Summer is over...

It’s September!  In Finland, that means it’s officially the end of summer.  If you like the sun, then today was not your day in Valkeakoski.  Also if you like good weather, you’re out of luck.  All the good weather chose to stay in July and August.  Oh well, I’ll just get the radiators in the apartment going and live a toasty life in my apartment.

 

We play tomorrow against JJK.  I have absolutely no idea what JJK stands for, but then again I don’t even know what HAKA stands for.  It’s another road game, but I have no idea where.  I’m just going to get on the bus and then get off when it stops.  JJK is in the bottom half of the table and is slightly in danger of falling into the relegation picture if they drop a few games in a row, so they’ll be ready to play.  As for us, I think we’re ready to right the ship a little bit.  It’s been a rough time since I got here but there is light at the end of every tunnel and perhaps this next game will be our light at the end of the tunnel.  A win would put us in a decent position going in to the last two months of the season.

 

As for me, I don’t know if I’m starting tomorrow, but I know that I’m ready for whatever time I’m given.  This past week has been my best week of training and my confidence is very high at the moment.  I played especially good on Wednesday, when in my opinion I was the best player at training.  I don’t say that lightly, as I’m very critical of myself.  But Wednesday I didn’t put a foot wrong the entire training and it’s helped a lot for my confidence in the team.  I already feel more accepted by my teammates after that training.  They’ve seen how good I can be and I think that makes them more willing to really make an effort to make me feel comfortable in the group.  Now I just have to put in the same type of performance in the matches so that the fans will love me!

 

Off the field, I have to say that I am bored out of my mind in Valkeakoski.  There is nothing to do.  Normally when I move to a new place I can be busy for a solid month just exploring the area.  The thing is though, that I’ve already been to Valkeakoski twice before.  So, when I arrived last month I had already done the whole walk around the town and seen everything that a new person needs to see.  So now I just find myself stuck in my (very nice) apartment staring out the windows like the freaking Hunchback of Notre Dame!  The only time I’ve really explored has been on my runs.  I typically go for a run on our days off so when I do I always try to run somewhere that I haven’t been before.  In addition to seeing new places, it helps the time to go by while I run.  Unfortunately though I’ve gotten lost twice and ended up running much longer than I planned!  A bit of extra training is never a bad thing though.

 

I have no idea what I’m going to do for entertainment over these next two months.  I’m not really buddies with anyone on the team except Kris.  But he lives with his girlfriend and they don’t want me around all the time.  So I’ll probably end up just buying a couple of PS3 games and just play video games all day.  Hey, it’s definitely not the worst life a guy could live.  I certainly won’t be doing too much more exploring if the weather stays like this or gets worse.

 

I’ll be back to report on the match either tomorrow or Monday.  Then I’m going to London for the week so I may not have any posts up during that time.  Hopefully we’ll get the win.  Lord knows we need it!  See ya soon with some good news!

 

The meme:

Matchday 24 and Boring Weekend

I’m back.  I was gone for a bit but now it’s time to get back on the horse and do some writing!

 

Many of you reading will know that we lost again, 3-0 to Lahti.  I won’t say much about the game other than that 3-0 was a harsh scoreline for that game.  I’m not necessarily saying that we were the better team or that we should have won, but we definitely did not deserve to lose 3-0 based on the flow of the game.  That’s just the nature of the game though.  Maybe next week the luck will go our way.

This picture matches our situation.

You guys will also probably know that our coach got sacked last week.  I didn’t mention it in my last post even though I knew because I didn’t want to go spreading news that wasn’t already out in public.  I don’t look at any of the news outlets here so I had no idea if the media had been made aware.  Before I talk about Sami I will say that I was very surprised when I got the news.  It was a bit surreal because when training started Sami was there and things seemed perfectly normal.  By the time we had returned from our recovery session with the fitness coach Sami was gone.  Still, I didn’t think anything of it.  Then the owner came in and addressed us in Finnish.  Since I didn’t understand, I assumed it was a call for us to step it up.  We all know that it is unacceptable to lose 9-2 so I was not at all surprised that the owner would want to address us.  However, once the speech was translated I was totally shocked.  I didn’t think that firing Sami was even a consideration, even after such a bad loss.  I’ve never had a coach fired before, so my brain just never considered the possibility.  The decision is made though, and that’s that.  Bringing it up after today won’t do anybody any good.

 

I won’t say too much about Sami, as anything I have to say to him I can do directly and not via a blog.  But I will say that I really liked Sami as our coach.  I thought he was doing the best that could be asked of him and I know that he had the respect of every player in the locker room.  That may seem like a given, but it’s not.  I’ve played on more than one team that didn’t fully respect the coach.  It’s not apparent to the outside observer but it has a big effect on the team when the guys don’t trust the coach.  Like I said though, that was never an issue with Sami.  Also, Sami brought me to this club.  Even though he didn’t keep me when I was here back in February, he had the confidence in my ability to bring me back.  That will always mean a lot to me.  The hardest thing to do in this game is to get a chance and he gave me mine.  I will miss him, but I don’t think it will negatively affect my play.  I’m being asked to do essentially the same thing as I’ve been doing, so for me not much has changed.

 

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After the Lahti game we had a bit of a team thing at the stadium.  It was planned weeks in advance and was just a bit of a time for us to hang out together as a team and just enjoy each other’s company.  Unfortunately this event happened to come on the heels of three defeats in a week by a combined 14-3 so no one really wanted to see anybody else.  Still we had a brief discussion on what needed to be done and then got on with trying to enjoy the night.  I took a picture of the ‘party’ but I didn’t stay too long.  I’m not really a huge party animal and there was no way I was going out to the bars or anything so I just drank a few beers and went home.

 

That was Saturday and since then I have done absolutely nothing.  I went for a run yesterday and then to training today but other than that I have just sat at my apartment.  I’ve watched a dozen games, four movies, countless tv shows and played Final Fantasy XIII on PS3.  I’ve also eaten food, pooped and brushed my teeth (in that exact order).  I was planning on trying to get a decent grasp of Finnish, but I’ve noticed that none of the foreign guys on the team speak a word of Finnish so I’m not going to try either.  Maybe that makes me a dick, but oh well.  I’m just lucky that I hit the linguistic jackpot and was born to an English-speaking country.  I guess all the colonialism and slavery that has led a black guy born in America to speak the common language of the western world was all worth it!

 

That’s all for now.  The only other thing I want to mention is that Ronaldinho’s goal this week wasn’t that great.  He is one of the ten best players of my lifetime so far, but that doesn’t mean that his goal was anything more than decent.  He just muscled a defender then passed the ball past a hapless Brazilian goalie (Sorry to be repetitive.   All Brazilian goalies are terrible).  I saw a player named Wanderson score the exact same goal for GAIS almost exactly one year ago when I was in Sweden. There wasn’t a worldwide glorification of it.  Now I’m done.  The meme:

 

Matchday 23: (Another) Nightmare in Turku

The last game was the single worst game I’ve ever been a part of.  We lost 9-2.  The game went exactly the way it sounds.

 The team has taken this really hard.  A lot of things have happened in the last 48 hours and now we’ve got to get it together and move forward.  We play FC Lahti and a win would go a long way towards helping to keep this club in Veikkausliiga.  I’ll talk more about everything when my spirits are a bit higher.

That’s all I can write at the moment.  I’m too embarrassed with my performance and the performance of my team to pop up in any public forum.  If you like my blog, hope for a Haka win tomorrow and maybe you’ll see the old me again!

Matchday 22: Trip to Vaasa

Well, that didn’t go to plan.

Vaasa when I was there in February.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The meme:

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.

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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!