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:

Backslide

They just couldn’t stay away!

The cat’s already out of the bag for many, but I’m happy to announce to the rest of you that I’ve signed a contract with FC Haka of the Finnish Veikkausliiga.  The press release is up at www.fchaka.fi.   I’ve already put the value of the contract in another post so I won’t go there again, but the contract is for the rest of this season (October 31).

Haka vs. Inter Turku

For my long term readers, you will remember that club name.  That’s because when I started this blog I was actually planning on playing with Haka.  I thought that my European adventure would start at Haka.  It didn’t, but I’m here now and happy for that.  I’m now quite happy that I took the opportunity to talk to Sami Ristila (the head coach) when I left in February.  At that time, I told him that I enjoyed my time here and would happy to come back if he ever needed me.  Fast forward four months, and he needs me.  Well, he needs strikers so hopefully that means he needs me.

For those wondering, the ankle is fine now.  I was able to do a proper training yesterday and it felt good, so I think that injury is behind me.  It will still need a bit of time before it’s as good as my other ankle, but there’s nothing that my ankle limits me from doing right now so it’s no problem.

I signed my contract officially yesterday and I will be available to play come our next match on Sunday.  I still haven’t gotten clearance from the federation yet because I can’t get anyone from Enkoping SK to email over a release letter.  It’s annoying because the letter would take literally 30 seconds to write.  Even more annoying is the fact that my contract is finished with ESK and I can’t understand for the life of me why I need anything from them.  My leaving ESK was cordial, but it still seems weird that I must rely on them for anything to be available for my new club.  It would be like me breaking up with my girlfriend, then asking her to write me a letter saying we’re broken up before I can date anyone else.  I’m sure it will get done in the next few days, but I wonder how this process gets done with players who leave their club under less-than-ideal circumstances?  Like what if your contract ended and then you went and trashed the club in the papers?  Would you then have to come begging back to that club for a release letter?  It all seems quite strange to me.

Back in Valkeakoski, the city where Haka plays, I’ve been spending most of my time as a vagabond.  I was staying in a hotel, but the entire freaking place got rented out by a Russian hockey/skating club.  They’re not using every room, mind you, they just booked every room so they could have the whole hotel to themselves.  What a Russian thing to do.  I don’t even know what that last sentence means.  Anyway, I got booted from the hotel where I was loving life and now I’m sleeping on the couch of one of the goalkeepers.  I really don’t want to be an inconvenience though, so I decided I’d spend most of my day in the town.  Kris Bright, a fellow new signing and striker, is essentially in the same situation.  Our brilliant plan has been essentially to just live at the stadium until we get our housing situation sorted.  In the stadium there is a nice room with a huge, custom built sofa that could seat like 20 people, a big screen tv and wireless internet.  So we’ve just been sitting here eating food, watching the Olympics and Skyping people.

There’s really not much more to say at the moment.  I’m not quite settled so there won’t be so much more to say until then.  We’ve got double training the next few days and I should be into an apartment by the end of that.  At least I hope I am.

Now here’s today’s meme!

Can I get a high five for getting a contract? No?

London in Pictures: Part 2

I seem to have a bunch of new readers since I changed teams.  To you guys I say thanks and I hope you stick around and follow the blog!  To my longer-term readers, you'll remember that I went to London a few weeks ago and posted some pics.  Well now I'm posting the rest.

I'm all set to sign the contract officially tomorrow.  My ankle feels great and I should resume full training tomorrow as well.  I did some very rigorous testing of the ankle today without getting it taped and I passed my self-imposed tests with flying colors.  I'll probably continue taping my ankle when I train and play for the next few weeks though, just to be safe.

Anyway, here are the photos.  Enjoy!

Emirates Cable Car



Looking west over London.  O2 Arena on the left.

Big Ben

Emirates Stadium.  $28 to take the tour...no thanks!  I'll just take a photo of the outside and pretend like I took the tour!

Interior Courtyard at some art museum.

Farm Livin and Ankle Healin

I’m now with (hopefully) my new team.  I say hopefully because there are a couple things preventing me from signing the contract at the moment.  I’ll get to those in a second.  If you’re a bit confused as to who I’m signing with, don’t worry: I haven’t revealed the club just yet.  I don’t want to jinx anything until it’s done!

Like I said earlier, there are a few problems, one significant the other minor.  The minor one is a paperwork issue, but we have ten days before the next game I’d reasonably be available for so that’s not a huge issue.  It will get done, it’s just taking an unnecessary amount of time.  The significant problem is my ankle; it’s still 100% now three weeks after the initial injury.  The club knew about my ankle before I got here and it didn’t discourage them from making an offer, but now having seen me in two trainings they are worried that the injury may be more than a rolled ankle like I believe it is.  For this reason they want to structure any contract with a clause that allows them to terminate it at essentially any time.  This seems reasonable enough, but I don’t like it one bit.  It opens up Pandora’s Box.  If six weeks from now I pull my hamstring and have to miss four games, will they just release me?  It would be a dick move, but financially prudent for the club and perfectly legal under a contract with the clauses they’re asking me to put into the contract.  I don’t want that obviously.  Even worse, there could be a situation where I’m essentially here on trial waiting for my ankle to heal.  After two weeks, for any reason, the team could decide not to take me and then I’m in the awful situation of being out on my ass with two weeks to find a team and sign.  The only realistic way for me to do that would be to go to the lowest level possible where I could immediately wow the staff and get a quick offer.  Obviously that’s not the ideal situation.  I could very well end up stranded in Europe without a club in the autumn.

With all that said, I’ve spoken with the coach and he’s made it clear he wants me here and wants me playing.  He respects my ability and will give me every chance to prove my fitness.  He stressed that as long as I can play 100% that the contract is firm and I have no need to worry about anything other than getting completely healthy.  I mean, he could technically be lying but I just don’t think he would do that.  I don’t feel like anyone would do that, to be honest.  The staff has decided to only put me through very light training for 3-4 days to see if the ankle makes a big improvement.  If not, then I’ll have to get a scan to make sure there isn’t something significantly wrong with the ankle.  If that comes back positive (the wrong result) then there will be no contract for me anymore.

Anyway, I left Enkoping on August 1 so I’ve been at my new club for three days now, more or less.  I’m staying at a hotel at the moment, but the first night I was in a very different setting.  I stayed at what was effectively a B&B quite a ways away from the club’s city.  There was no internet there, which is why I didn’t post anything the past few days even though a lot happened.  There were farm animals and all that, but it was actually really comfortable for a city boy like me.  I won’t talk about it, I’ll just put the photos and videos I took.

I’ve had a couple of trainings with my new team.  They were actually both on Thursday.  In the morning it was just a handful of guys + the ‘keepers + some junior teamers.  We did some passing work and then some finishing.  It was pretty basic, but I was really happy to be able to test the ankle in that environment rather than with the whole group.  It felt the best it has since I hurt it.  I scored some good goals and was happy with my mobility.  Even at 80-90%, I’m a bit quicker and a lot faster than the majority of players.  I could easily play and contribute in a match right now.

The afternoon session was for the whole group and was light.  There was a big difference for me though.  My ankle was significantly more restricted and it showed.  My lateral movement was effectively zero and even movements that didn’t cause pain still looked awkward because I was overcompensating for the ankle in everything I did.  I did alright in the early possession drill, but by the end of training when we played 6v6 to goal I was unable to do anything.  I couldn’t run past players because of the small space and beating a player was out of the question because of the ankle.  I probably looked a bit like some kid who won a contest and got to train with his heroes for a day.  I’m not worried about it though because I know I can be an important player for this team as soon as I’m 100%.  The ankle is not a problem unless I get tackled there.  But every athlete is one wrong step or a bad tackle away from being injured so in that way I’m not in a much different situation than anyone else.  With ice packs and rehab I've improved more in the last two days than the previous two weeks.

Hopefully I can sort everything out and sign officially.  Then I can tell you all where I am now!  All I can confirm at the moment is that this team is in a higher league than ESK and that I’m no longer one of the old guard.  There are plenty of guys in this team who make me seem like a spring chicken at age 25!  I also don’t think I’m giving too much away to say that I’m still in Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland).  I’ll give some hints as the days go by if I haven’t made things official.

That’s all folks.  But of course I can’t leave you without a meme!

Three Little Birds

Bob Marley fans will get that title.

I was offered a contract today.  I haven’t signed it yet and I’m incredibly scared of the offer going away for some reason so I won’t mention the team just yet.  However I’m traveling tomorrow to go sign the contract so I should be able to let you guys know soon enough.  The contract is for a net sum of $1500/month.  Of course I won’t be paid in US dollars but that’s the equivalent amount.  I will also be given an apartment, so my only real expense will be food.  Maybe I can work out a deal with a restaurant once I arrive.

This offer means that my time in Enkoping is definitely over.  I pretty much knew that before, but it’s kind of hitting me now.  While I wasn’t in Enkoping for long, I did make a few pretty good friends and I will miss them.  I will see them in the future, but it’s a bit weird to know that some of the other guys I will never see again.  The same way there are plenty of guys from my Harrisburg and Crystal Palace Baltimore teams that I will never see again.  I guess it’s just part of the job.  My teammates are really just co-workers, and if one of us changes jobs then that’s it.  We just go our separate ways.  It’s a part of this life and I just have to accept it.

I can’t say I’m too sad though.  I’m going to a good opportunity and success at this club could mean really big things for my career.  I expect that I will have success, but then again I would expect that even if I was going to La Liga or the Bundesliga; I have a confidence that can never be destroyed.  It wavers sometimes, but nothing/no one will ever take my self-confidence.  That will never happen.

That’s enough with the mystery.  I’ll be traveling tomorrow but maybe I can get a post up in a few days once I’ve sorted everything.  Please send happy thoughts my way, because if this offer comes off the table between now and the time I can sign it then I will be really down in the dumps.  I wish I could sign the contract right now, but it will have to wait at least until tomorrow afternoon.  As soon as I get to the new club I will try to sign the contract before they realize I’m not any good!  Haha the reveal of the team is coming in the next post!

And last but not least, today’s meme.  It's actually a photobomb, but it sums up how I feel right now.  No need to dwell on the semantics.

Peace Out Sweden: It's been real...

My time in Sweden seems very much to be coming to an end.  I have a trial scheduled for later this week in Finland and nothing after that.  I’m a bit wary of that because my ankle is still not so good.  If that trial doesn’t work out then I honestly don’t know what I’ll do.  I guess I’ll just email every team in Europe until someone responds, but even then I have no idea where I’d stay in the interim time.  London I guess.  But as of now I have 32-33 days to find a team, impress them and sign a contract.  That’s really not a lot of time.  It gives me the possibility to have three, maybe four trials if I’m lucky.  I’m already stressed about that; I can’t imagine what I’ll be like if things are the same in two weeks.  Even if I don’t find a team, I’ll still probably try to stay in Europe and get a job, likely in England because of the language, as a newspaper reporter or something (I have a degree in journalism).

Ok, tangent--------------------------------

For Americans who follow soccer, it is common knowledge that England is the highest paying country for soccer.  It is also common knowledge that it is almost impossible for Americans to get a work permit, because those who apply for a work permit to join a soccer team must pass rigorous guidelines which I won’t outline here.  All you need to know is that I have a better chance of having a baby (like me actually having the baby) than getting a work permit to play in England.  But there’s always been something that I’ve wondered:

Can I get regular work permission in England (like a green card equivalent), then use that to qualify to play in England? 

I don’t see any reason to deny me to play for a League 1 or League 2 team if they want me and I already have active work permission in England.  On top of that, it seems a bit unlikely that at that level anyone would even notice.  At the same time, a League 1 team in England could pay salaries of like 6000-10,000 pounds a month.  That would be a sizeable raise for me without being an unreasonable raise in quality of play (from the highest I've played I should say.  It would be a big jump from division 1 in Sweden).  I mean the top attacker in League 1 last year was 36-years-old.  That doesn’t discourage me from thinking I can play there.  So my point is that if I don’t find a team by September 1, then maybe I’ll go to London, stay with Celia (I haven’t run this plan by her, in case you were wondering lol) and work at a newspaper.  There’s like 100 of them in London anyway and I’m good at writing news stories.  Much better than I am at writing stream-of-consciousness blogs J.

End of tangent-----------------------------

I trained today with ESK since I didn’t have anything else to do.  I’m pretty much just killing time until I leave Wednesday.  I paid Robert for his bike, which was stolen while I was in London.  That sucked, paying for a bike because it got stolen a week before I was leaving.  I could have kept that money in my pocket by keeping the bike at my house when I went to London rather than leaving it locked up at the train station.  Oh well, you live and you learn.  There’s criminals everywhere, even Enkoping.

Tomorrow I will train again and then I’m off to Finland.  I’m looking forward to telling you where I’m going, but nothing is 100% clear at the moment.  Developments are happening all the time and for that reason there’s no point in trying to look too far into the future.  Maybe I’ll do the trial this weekend or maybe I’ll sign tomorrow for another club entirely.  Or maybe everything will fall through and put me back at square one.  The last scenario is by far the worst for me, but would probably make for the most interesting blog.

No pictures because I’m literally sitting in Enkoping wishing I had more money.  I’ll put a meme instead.  A USA-themed one because of the Olympics.  It's from the hilarious Comedy Central show "Workaholics".  Enjoy!

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: