Veikkausliiga Predictions

I’m doing a predictions list, and I have to put it out now because the whole league starts playing in 2 hours.  I planned on posting this two weeks ago, and I actually wrote it on April 3 or 4, but it’s just now getting completed.  I don’t really see much of this in Finland, but in America there are predictions galore.  Hell, there are mock drafts for the NFL for all 200-something picks, even though no one in the world can be sure who is going to get picked 157 or 39 or 213, not even the people making those picks know until a few minutes before.  My list is not going to be as specific as those.  Instead, I will group the league into 4 categories: Possible champions, medal contenders, middle of the pack teams and finally, relegation fighters.  It should be noted that last year I predicted that JJK would be relegated and VPS would get 3rd, though I also predicted TPS would be 2nd and Honka below top 6 (that was before Honka’s still-mysterious spending spree that brought them 5 new starters in a week).  Without further ado, my predictions.

Preseason predictions for Veikkausliiga 2014:

Possible Champions: HJK

Let’s be honest, HJK has double the budget and more talent than any other team in the league.  I think we (VPS) can beat them, but how many other teams can?  They lost their most productive player in Zeneli and a great striker in Pojonpalo(sp), but they replaced those spots with Alho(Aho?...the black guy) and Forsell, so I don’t think they’re too stressed right now.  The championships streak has to end sometime, but it won’t be 2014.

Medal Contenders: VPS, KuPS, Inter, IFK Mariehamn

I think VPS will be #2 this year, simply because I think we’re slightly stronger than last year and our competitors are slightly weaker.  Simple as that.  

KuPS is something of a dark horse.  They apparently have tons of money and every year they seem like they should be one of the best teams, but inevitably end up finishing 7th.  I think if they start well enough to actually care about the last 15 games, then they can finish in the medals.

Inter had a bad year last year, but they got Ojala back and that’s a big deal.  His set play service is worth 15 points a season.  They also obviously have the striker whose name I can’t think of right now who always scores with his head (as long as he avoids threatening referees) and the winger Duah is a heck of a player.  They also have Gruborovics(sp) who is very good and I think they still have the dutch midfielder, who is probably my favorite non-VPS player in the league.

IFK Mariehamn is a great attacking team, but they will probably be undone by their defense.  I know from experience that it’s fun to play with a team that scores a ton of goals, but nothing is more frustrating than scoring 3-4 goals in a game and losing or drawing.  Despite their talent, they have a lot of personalities that won’t like being on the bench for even one game.  A good start for this team could put them top 3, a bad start and they’ll implode and could finish 10th.

Middle of the pack: MYPA, SJK, RoPS, Lahti*, Honka*

This is the “Why are we even playing?” group.  They all have talent, but probably not enough to win medals and too much to be relegated.  

Lahti has a star because they might actually belong in the medal contender group.  I don’t know much about their players, but the striker is a beast and will score plenty of goals.  I also like the tactical flexibility of their coach.  He will have Lahti ready to play 2-3 different formations which will serve them well.  They’ll be able to adjust to tactical mismatches in-game which will allow them to earn points in matches where the initial gameplan isn’t working.  This is essentially the opposite of JJK last year, who had such a rigid gameplan that they could be beaten by literally anyone.  And they were.

MYPA, SJK and RoPS are all the same to me so I’m putting them together.  All will get sufficient points at home to not be in danger of relegation, but each will struggle, especially away and in the summer as the season stretches on.  Don’t be surprised if any of these teams is top 4 in June, but I can promise none of them will be top 3 in September or later.  I’ll let you in on a secret in the league, and that is that every team in Veikkausliiga wants RoPS to get relegated.  No one likes going there, the field isn’t very good and there’s no fan atmosphere to make the game fun.  Ironically, that lack of motivation going to Rovaniemi is a big reason why RoPS takes so many points at home and is in absolutely no danger of being relegated.

Honka is another team with a star because I think they might actually belong in the relegation fighters group.  They have a new coach who was a great player, but I don’t know what his coaching credentials are like.  There’s a reason Michael Jordan and Zidane aren’t head coaches [edit: Zidane is now]...sometimes a coach’s personal greatness makes them unable to teach less gifted players how to succeed.  Honka also is filled with young players and that’s tough.  I had that situation when I played at Enkoping and despite our skill, we lost every game to more experienced teams.

Relegation fighters: Jaro, TPS

Jaro is here every year, and they never actually get relegated so I don’t know what more to say about them.  They have one of the top coaches, but their lack of money and unwillingness to win ugly puts them in this group.  They tried to be pragmatic in the last game we played against them last season and embarrassed themselves.  They simply don’t bring in players who fit that fighting style that is so important in the first 5 and last 5 games in this league.  The ironic thing is that Jaro would probably have more success in Allsvenskan, which is a better league than Veikkausliiga, because the games are more based on possession and finesse than fighting.

I don’t know one thing about TPS except that Patrick Lomski is playing there now and that they are in financial trouble.  They had to get rid of a bunch of players and seem to be going into this season with a bunch of young hopefuls and lower division talent with a very good british guy running the midfield.  Sounds eerily alot like Haka in 2012.

That’s the preview.  Feel free to shower me with praise in November when my predictions are shown to be true.  Just call me Blackstradamus. If I'm horribly wrong, well then screw you make your own predictions and leave me alone :)

Am I Famous?

I must be, because I've been in the media (social and real) this week.

I got a bunch of twitter followers last weekend because I was mentioned on the live match tracker someone was doing.  I had completely forgotten that I had twitter, only to get 16 emails telling me that I had a new follower.  You would think twitter would have figured out a better way to do that, but oh well.  I guess I have to start “tweeting” now to justify my newfound support!  

Not to bury the lead (or “lede” for the purists out there) but I’m putting one of my email addresses in the about me section of this blog.  I’m doing this because I often get feedback via other mediums and I wanted anyone who wanted to voice their opinion to have a direct line.

I was also made aware that the story by Lari Vesander http://jalkapallolehti.fi/pitka-kotimatka/ was published.  We spoke on facebook for quite a long time and I’m happy with how the story turned out.  It was very well written (at least the google translate was well written) and a good representation of my time.  I majored in journalism in college and I can only hope to one day write a feature piece as good as this.  I had actually forgotten some of my feelings when I was doing all those trials in 2012.  It’s strange to admit because sharing my story with others has become such a big part of this blog, but originally the blog was only supposed to be for me.  A way to remember everything that I did and where I came from.  Inadvertently the blog did exactly what it was supposed to do, for me at least.  To answer a question posed in the story, the reason I did so many more posts in 2012 (February and March especially) is because it was meant only for me and a few select friends and family whom I’d tell about the blog.  In that way it was more a journal than blog.

Also you’ll all be happy to know that I’m much happier now than I’ve been at any other time since I’ve been playing in Europe.  For a three week period that included only 2 games and a bunch of double trainings, my March in Vaasa went surprisingly fast.  The days only go by faster once the season begins so I’m sure this year won’t drag on like others have.  Before I know it I’ll be in the city center in from of the people with my silver (let’s not get crazy and say gold) medal thinking, “Where has the time gone?”.

The kid problem at my apartment is starting to get out of hand. Today I was almost caught in the crossfire of a watergun battle and later ruined a game of tag just by walking into my apartment building. Back in my day kids had some sense. And we walked to school 5 miles. Uphill both ways. And always in snow, even in the summer.

In happy news, we’re done with our two-a-day trainings and the season finally feels like it’s here!  That means a lot of things, but apparently for one of my teammates that means dressing up.  Now, I’m not against wearing nice things into training, but as you’ll soon see my friend Frido takes it to a whole different level.  Can you say “Paris Fashion Week?”

There are no words.

It was -1 outside.

To be fair to Frido I put an actual picture from Paris fashion week. I typed “fashion week shorts men” into google and that was the least ridiculous picture I could find.  Don’t believe me?  Click this link.  I dare you.

https://www.google.com/search?q=fashion+week+shorts+men&rlz=1CASMAE_enFI549FI549&espv=210&es_sm=93&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=fJU9U5rpGILj4QTrjYHwAQ&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=611

First game is Sunday and I doubt I’ll check in before then.  I’ll try to take some video during the trip, but no promises.  Apparently people don’t like their daily lives to be filmed for a blog.  Who knew?

The meme (Frido's outfit if he ever gets rich enough to buy it):

Settling

We lost.

I know I said otherwise earlier, but now that we’ve lost I realized I didn’t actually want to win the League Cup anyway.  At least that’s the party line at the moment.  We unfortunately played much like a team still in preseason, lacking any real cohesion and missing chances that we would otherwise score.  I’m not going to recap the game because most of the people reading this were either there or have already heard everything.  Like always though, I’ll make a few notes:

-The SJK goal should not have counted because of a handball.  It was obvious and not really up for debate.

-I was pulled down in the box in the final moments of the game.  The ref told me after that he saw me get pulled, but that I fell too easily.  I told him that I fell easily because I was only on one leg since the other was swinging to shoot the ball, but he said he didn’t see it that away.  We agreed to disagree.

-Despite the loss and being shutout, I felt we were the better team.  I am very sure that we’ll finish above SJK in this year’s table, barring some unforseen catastrophe.

As for me personally, I played 25 minutes and felt very good physically.  However, my understanding with my teammates was perhaps the worst of anyone on the pitch, which makes sense since I haven’t played with any of these guys in quite some time.  I squandered great passes from Anthony and Nganbe because I wasn’t quite on the same page as those guys.

Back in everyday life, things are starting to come together.  I’m getting a bike tomorrow (or not, since this same guy took a month to get a bike that was promised to me last year…).  My first order of business on the bike will be to ride to Jysk/Sotka/somewhere and try to find a mattress for my bed, since currently I’m sleeping on a glorified table.  After that, the interior designer in me is going to decorate my apartment and make it my own.  One of the most important things off the field for a player, especially a foreign player, is to have an apartment that feels like home.  That can mean things from home that you can’t find in your adopted country (in my case, grape jelly.  I bought 4 jars of grape jelly so that I can make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches) or it could be simply having a place that makes you comfortable.  I’ve already started that process by buying my bed and a couch from a secondhand furniture store that I somehow never knew about.  I’ll finish the job and put up pictures so that you can all admire my work!

There are some negatives about my place.  First, I had no say in the matter which sucked because I had spent a ton of time finding potential places to live.  My place is nice, just not my first choice.  Or second.  Or third.  You get the point.  It’s also costing me about 100 euros more per month, effectively so I can have a bigger kitchen.  No thanks.  I only cook because if I didn’t I would die.  That’s literally the only reason.

There’s also like a thousand kids that seem to spend the entire day playing outside my apartment.  I may sound like an old man, but these damn kids need to play somewhere else!  Some of us have absolutely nothing to do all day and want to be left in peace!

That’s all.  I’ll try to get a video post up soon just to have something different.

Shit's Getting Real

It’s officially time for the games to get real.  Starting this weekend, every game counts for something.  This is always one of my favorite times of the year because a few things happen simultaneously: We train less, play more and actually get to celebrate our goals.  In preseason you train an insane amount, play almost never and have to pretend like you’re not happy about scoring.  Thank goodness it’s time for the bright lights to come on!

Last week we trained our asses off because we had the weekend off.  We had double trainings on three of the days and got into the gym as well.  We ran fitness every day and generally made the most of our last non-game week for the next two months.  The guys are super fit just like last year, and that will help us a lot because I don’t think many Finnish teams make fitness a priority.  We ran circles around teams last year in the 2nd halves and specifically the last 20 minutes of games.  If you don’t believe me, go back and see how many times we came from behind to win or draw last year.  It must have been 7-8 times at least.  As for me personally I’m happy with where my fitness is, but I realize that this is my last opportunity to really build my fitness level for quite some time.  My game is based almost solely around running, so the more I can run (and specifically, sprint), the better player I’ll be.  I’m essentially going to train through the League Cup final to give myself one week extra to prepare for Veikkausliiga.  It won’t affect my play this weekend anyway, as I’ll likely not play huge minutes.  I don’t know what the lineup will be, but seeing as this will be only my second game I can’t imagine I’ll play 90 minutes.  When you think about that, it would be almost irresponsible for me as a professional to not do a bit extra work to get caught up to my teammates’ fitness.

On Friday we had only one training and then were given the weekend off.  That gave me some time to try and get some stuff done.  I finally got my phone setup, so I’m on the grid!  I also sorted out my credit cards so that I no longer had to fear starving to death because I can’t buy things.  I wanted to look at apartments, but apparently in Finland no rental company has any interest in getting tenants for their open apartments.  I emailed one company, who waited three days then emailed me back to offer me an apartment that met not a single one of my criteria.  I then walked into a particular rental company, the same company that I used last year for my apartment by the way, and they proceeded to tell me that they’d call me later with options...WHAT?  I’m tempted to go on a rant here, but I’ll hold back and just give you the thesis of my rant:  Why would a leasing company not show empty apartments to a prospective tenant who is ready to move in immediately?  Why would this process possibly be so difficult?  There is literally no risk of non-payment since VPS is paying for it anyway, so I can’t figure out why this has become so difficult.

The free weekend also meant that the team was able to have a bonding night/team party.  The less said about it the better, but I did take one picture before cameras were turned off.  Just know it was a good night and a necessary thing to help build the kind of team spirit that wins games in the summer.

Don't talk shit about the picture quality, it's a new phone and I'm not good with the camera!

Because of the team party, Saturday was necessarily a lazy day.  I literally did nothing.

Sunday I did laundry, but not in the way that you probably do laundry.  Being in the hotel is like being homeless for a lot of things, laundry being one of them.  I can’t afford to wash my clothes at the hotel, so I end up just doubling up everything besides underwear.  Unfortunately, I only had a two weeks supply of underwear more or less and by Sunday the situation was getting a bit dangerous!  Fortunately for me, a friend stepped up and let me wash clothes at their house.  The fact that I even found someone to help me is a big step forward over last year.  I think I’m going to achieve my goal of being more social and involved in the happenings of Vaasa this year.  That night I watched the Real Madrid - Barcelona game and wow...what a classic.  So many stars playing so well in an up and down game.  If only every game was like that.

He and I were born the same week.  Depressing.

We’re back to training now, and the next couple of days will be hard training like last week.  We have Wednesday off, and after that our attention will turn to SJK and the League Cup final.  We really want to win this game, and it would be my first ever professional trophy, so I’m really excited about it.  There should also be pretty good weather and a big crowd which is always fun.

I’ll check in again before the game!

Getting back into it

On to the Final!

Saturday night was one of the best games I've been a part of with VPS.  We won 4-0, but that only tells part of the story.  After a rocky first five minutes which included a missed penalty from Mariehamn, we dominated the game and the score was fair.

Fortunately because of the comfortable scoreline I was able to come on for the last 10 or 15 minutes.  It was a good first runout back with the guys, though it was terribly cold and my feet were frozen.  I can't wear the same shoes anymore in cold weather.  As for my play there wasn't much to say.  I didn't touch the ball once until the last play of the game, but my touch did result in a scramble and goal by Nganbe Nganbe.  

Speaking of that goal by Frido (Nganbe's given name), it must put fear in the hearts of every coach and defense in the league.  In roughly 15 seconds, we took the ball from the goalkeeper's hands to scoring at the other end.  At one point in the attack, the IFK Mariehamn defense would have seen Frido, Steven and me all running at them full speed with Sebastian having the ball and his choice of who to play.  Even though IFK had four guys back it didn't help and we scored.  It definitely won't be the last time we score a lightning fast counterattack goal this year!

The trip home from Mariehamn was typically horrendous.  While I like the ferry, I absolute hate the trip itself.  We have to leave a day early when we play Mariehamn and spend most of the time between leaving Vaasa and arriving in Mariehamn in transit which is terrible for match preparation.  And I don’t want to hear about how Mariehamn has to deal with it every game.  They travel overnight so they get a proper night’s rest and then travel in the morning by bus like every other team.  It’s not a fair comparison.  It sucks that we have to make the trip again in only a month.  It takes a lot out of the players.

Since we’ve gotten back to Vaasa I’ve been in full fledged getting situated mode.  I’ve been looking at apartments and trying to get my new cell phone to work over here.  I’ve also got to get a residence permit again for some reason, which is an expensive and god-awfully slow process.

Tomorrow is a free day so I’m popping down to Helsinki to take care of a few things.  Someone needs to run for president (prime minister?) of Finland on the platform of simply lowering train tickets.  I’m sure if you promised that and nothing else you’d be a wildly popular candidate.  I’ll be in Helsinki for 18 hours, and it’ll cost me more than a typical trip to London!  I’ll be sure to take some pictures to remember my short visit.

That’s it.  I’ll talk more about SJK going into next weekend’s game.  Or maybe not since I don’t know a single thing about SJK except that they’re from Seinajoki, wear black and gold and have a small army of players signed. Maybe I'll look some stuff up on wikipedia.

The meme:

The Return

I had a funny joke I was gonna do with the title but the headline box won't let me do it.  Actually, I'll just do it here.  Consider this the actual headline (clears throat):

"Return of the King Prince Hearthrob Star Good player ... The Return"

Thank you, thank you.  Don't forget to tip your waitress.  And what am I saying? Of course I'm a heathrob!  Anywho, back to the task at hand.  After months of nothing I'm back on the proverbial wagon and blogging again.  Why, you might ask?  This is why.

It’s exactly what it looks like.

I have re-signed with VPS and I’m back in Vaasa.  I’m once again a Yank Abroad!  

I think this gif will be reused.  I, like this gentleman, am committed to keep blogging! No matter the situation :)

It’s a new year and therefore I have some resolutions for this blog.  First, I will post more than I did last year.  Second, I will make the posts shorter so that the blog is more readable (though I’m sure some 1500-word posts are still to come this year).  Third, I will be sure to put in more pictures and videos because I think they better show what it’s like to be in my and my teammates’ shoes.

I said it a bit in the brief interview I gave for the VPS website, but I wanted to reiterate that I’m really happy to return to VPS and be a part of a team where I’m respected and trusted to do my job well.  This is the first time in my career that I’ll get a chance to play two full seasons with the same club and I am sure that continuity will make me play better.  My best games last year came after I had my option picked up in the summer and I knew I was accepted as an important member of the squad rather than some extended trialist.  Now that good feeling that I had playing in August-October of last year is here already in March.  I’m excited about what that means for myself and VPS.

For those interested in my salary, I will disclose that (probably not so specifically as last year, but a decent ballpark figure). I just didn't want to put it in this post because in my experience thousands of not-so-interested people will read this post and then only a few hundred will read the subsequent post. It's those few hundred who really care about me and VPS who I think deserve to know what we earn. Random people who stumble across this blog as the news of the day don't care what we make and thus don't need to know. I put my salary last year so that our fans (and perhaps fans of other Veikkausliiga clubs) would know that there are circumstances that can affect a player than fans never think about. Maybe the player you love to hate isn't running because he hasn't had a decent dinner because he makes 800 euros a month and payday isn't until next week. Or maybe one of your players takes a stupid yellow card because he's frustrated with working his ass off and making less than the people yelling at him from the stands. Those are totally made up situations so you know, but the idea is the same. Though I'll have you know though that I played every game last year on a full stomach and only took stupid yellow cards because I am, in fact, stupid :)

That's all for now. I've got some notes to finish the post.

-I have spent the entire winter collecting an infinite supply of gifs/memes that reflect any possible emotion, and/or are hilarious.  So there’s probably gonna be a gif in every post.  Deal with it.  Examples below:

-Getty has inexplicably made their entire library free out of nowhere, so the stock photo value of the blog is about to go through the roof.  I can’t however guarantee that the stock photos I use will have anything to do with what I’m writing.  Examples (again) below:

[Edit]  They've changed that between the time I heard about it last week and now.  So much for Getty Images.

Post Season

Well, we did it.

14 wins (team record), 51 points, 3rd place and a spot in Europe.  Not bad for a team predicted to finish 11th.  I’ll put on my “clairvoyant Jordan” hat and mention that I said back in March/April that our realistic goal was third place.  I never liked the idea that our public stated goal was just to finish in the top half of the league.  That seemed like stupidly low bar to shoot for.  Turns out I was right and VPS was a better team than anyone thought, including perhaps ourselves.

I won’t talk about the games other than this: Jaro was our most comfortable game of the season, which I expected considering they had given up weeks earlier.  IFK Mariehamn is a game that just as well could have been cancelled.  Neither team had any interest in being there and after seeing how the field was cutting up, no player was willing to put in a challenge and risk tearing their thigh or groin or something else.  To make things worse, we had a referee who made calls that make me wonder if he has any friends in Singapore, if you know what I mean.  That said, after the game we celebrated our bronze medals!

----------------------------------------------------------------

Those first two paragraphs were written like five weeks ago, so I’ll leave them but not finish that post.  It would be kind of useless to describe our celebrations that night and others at this point.  Last season is in the past and that team is its own entity and separate from VPS 2014 and going forward.

For those who care, I’ve been doing well back home in Indianapolis.  I see my family every day and I get to watch my niece grow up in front of my eyes.  My friends who I’ve had since middle school and even earlier are around and I’ve enjoyed seeing them and catching up.  I also love that beers cost $2 at restaurants and $0.60 at grocery stores!

not the last pic of Indianapolis in this post

A few people have given me well-wishes on facebook and I really appreciate that.  I know how it is with fans, and rightly or wrongly they support the team over the individuals wearing the jersey.  As soon as I walked off the field in the last game, the fans of the club really have no duty to support me whatsoever until/unless I return.  The fact that quite a few people wished me well anyway is very heartwarming.  These well wishes lead me to have to make something clear though: I was not homesick during the season.  I knew what moving to Finland meant and the fact that I missed my family doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not I’d consider going back to Europe.  I’ll talk a little bit about my situation later in this post, but I just wanted to say that I’m willing to live anywhere and having my family in America does not attach me to this country whatsoever.

As for the club itself, I’m impressed with who they’ve brought in this winter and also that they re-signed some key players in the club.  The boys have already started training again which is crazy to me, but it seems like most Veikkausliiga clubs are training now so I guess that’s normal.  On the flip side, I’m a bit disappointed by the players that don’t seem to be coming back.  The class of 2013 (Henri, Dafaa, Kerr, Ameobi, Smith, Seabrook, Hoivala, Lomski) did A LOT for VPS last summer.  We were by no means responsible for all of the success, but these players were the changes between 9th place in 2012 and 3rd place in 2013.  I’ll note that we weren’t the only reason the team did so well; players like Koskimaa, Fowler, Antti and Strandvall played out of their minds the whole year.  But I also don’t think that a random grouping of players would have done nearly as well as the Class of 2013 did.  You’d think that type of contribution would be something that a club would fight to keep together.  After all, there’s no reason we couldn’t dream about silver or even gold medals with that group plus Morrissey, a healthy Jarno, and a 3rd CB to rotate in to keep our defense fresh and allow Fowler (one of the best MFs in Finland) to play alongside Dafaa.

Indianapolis...also known as NAPTOWN!

That said, I haven’t loved how the recent crop of players has been treated these past few weeks.  We had the best defense in the league, and unceremoniously dropped one of our CBs.  We scored something like 35-40 goals last year, and as of now about 20 of those goals are not back.  VPS kept Henri and Anthony who were the best two players from that class, but also seem to be letting a lot of us walk.  I’m just speculating, but I think that they believe they can find another group of guys for the class of 2014 who will do just as well as last year’s new guys.  I hope they do, because I really like VPS and want the club to succeed as much as possible.  Or I could be completely wrong and they plan on bringing everyone back, which would be even better.  I also know that everybody doesn’t necessarily want to be back and that can complicate things.

As for me personally, this offseason has been dramatically different from past years.  Last year for example, I didn’t hear from any teams about a possible tryout/contract until February.  That club was VPS and it’s a good thing I impressed them, because otherwise I don’t know where I would have ended up.  This year though, my phone has been metaphorically “blowing up”.  Of course I’ve spoken with VPS, but I can’t/won’t say anything else on that situation.  Come next season I’ll either be there or I won’t, and at this point there’s no reason for me to fuel speculation beyond saying that we’ve spoken.  I’ve also had interest from random places (Asia, Australia) as well as not-so-random places (America: MLS, NASL, USL-Pro, Finland).  As a result, I’m sure that I will have a contract done far sooner than March like this past season.  That’s always good on the wallet!

Indy city center.  In a lot of ways similar to Vasaa city center.

I’ve said enough at this point.  I’ll try to update this thing more often this winter, but I don’t know how much things of interest I’ll have to say.  If you don’t see a new post, then trust me you haven’t missed anything.  Til next time!

The meme: