Sitting Pretty

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

The meme:

Back to Reality

I’m back after a nice four days in London with Celia.  I had a good time and wish it was longer, but then again I spent most of my money and now I’m in the poorhouse.

Celia

 

No matter what anyone tells you, holidays are a professional athlete’s favorite time on the calendar.  The games are obviously fun (sometimes), but they’re also really hard work.  Our weekly time off typically comes on Mondays or Wednesdays and we rarely get more than one day off at a time.  Because of this, most professional soccer players never really get a chance to take a break.  I know a lot of people probably sneer at that sentiment and think that playing a game for a living can’t be that hard, and they’re right; playing soccer is an awesome profession.  But if you had to run and jump for two hours almost every single day you would see why 4-5 days of not doing that would be welcomed.

 



me at the market. bottom right for those who don't see it.

I’ve been to London about a half dozen times now, and every time I go I discover some new things I like.  I’ve never been in the city when the weather’s been bad, so that’s helped.  At this point, I’ve seen just about every tourist sight there is except Buckingham Palace which has irregular opening dates.  This trip was more about hanging with Celia and seeing parts of London that the locals visit.  Celia has a fascination with outdoor markets which, no offense to anyone reading, must be a white people thing because it doesn’t appeal to me at all and no other of “my people” happened to be around at any of the markets we visited.  On the flip side, I bought something called a Tastecard for 30 pound and used it to get half off on essentially all of our meals.  Unfortunately, having the Tastecard encouraged Celia and I to eat at restaurants for lunch and dinner every day and I ended up spending a fortune even though Celia paid for almost half the meals.

 

Of course, all good vacations are inevitably destroyed by the trip back home.  And it doesn’t help when home is in small town Finland.  I actually like Vaasa quite a bit, but no one can deny that there is nothing more somber than a flight from a place like Stockholm or London into Vaasa.  No one is getting on that plane with a smile.  Leaving Tampere to go to London was like a carnival atmosphere at the departure gate.  Coming home was more of a funeral march.  It didn’t help that Karsten, Grant and I booked a return journey that featured 3 flights.  It also didn’t help that two of them were delayed, meaning that we had to stress our connections and didn’t arrive until about 1:45am.  And then, as if SAS knew that I wrote a blog or something, my bag didn’t arrive and I was forced to go through the ordeal of reclaiming my lost luggage that didn’t conclude until about an hour ago (3 days after I got back).

 

But enough about me; the real long-term winner of my trip by a mile was Anthony Dafaa.  My favorite roommate’s life got infinitely better because while I was in London I bought a Playstation 3.  I’ve been pleading with Anthony for months to split the cost of a PS3 with me and he has denied every time.  He claimed he didn’t really want a PS3.  Well, now that we’ve got one there’s only one gamer in this household, and it’s not the same as the house’s blogger.  I don’t say this to condemn Anthony because I like him a lot, just to note that he was the real winner from my vacation.  And he also now has his own controller, given to him by his brofriend J.

 

Well I guess that’s about it for now.  We’ve now come back and had two days of training and things improved dramatically from Monday to Tuesday.  I think we’re ready to play and I’m also pretty sure that we’ll have just about everyone available for selection.  It’s been a long time since we’ve had a fully healthy squad, but we’re slowly getting there.  The break in games definitely came at a good time for us.  We play against FC Lahti, who just hired my old Haka coach Juha Malinen.  That kind of sucks for us, since the hardest type of team to beat is one who just hired a new coach.  Every player will want to prove a point.  We’ll just have to counter that and step our game up even more.  I’m pretty sure we’ll be a better team than Lahti, but whether or not we’ll be good enough to win tomorrow is up to us.  A thank you in advance to any of the Geezers who make it out to Lahti on a Thursday night.  It’s far away but those guys and gals have gone further so maybe they’ll be there!

 

The meme and GIF:

 

A Chance to Relax and a PED rant

Finally a break.

 

The home ground.

We’re essentially 1/3 of the way through the season and we are about to take a well earned week off.  VPS has played 10 games thus far, and our 6-2-2 record is good for 20 points and the joint top spot in the league.  That said, we’re only 4-5 point above 8^th place so it’s a bit too soon to be putting our name on the trophy.  If I’m being honest, these first ten games really have not been the greatest soccer that VPS has ever played.  We’ve only really dominated one game (RoPS) and the rest of our wins have only come by one goal, some in borderline miraculous circumstances.  I’ll take the points though, and if we manage to continue at this rate then we’ll probably win the league.  But then again that’s a really big IF and the league still has a long, long time to go.  What’s for certain though is that we’re gonna have to get a lot better in every aspect of our game.

 

The last two games have been fun.  We won both and against Jaro we had a great crowd.  The Jaro game was especially nice because the atmosphere was in stark contrast to a lot of the other games we’ve played at home.  The fans were behind us from start to finish, and what do you know we got better and better as the match went on.  It’s almost as if our fan support pushed the team to improve itself! ;)  I took some video after the game, but I got just the ending of our two little celebrations.  You get the point though.  We were very happy to win.

 

 

I also got my first assist of the season so I was happy with that.  I’m a winger so my main job is to create goals, so in my opinion getting assists is more important than even scoring goals.  I hope to get many more as the year goes on.

 

The game against Mariehamn was memorable for only one reason: we won despite playing terribly and without either of our first choice center backs for 2/3 of the game.  Winning while playing bad soccer has kind of become a theme for our club (or perhaps a motif, for those of you who enjoyed English class in high school…I guess what I call English class would actually be Finnish class or Swedish class for most people reading this, but you get the point).  I would prefer that we played better, but I can’t really complain with the results.  Clearly it’s working for us and it seems we don’t need to dominate games to win, which is kind of good news.

Ball in the net against Mariehamn.  Jyrki scored and me and Anthony are happy!

 

If you're wondering what we were saying it went something like, "Keep walking this way so we can catch our breath."  I'm not kidding that's what we were actually saying.

I also got to see my good friend from Haka, Kris Bright.  We both kind of suffered through some really tough times in Valkeakoski and really only had each other (along with Nana Attakora) to talk to during that time.  It was great to see him starting and doing well.  Things aren't going perfectly at Mariehamn, but he's definitely having more success there than either of us had at Haka.  I also saw and spoke with a fellow Yank, my friend Monica Dolinsky.  We both grew up in Indianapolis with similar stories.  She was one of the top handful of soccer girls in the state and I was the same for boys.  We never actually spoke though until after college when we ended up in the same circle of friends.  Now our lives are mirroring each other again, at least in the geographical sense.  She was in Sweden when I was and now she's been in Finland the whole time I've been here.  I hope her next stop is southern France/Spain or something!  She plays on the top women's team in Finland so that's awesome for her.  She also gets to go home for six weeks this summer, so I'm a bit envious!

 

I don’t really have anything else to say.  At least nothing relevant to my life personally or to VPS.  Instead, I’m gonna go off on a bit of an off topic rant.  If you care to know what I have to say then by all means keep reading.  If not, then I’ll be back next week after I return from vacation in London.

 

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At one of our hotels, I watched a debate (from Australia, no less) about performance enhancing drugs, or PEDs.  Now before I go into my thoughts about it I have to say that I have never used any PEDs (at least nothing that is illegal.  I would classify anything other than food as a PED.) and that I don’t know anyone using PEDs.  I don’t think I would even know the signs.  The debate though kind of struck a cord with me because it confirmed in my mind something that I’d already been thinking: PEDs should be legalized.

 

When most people hear someone say this the first thing they think is, “Oh no!  PEDs are bad and shouldn’t be in sports.  They take away the integrity of the game.”  But think about that…every professional athlete takes one thing or another to enhance his/her performance.  I make protein shakes almost every day to help me recover and to increase the effectiveness of my weight workouts.  Protein is perfectly legal and has no side effects that I’m aware of.  Surely no one would say that I am cheating the sport of soccer because of my protein shakes.  So my question is, “why are steroids or HGH or whatever else people are using illegal?”  These are also performance enhancers that when administered by a professional have little to no side effects.  Steroids can give you man-boobs?  Well I see man-boobs every single day so it must not be that awful.  I haven’t done a ton of research, but as far as I know, steroids and HGH have no devastating effects when taken properly.  If you don’t believe that, then explain to me why we give steroids to little kids who have asthma?  Or why steroids are in every hospital in the advanced world?  Every professional athlete would have equal access to these drugs, and if given by doctors then the risk would be minimal.

 

Speaking of risk to athletes, I don’t understand what argument can be made against PEDs that can’t be countered by an argument of things that athletes ARE allowed to do.  For instance if I break my leg tomorrow, I can go to the hospital and get a cocktail of drugs, use state-of-the-art technology and have surgery.  I’ll be back on the field in 5-6 weeks.  Is this natural?  Are the things that doctors would do to heal me not performance enhancing in a way that the body could never possibly do?  Then why isn’t leg surgery illegal?  I would guess there’s a better likelihood of me dying from complications from a leg surgery than from taking FDA-approved steroids on a monitored schedule.

 

The last argument against PEDs and the one that it’s opponents always fall back on because of its emotional appeal is the idea that PEDs ruin the essence of fair competition.  That sport exists to push the body to the limit and reward excellence.  For me, this is the worst argument of all.  Lance Armstrong used PEDs, but he still got his ass on that bike after having cancer and rode it across an entire country uphill.  I would bet that no one reading this blog could match what Armstrong did no matter what kind of steroids they had access to.  Armstrong is still a dick and a bad guy all-around it seems, but in my opinion that has nothing to do with the drugs.  That has to do with his over-the-top competitiveness and pressure to succeed.  The same applies to Barry Bonds, a former American baseball player who never tested positive for PEDs, but surely used them.  Steroids might have helped him gain strength, but there were plenty of guys in MLB that were stronger than Bonds and never hit half as many home runs.  There was clearly hard work and skill involved.  These athletes may have cheated, but only because the rules are stupid.  Armstrong and Bonds were both super athletes before they took PEDs, and both are healthy adults now after taking them.  So why are they so bad?  And before you answer that, consider that Lionel Messi took Human Growth Hormone (HGH) from the time he moved to Barcelona at age 12 until some time recently.  HGH is a banned substance, but since it’s a drug that mimics naturally occurring hormones there is no way to test for it.  Plus I’m sure he stopped taking them before he became a member of the FC Barcelona first team.  Messi is (rightfully) celebrated as a hero, even though he did effectively the exact same thing as Barry Bonds, who is a villain.  There’s a reason why Lionel Messi, who is 5’ 5” tall, has legs like a freaking elephant.  And it’s his inhumanly strong legs which give him his inhuman acceleration and agility.  I would argue that Messi’s athleticism is due in large part to HGH.  He was a great athlete who became the best soccer player in the world thanks in part to PEDs.  No one though would argue that Messi has cheated or that he has become the world’s best player because of PEDs alone.  So doesn’t that kill the argument that taking PEDs ruins the essence of sport?  Did Lionel Messi not work incredibly hard to get where he is?  And has he ruined the game?  Of course not.  But how much more fun would soccer be to watch if there were 25 other Lionel Messis?  How great could Michael Owen have been if he was able to use steroids to recover from all those injuries and HGH to prevent more from happening?  How much better would it be for fans if the greatest players could all play until 40?  These are not just hypothetical questions; they are the reality if we just removed the taboo of PEDs.  Science is at a point where taking things to improve performance are as common as lifting weights or running sprints.  You don’t like PEDs?  Well then stop taking your daily multivitamin or cough medicine when you get sick.  And don’t even think about taking Burana when you sprain your ankle.  That’s cheating!

 

The meme:

Matchday 7-9: So many games

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

Sonera Stadium

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

Jyrki before the HJK game.

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

 

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

Going for a run the day after HJK.

 

Heading to MYPA.

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

 

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

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

 

The meme and GIF:

 

 

 

My First Goal

Well it’s been over a year but it finally happened: I scored an official goal!

 

that's about right.

Well, that's a little passive-aggressive.

Now to be fair to myself, I spent the entirety of my first year in Europe playing games where my team was being dominated for large stretches.  I also didn’t feature as a striker at all last year, so there probably wasn’t an expectation that I’d score a ton of goals.  Still, to go over a year without scoring is really bad for an attacking player, and I don’t intend to wait another year to get the next one (or two).

 

Adding even more satisfaction to my goal was that it turned out to be the game winner in a 1-0 triumph over JJK.  The game wasn’t very good for us, but we held strong at the back and snuck a goal.  I could even have had one or two more had the ball bounced my way.  Maybe it was best I didn’t score again, as my celebration has been taking a pounding among my friends and family!  But if they think for one second that I’m not going back to it when I score again they are sadly mistaken.

 

Our most recent game was against KuPS.  We lost, 2-1 and played poorly throughout the match.  There’s not really much to say about the game as it was so poor, but I do have some general talking points that aren’t necessarily specific only to the KuPS game, but to all difficult games.  First, I heard all week leading up to the KuPS game about how proud everyone in Vaasa was of our team and how we’d have such great support at the game.  It was true that we got a good attendance, but the mood of the fans struck me as a bit odd.  From the first bad touch of the game there were moans and groans.  Anytime something didn’t work out perfectly, there were people calling to the field.  Not that there was much to cheer, we did play poorly, but fans are there to cheer their team.  We probably deserved to be booed at the final whistle (we weren’t), but for a team that hadn’t lost on the year we had a surprisingly short leash with some fans.  It felt almost as if the crowd expected things to go wrong. 

 

I don’t think that fans of teams realize the effect they have on players, especially their own players.  When I’m away, people are supposed to criticize my every mistake (and I make enough to become fan favorites at some opposition clubs J).  But it’s true that the only place harder to play than in front of a hostile away crowd is a hostile home crowd.  Our crowd is far from hostile obviously, but the anxiety was plain to see and I’m not sure why.  We are a good team and we will win a lot of games this year.  We are at the business end of the table.  But that doesn’t mean that we won’t have bad days.  We had great support throughout from GH98 supporters group at least.  “The Geezers” are pretty incredible despite their relatively small numbers.  I’ll take the 50 guys and gals from our Geezers over 500 of the fair weather fans other clubs seem to have.  The Geezers even traveled to Jyvaskala (I can’t be bothered to find the proper spelling) to cheer us on last week.  That’s commitment.  I wouldn’t go to that town of my own free will for any reason.

 

A second point that stood out from the game was how inexperienced we are in coming from behind.  Now, this is a good problem to have because it means we are normally winning, but I think it’s something we’ll be working on more once we have time to actually train and not just prepare and recover from games.  When I came on around 60 minutes, I was put as the right winger.  But after a few minutes I was switched to striker and I don’t think I touched the ball again.  Normally when we attack we are trying to break down anywhere from 6-8 players.  But against KuPS we were trying to get past all 10 + the goalkeeper and we just didn’t have any ideas.  We have the players to break down any team; between the starting attacking players and the guys who have played those spots off the bench we have every attribute you’d want to score goals: speed, strength, size, technique, accuracy, cleverness, etc.  We’re also getting an understanding with each other that will pay dividends as the season rolls along.  We may not be the greatest at breaking down 10 guys, but hey, even Barcelona struggle to break down numbers sometimes.  If we keep getting leads on teams we won’t have to worry about playing against 10 defenders anyway.

 

The third and final thought I’ll mention has to do with this game in particular.  For the first time all season, we played on a pitch that was watered before kickoff and at halftime.  While this is normally a good thing, I think it kind of made things more difficult for us.  We’ve been training for three weeks on a bumpy grass pitch not dissimilar from the match pitch at the moment.  As a result, we’ve gotten accustomed to playing on that kind of surface.  With the field watered and a lot of the grass on the pitch still not deeply rooted, the field played very quickly and the ball skipped as if we were playing on turf.  Ironically, KuPS play every game (and presumably train) on turf and had no problem with the surface.  It was almost as if we sabotaged ourselves by making the field as nice as possible.  This won’t be a problem going forward though, because the stadium and the training ground are both getting to be really good.

 

Our next game is tomorrow in Turku.  I’m not sure how things will go, but to be honest I’ve seen a bit of Inter Turku and I’m not overly impressed.  They have some really good individuals, but so does just about every team in the league.  It’s never easy to go on the road and get a win, but we’ve already gone to Turku and won so why not do it again?  Plus I owe Inter a bit of revenge for beating me at Haka last year with a last second goal.  My season this year is sort of a mini Haka revenge tour, and Inter is the next target on my list!

The meme:

 

The Bromance and Matchday 4

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

 

seems appropriate for my complaining.

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

my goal: STOLEN!

 

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