The Calm Before the Storm

BALLIN!               

 

Only one thing has happened to me since I left you guys last week.  Me and Anthony have now moved into our new apartment, the nice one that is 100m from where we were staying the past three weeks.  This is a big deal for us, as we are both now relatively settled and ready to prepare ourselves for the season.  It’s been kind of a long time coming, but now that the season is upon us the games will come thick and fast.  So it was very important that we got into our permanent place before all of that happens.

 

I took some pictures of the place before we moved anything in.  I’ll post the pictures of how it looks now another time, as it’s almost 10pm and our place is pretty dark at the moment.  But you’ll be able to get the idea based on these photos.

living room

living room

my bedroom

kitchen

Now all I need to do is add some of my own touches and this place will be home!

 

In other news, I have to make a confession to being an idiot.  I’ve been waiting for my first paycheck for a few days thinking that something was wrong since I didn’t receive anything.  Finally I went and spoke with the people who handle that stuff and they reminded me that I needed to get a tax form!  I would have been paid awhile ago, but I completely forgot to do 5 minutes worth of work to get my tax info.  The club offered to essentially pay the salary in advance, but I declined for now since I’m fine moneywise and I’d forget to ever go to the tax office.

 

As for the team, tomorrow is the big day and our first game.  It’s a tough task going to TPS and trying to get a result, but it has to be done so we’re up for it.  We’ve played quite well at times and if we can show the good form we’ve had in other games then I fancy our chances.  Veikkaus obviously doesn’t as we’re something like 6.05:1 to win.  If I was a betting man (which I am, just not on any league I’m a part of) I’d like those kinds of odds for VPS to win.  We have a strong team and we’ll be very excited to play in front of a good crowd on what is effectively a neutral field.  If any VPS fans make the trip, make sure you’re loud and don’t be afraid to come say hi to us after the game J

 

The meme (and GIF):

 

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...

The Good Life

It’s almost gameday, and I’m really excited for the string of games we have coming up.  We play three times in the next seven days starting tomorrow.  I’m in the starting team which is good.  We’ve got a lot of guys injured or suspended so we’re a bit bare bones at the moment.  Still, we just added three good players (tooting my own horn there) so we’ve got the ability to deal with players missing games.  I think we’ll do well, but come back in a day or two to see if I’m right!

My house is pretty cozy now.  My trip to IKEA helped, but I’ve also gotten a lot of help from the club in getting such a nice place.  I’ve shown you the pictures of the apartment so you can see that it’s really nice.  But the club has gone above and beyond to help me enjoy my living situation.  For instance, I mentioned here that I had been having a bit of a problem buying a bike.  I finally gave in a few days ago and asked the club if there was any way they could help me find and buy a second-hand bike.  Two hours later, a guy showed up at the end of training and just gave me a bike.  I had never seen the guy before, but clearly the club had just called him and asked him to bring a bike by for me to have.  Better yet, it didn’t cost me anything.  How awesome is that?  It’s not the greatest bike in the world, but it’s got two wheels and you can’t beat the price!

The next day, one of the people in the office came to me and asked if I had time to help him move a tv into my place.  When I told him I already had a tv, he said that this one was better and also had a cable box so I could watch tv.  A few hours later, I had this:

I didn’t even ask for that!  It was just another way that the club has gone to great lengths to make me comfortable here.  I honestly couldn’t ask for more.  No offense to my former club, but there is no comparison between ESK and FC Haka.  That’s perhaps not surprising, but it’s true.  Things at Haka are much better for me at the moment.

Some people may think that this kind of stuff doesn’t matter.  I mean, I would have eventually gotten a bike and I don’t watch much Finnish television.  But to know that the club would make such an effort to make me happy goes a long way.  I always give my best for the team, but perhaps there’s a little extra that I’ll be able to give to Haka that I wasn’t able to give to ESK because I’m so much more content here.  There is no question in my mind that I can take care of my body better here than in Enkoping.  I even have an oven, freezer, washing machine and shower!  I didn’t have those things in Sweden, so to have them here is like living in luxury!

The other day, I was hoping to go to IdeaPark in Tampere.  Essentially this place is a shopping mall, but it’s got its own cool name because malls don’t really seem to exist in Scandinavia.  Unfortunately, I didn’t get to go because the team car was being used by someone else.  I made good use of my time though, and decided to take a bit of a walk around Valkeakoski.

I only walked around the areas on my path from the city center to my apartment, but still there were some beautiful places.  I’m enjoying the good weather that we’re having at the moment, because I know what winter is like here.  Remember, I was here in February.  For those who don’t remember:

And I’ll be dressed like that again pretty soon.  There may be some hope for decent weather in September, but October is a lost cause.  I know that as soon as the calendar turns over into October that I’ll have to put the t-shirts and shorts away until April.  So I’ll probably be going on some more walks soon!

That’s all.  Now the meme, in honor of USA Olympic Basketball.  Look at the picture closely and you’ll get the joke!

IKEA and The Great American Bike Search

Hiya!

I’m speaking like I’m from the south Pacific because I’ve been spending a lot of my time with Kiwis!  That’s people from New Zealand for the non-cool kids out there.  We had a relatively light training the day after the game, then we had the afternoon and the next day free.  Kris, his girlfriend and me took the opportunity to head up to IKEA Tampere.

What can I say about IKEA that hasn’t already been said about Ghandi?  The place is a godsend.  Without IKEA my life would be uncomfortable because I can’t afford reasonably nice things.  Instead, for 100 euros I got bed sheets, a duvet and the filler that goes inside of it, two pillows and pillowcases, a nightstand for my bed, hangers and a bunch of bits and pieces for my kitchen.  The trip to IKEA went well, with one really random exception.

For this story to make sense, you have to know that earlier that day Kris had injured his ankle walking around town.  It was nothing major, but he taped it and elevated the ankle any time he could.  About halfway through the shopping, we found ourselves at the cafeteria and sat down for lunch.  There were five or six chairs at the table and only three of us, so Kris took the chance to put his ankle up on a free chair to elevate it a bit.  About ten minutes later, an older (60s I’d guess) couple came up and started talking to Kris, though they didn’t speak much English.  We thought they recognized us and were concerned about his taped ankle, but in reality they were scolding Kris for having his foot on the chair!  The husband said his piece then walked away, but the wife couldn’t let it go and eventually grabbed the chair from under Kris’ foot, almost dropping her tray in the process.  They seemed really pissed off at what was at worst a slightly disrespectful move.  In reality though, there was no disrespect intended, just an athlete trying to take care of his body.  For the record, I’ve decided to unfairly label old people in Finland as grumpy until I’m proven otherwise.

This picture has nothing to do with this post.

For about a week now I’ve been looking for a new bike.  I have one currently, but I’m loaning it from one of my teammates and he’ll need it back.  Thus, I need to find a cheap bike to get around.  The only requirement is that it has two wheels.  I can’t possibly walk from my place to the stadium every day.  It’s a 35 minute walk and once the weather starts to turn it could be a deathmarch.  When I was in Valkeakoski in February, it was -27 C and I had to walk to the place I was staying then.  It was a five minute walk, but I felt like I was dying by the time I arrived.  Multiple that walk by seven and you might see a frozen Haka player halfway to his apartment sometime in October!  That is unless I get a bike.

The whole bike ordeal has been a lot more difficult than I imagined.  I just want someone’s old bike, not some top of the line, Lance Armstrong Livestrong masterpiece.  In essence, anything that can get me from the stadium to my apartment in -10 C weather without me dying.  Not too much to ask for, right?  Well obviously not right because one week into the search and I have no leads whatsoever.

In positive news though, I’ve started to embrace cooking and eating at home again.  For my first two weeks here I ate out every day.  Today in fact is the first day that every meal I’ve eaten has been prepared in my apartment.  Not that that’s saying much, as it’s 9pm right now and I’ve only had a banana, piece of chicken, chocolate bar and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat today.

Ok tangent:

I don’t eat.  I don’t know why, but I have the smallest appetite of any adult male that I know.  When I go out to dinner, there is never a meal on the menu I can finish.  I would guess that, candy aside, I probably consume less than 2000 calories a day from proper food.  Still, I somehow maintain a 185lb (83kg) frame.  I don’t know why I don’t eat so much.  I never go hungry or skip meals to save money or anything.  Nor am I a picky eater.  In fact I love to try new foods.  I just don’t really have much of an appetite, and I’m quite happy about it.

End of Tangent-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before I go I’ll do my first ever movie review on this blog!  I went with the Kiwis to see ‘Ted’ with Mark Whalberg(sp).  It was funny, but not nearly as good as I hoped.

That’s the entire review.  What, did you think it would be good?  Haha, good one.  You clearly think too highly of me!

Next game isn’t until Sunday so we’ve got a few more good days to train.  I’ll let you know how things go!

And of course, the meme:

 

Haka Matchday 21: Smells Like Team Spirit

I played my first game with Haka yesterday.  We played FC Honka and tied, 2-2.  I didn’t start, but came on as a right midfielder in the 61^st minute.  I think I played ok, but to be honest I won’t have thrilled anyone with my performance.  I was able to show a bit of my ability, but the last 30 minutes were quite hectic and didn’t really have any rhythm.  Both teams played to win and felt like they would win.  It must have been an exciting game for the fans to watch.

Honka's stadium

There were two other new players playing their first game yesterday, Kris Bright and Jonne Hjelm.  They had rather more impressive debuts than me.  Both guys scored goals!  Kris’ goal was a brilliant wonderstrike into the top corner…(Kris' goal is at 1:10 in the video and Jonne's 3:55.)

Not quite a super strike :), but all goals count the same and we were happy to take it.  It was especially good because we had allowed a diabolically bad goal just two minutes earlier.  A lesser team would have put their heads down, but the guys who were out there deserve a lot of credit because they turned things from bad to good in a hurry.

We went down later in the game, but we kept fighting and taking chances and finally it paid off in the 88^th minute when a great cross from Juha Pirinen was headed into the far side of the goal by Jonne.  It was the culmination of a frantic last ten minutes which saw chances for both sides.  Honka must have been felt hard done by, since they had missed probably 5-6 really good chances over the course of the game.  Then we come down and score with our first great chance.  That’s soccer sometimes; If you don’t take your chances the other team will.  It’s almost like a law of the game that if you miss two or three great chances then the other team is guaranteed to score their first chance.  I think the result was fair though based on the balance of the game.  It was very open and both teams looked to attack.  In the end, we were evenly matched so the points were shared.

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In life news, I’ve been doing some work getting my apartment in order.  I’ve finally filled up the refrigerator and also gotten some stuff for around the apartment.  I’ve also put all my clothes up in the closets and set my limited amount of personal items in their place.  I took some pictures of the place so you can get an idea of what it looks like.

Closet

Bedroom

Part of the living room

Kitchen

That’s all for now.  No training Tuesday so I’ll be doing some more shopping for my apartment and hopefully getting a bike of my own!  If anything interesting happens you’ll hear about it!  I’ll leave you with the meme.  This is for all my FIFA PS3/XBOX players out there!

My New Apartment

No more living at the stadium!

I moved into my new apartment today.  It’s very nice and I’m quite pleased with the living situation.  The apartment is a bit far from the town center, but it’s only a 10 minute bike ride so I can’t complain about that either.  I’ll put pictures up soon, but I haven’t taken any just yet.  I’ll wait until I’ve put my stamp on the place a bit!

I might be going on a bit about my new apartment, but I can’t stress how much having a place provided by the club helps the player.  If I had to search for my own place I’d be lost.  Now I can just relax and focus on playing my best.  Right or wrong, I went on for weeks about how much I didn’t like my place in Sweden, and that money came out of my contract!  I don’t think that it affected my play, but who knows?  Here I have one less distraction.

Speaking of distractions, now that I have a place I’m forced to sort some things out and they are not easy.  First, I need a bike because it takes 30 minutes to walk from the stadium to my place.  I have one now that’s being borrowed, but I’ll need to find one of my own very soon.  I went to a store today to look at bikes and the cheapest I found was over 200 euros.  I also need some pots and pans, light fixtures and an internet stick, since I can’t get broadband internet service anywhere without a two year contract.  For those reasons, I might still be effectively living at the stadium for a few more days while I sort things out.

I've been spending quite a bit of time walking around this past week, but I don't think I'll be doing too much walking anytime soon because it is incredibly cold outside.  Last night walking home it was 9 degrees celsius.  Today in the middle of the afternoon it was 14 degrees celsius.  I thought this was summer!  If this is what August feels like, then God help me when October comes around.  It won't be as bad as it was last February (-27), but at the same time the games won't be indoors!  There will probably be some miserable days in a few months.

In soccer news, I finally got my paperwork sorted.  For over a week, I waited for my previous club ESK to provide a release to the Swedish FA.  Essentially, all I needed for ESK to do was acknowledge that my contract had expired.  This process would take five minutes, but for some reason the club waited until today to do it.  As a result, Haka and I have been freaking out trying to get this done.  If you're wondering what the form was, it was an International Transfer Certificate (ITC).  This form needs to be filled out for any player movement between countries.  It's a simple form and just matches things up so that nothing can possibly get lost in translation, more or less.  It would be a bigger deal if I had been bought, but since I was a free agent it was nothing more than a formality.  The fears about the ITC turned out to be for nothing though, since ESK got it done.  I’m ready to play my part in Sunday’s game!

I had a bit of media attention a few days ago.  The local paper, VS, interviewed me and Kris about coming to Haka.  It wasn't much, but it's nice to be in a place where the club means a lot.  In Enkoping people cared, but it's hard to have the same passion for a 3rd tier team as you'd have for a 1st tier team.  There seems to be a bit of excitement about the arrival of us new players.  We're all strikers so I guess that adds to the excitement.  Nothing better for a fan than a new striker who they haven't seen miss yet!

I kind of hate to say it, but that’s about all for now.  I’ve spent the last two or three days almost entirely at the lounge area of the stadium watching terrible Olympic sports with Kris.  Now I can use my free time to liven up my place!

And of course, today’s meme:

Party People and Where's the Beef?!

S’up. 

I'm so gangsta. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tequila, whisky and vodka.  WHY???

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

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

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

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

Taxes – 2850 or so

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

Restaurant – 1500

Wait, what?

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

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

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

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

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

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.