incident actually happened against me.  Grant played me a great lofted ball into the box and as I chested it, I was clattered into by some defender.  It was as obvious a penalty as you’ll ever see and makes me wonder if perhaps I have somehow gained a reputation in this league as a diver?  I’ve never dove in my life (well……..at least not recently), yet I can’t seem to get a call in this league.  I’ll been elbowed in the face twice (things that would get players red carded in America) without a call.  I’ve been tripped dozens of times this season with no call all while being whistled for 2-3 fouls a game.  Enough of my little rant though, I just wanted to mention something that I did that might make our fans feel a little bit better about the ref.  When Sebastar scored, I high fived him but ran in the opposite direction of the celebration.  I tried to get the ball to give myself a logical reason of being next to the ref, but Honka immediately kicked it to midfield.  Regardless, I ran to the referee and essentially asked if he was enjoying Finnish summer, but with a bunch of American curse words he may have thought that I was insulting him and his performance.  Not that I would do something like that J.  If you’re someone at the Veikkausliiga office who has the ability to fine players, then I’m sure I remember just asking him about the weather, nothing else!

 

It’s midsummer today or tomorrow or both, I’m not really sure.  I find it weird that Scandinavian people celebrate this holiday, but then again Americans celebrate Cinco de Mayo by dressing in borderline-racist costumes and drinking Mexican beer made in Texas, so I guess I shouldn’t be throwing stones.  Our next game is against RoPS and Anthony is suspended so he doesn’t have to go.  He couldn’t be happier about it either, though he’ll miss us while we’re gone.  Until then though we have a few days off so I’m gonna go enjoy Vaasa!

 

The meme:

The Bromance and Matchday 4

There is a budding bromance happening in my apartment, and I’m not involved.

 

seems appropriate for my complaining.

As you may know, I share an apartment with Anthony Dafaa.  We get along well and have similar personalities.  We also both are willing to cook and clean so our place stays clean at all times and there’s no problems.  Our only real difference is our taste in music: He loves reggae; I absolutely hate reggae.  Well that’s no problem, right?  Surely he’s not playing reggae music as loud as his computer speakers can blast it 24 hours a day, right? Wrong.  I often have to ask Anthony to turn his music down, kind of like if I was his grandpa and babysitting.  To his credit, he always does or puts in headphones.  Ironically the headphones are worse, because then I can’t hear the professionally produced song, but instead can only hear Anthony singing!  Needless to say, even though we get along great, the bromance isn’t between me and Anthony.  Enter Tomi Ameobi.

 

Tomi just so happens to live very close to our apartment.  In fact, we can see his place from our living room window.  When he first got here, he didn’t have an internet connection at his place so he was kind of forced to hang out at our place in order to have internet access.  It actually was good for us because we all got to know each other better.  We all get along great so it’s nice when he comes by.  My relationship with each of them though is nothing compared to their relationship with one another.   In like three weeks these guys have become bff’s.  At the heart of their friendship is the fact that Anthony is the biggest jokester ever and Tomi loves to laugh more than anyone you’ve ever met.  I sit in my room watching movies while these guys talk and laugh hysterically for hours at a time.  Sometimes I pop out and have a laugh with them as well, but I’m certainly not in the inner circle of this man-love.  I mention the bromance not because it’s terribly interesting in my life, but more because I know that the fans love Anthony and Tomi so I think you guys would be interested in knowing that those guys are best friends.

 

I’ve been away for awhile, so I missed a few things.  The most interesting of which was May Day, a holiday that I don’t quite understand.  If I’m being honest, I missed most of the festivities on May 1 because I was a part of some of the festivities on April 30, if you know what I mean.  If you don’t, I mean that I drank a lot of beer on April 30 and slept until about 2pm on May Day.  To be fair to me, I did a hard workout at the gym on April 30 and May 2 so my one night out didn’t affect my performance in training or the match.  I don’t really have much to say about May Day.  I walked around the entire city which was kind of nice, but really it just seemed like a normal day aside from the packed city center.  The real action from May 1 came once I got back home, to see that my apartment had been infested (carefully chosen word, lol) by a bunch of my teammates.  Tomi had brought over his Playstation 3 and he, Bamo Alfat, Karsten Smith and Anthony were having an impromptu Fifa 2013 competition/tournament.  I am perhaps the only soccer player in the world who doesn’t care for Fifa, so I didn’t play, but I did spend about an hour watching these guys do battle and getting increasingly frustrated.  Just as those old at-home laser tag kits ruined many a child friendships, Fifa temporarily ruins friendships of pro athletes in their 20s (except Bamo, who won’t turn 20 until like 2015).  At any given moment of time, the two people last to play the game weren’t on speaking terms.  It was hilarious to me as an outside observer.

 

I’m kind of burying the lead here, but a few days ago we played out Round 4 league match against RoPS.  More than your average game, there were many ups and downs both for the team and for myself.  First the team got off to a bad start almost immediately with Henri going down with an injury in the first five minutes.  He tried to shake off the injury, but in reality he only served to end his shutout streak because a few minutes later a RoPS player hit an amazing goal from almost 30 yards.  It was to Henri’s left, so he couldn’t go for it, but to be honest even if he hadn’t have been hurt it would have been useless to try and save that shot.  It would have taken two goalies to keep it out.  Another down note for the team came later, when Tomi aggravated his ankle and was forced to come off.  Fortunately, he was able to get on the end of a…let’s call it a “cross” from Toni Bjork (It was clearly a terrible shot haha).  After 27 minutes he was the second player to have to be substituted.  From there though we played great and were able to fight back and win 3-1, despite me having a goal wrongly(wrongfully?) disallowed for offside and a missed penalty kick.  The team showed a lot of heart and proved yet again that we will be a force in this league.  We may not necessarily be the best team in the league, but I don’t think too many people are looking forward to VPS on their schedule.

 

As for me, the game also had highs and lows.  I started out with the bold and brave move to sit on the front row of the bench.  Usually this row is reserved for the staff, but I got my seat early and held strong through some confused looks from doctors and coaches.  In many ways I’m like the Rosa Parks of the VPS bench.  Don’t call me a hero, I’m just trying to pave the way for the people who come after me J. (note: You can call me a hero if you want.)  I started the game on the bench which no player likes to do, but I ended up coming on much sooner than anyone planned.  I scored a goal which got called back for offside, even though the video shows that I timed my run perfectly to Sebastian’s shot that deflected into my path.  I also drew a penalty kick through sheer hustle going after a ball that most players on the pitch assumed was gonna land out of bounds.  I’m fair with myself though and I realize that there were plenty of bad things about my game as well.  I didn’t provide enough movement for the team when I first came on or at the very end when I was a bit tired.  I also had some touches that would be more at home at the donkey World Cup than in a professional soccer game for humans.  I also should have done more to pressure RoPS’ center backs, as they were essentially just defender versions of me: strong, fast but with the occasional (and predictable) poor touch/pass.  If I would have worked harder on defense I’m sure I could have caused them more problems.  That said, I think those defenders are happy to know that they won’t be seeing me for another couple of months.

my goal: STOLEN!

 

Lastly, I’ve got mention again that my work in the gym is paying off.  I’ve never really been a huge gym person, but since I’ve been in Vaasa I go all the time.  I haven’t taken more than 3-4 days off since I arrived and it’s really helping my game.  When I first came on last game I created a chance out of nothing just because I was stronger than my opponent.  Someone (Jyki I think) played a long pass into the box.  I went up with the center back, and even though he won the header, I put enough force into the challenge that the ball fell to me.  I should have chipped the goalie, but instead I went for power and didn’t hit it right.  Later when I drew the penalty I used my increased strength to get the ball off the center back on the line and then fight him off.  He was forced to make a terrible slide tackle because he simply couldn’t body me off the ball.  Without weight training I’m sure he would have pushed me off the ball either on the sideline or somewhere outside of the box.  It would have still been a foul, but not a penalty which is obviously a significantly higher chance to score.  Those are just two examples of ways my strength training has created chances that I otherwise would not have.  Even though they didn’t lead to any goals last game doesn’t mean that I won’t get some going forward.  Anyway, I don’t have a bike yet so my plea for a ride to the gym still stands.  Feel free to honk your horn and offer to drive me.  I’ll be the only guy in the history of Vaasa walking around with dreads and a backpack J

 

 

The End of Preseason: Preseason Matchday 3

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted, but to be honest that’s because not very much has happened over the past week.  When I last posted we were on our break and I was preparing to do some extra training during the holiday.  I did that, and I believe it helped since I felt very fit in our most recent game, a 1-0 loss to Haka.

 

Speaking of the match, it was yesterday in Valkeakoski and was not a very great performance from us.  I played roughly 80 minutes as a right winger.  I wouldn’t say that I was overly dangerous, but I think I was one of our brighter players.  Even though we lost, I was happy with my performance and especially happy with my fitness level.  It sucks to lose, but to be honest it’s preseason and the focus is more on preparing for Veikkausliiga than winning every match.  Because of that we started with a team that while strong, probably won’t be the same 11 that start the season opener next weekend.  I haven’t looked on the VPS website, but I’m sure it has a better write up about the game than I care to give, so you can go there if you want to know more.

 

In off the field news, Anthony Dafaa and I are both still living in an intermediate apartment while we wait to move to our new place.  The place we’re in now is nice and has everything we need except a working washing machine for our clothes.  Unfortunately, the current apartment is literally 100m away from the new place which we’ve already seen and is amazing.  Imagine how antsy you’d be if someone drove you one day to a mansion and told you, “You’re gonna live here soon,” and then took you back to wherever you live.  After a few days, you’d go crazy wondering when exactly “soon” means.  That’s what is happening to me and Anthony right now.

 

Outside of the apartment, I’ve spent quite a bit of the last week walking around Vaasa.  You’ll be happy to know that I’ve finally taken a few pictures so I’ll put them in here.  I’ve also gotten to know my way around the town quite well, so I’m really excited about summertime.  I love living near water, and Vaasa seems to be just about the ideal place in Finland for that.  Turku and Helsinki don’t have so much uncluttered coastline.  Maybe I’m wrong, but I think that once summer comes it should be easy to spend a few hours just hanging out by the water without being surrounded by a huge crowd.  I used to do that in Harrisburg, PA when I lived there and that was just a river.  I imagine it will be so calming to look out at the sea here.  Maybe it will help prevent me from getting homesick.

 

By the way, thank God the preseason is over.  From here on out, every game has real meaning.  I can’t stand preseason, especially once I’ve reached a decent fitness level.  Obviously I’m not 100% ready to play a crazy up-tempo game yet, but I’m exactly where I should be fitness-wise at this point.  I’ve only been doing preseason here for a month, but I was doing preseason by myself in Indianapolis from the middle of January.  That’s just about four months of training just for the sake of training.  From our Cup game Tuesday until the end of October, all of our games will be meaningful in some way.  Important games are the reason that we play.  I understand that preseason results may be a source of pride for some fans, but for the players they are just a tool to prepare for the actual season.  No trophies are handed out in preseason (ironically as I typed that I realized that in Finland they actually do hand out a trophy for the preseason League Cup.  The final is today, no less!).  I’m ready to spend the next six months playing games, getting goals and assists and winning.  Our team is not perfect, but we should be able to beat any team in Veikkausliiga.  That should make for some exciting times in Vaasa this summer and autumn.

 

I told you there was nothing going on!  But hey, you sat here and read everything I had to write so maybe it helped the obvious boredom that brought you to my blog.  Things should get more interesting as the games start.  I travel to Helsinki for the first time on Monday so hopefully I’ll have a chance to get out into the city for a bit.  That should make for a half decent blog post.  Who knows though.  Today I’m going to put a GIF in with the meme.  Hopefully it works.  If not, then I guess I just won’t be putting GIFs into my posts.

 

The meme, from my favorite truth-telling duck (and the GIF):

 If you're having a bad day, remember...

Return of the Yank

I’m back motherfuckers!

 

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

The meme: