Evan Harding will be back in Richmond in the next week or so to join our team again. I’m happy that my fellow fullback from across the field will come back for his third season.

The intensity of our Indoor practice has started to increase. The practice ending sprints are getting both more and longer, not always a great combination to look forward to . The possession games are looking a little bit sharper, but there are still lots of unnecessary turnover. After two weeks of Indoor practice, I already long for our outdoor practice to start. The turf is just not the same as green grass. The ball takes spins and bounces that are sometimes hard to guess and I feel that direct play is a little bit trickier than outside.
If you want to see how the real specialists are able to handle the ball on the turf, come out tonight to SCOR and watch our Kickers Indoor team play for the Championship game against Winchester Impact.

An addition to the tryouts lately has been Joseph, a friend of Kofi Nti. He is a powerful, strong center midfielder and played professional soccer before in Cyprus/Greece. He actually trained for a while with us a couple of years ago and it will be interesting to see what’s going to happen.

If you wanna go outdoor this weekend despite the rain, you might want to check out the Kickers Invitational. It’s a youth tournament for top class teams from Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, Baltimore and Pennsylvania. The field complexes with the most action will be Bryan Park, Providence, Hensley and Woodlake.

This morning, 8:00 am, we had our first “official” indoor practice at SCOR.
In the last couple of years we always had problems to find enough players that early in the season, but today we were a surprisingly high number of 18 players.

Players already signed and showed up were Burke, Deli, Ben, Luke, Murph, Ross and me.
VCU had a strong showup with 5 players from last season … Jake, Pat, Rosi, Evan and Gerson. Gerson even played in a team with the starters from last season, normally a sign for coaches interest.
Further players were two trialists and from the Kickers staff Kofi and Andy McIntosh.

All together a very interesting first session and definitely makes me excited about the new season.

The tryouts are over. They started on Saturday early in the morning with small sided games and finished with a couple of regular games. I was helping the coaching staff out on Saturday and Sunday morning and could form my own opinion. There were definitely some talented players in there and some experienced players with a proven record … but also some players that would probably not even make the cut for a PDL team. I am wondering with what expectations some players come to these tryouts? Is it just a kick around for them or do they seriously believe they can make money playing soccer?

Now the coaches will make up their mind, will talk to players, get in contract negotiations and by the end of the week we hopefully should know who will be signed and who will be invited back to train with us during the indoor practices (our inofficial preseason that starts this week). I think there were some good center backs at the tryout, but it is always a gamble how they fit in with the first team. The upcoming indoor practice might also not be the best way to evaluate the skills of a Center Back, but I am confident in Leigh and Jesse’s experience.

On a personal note: I don’t believe I saw a left back out there, so my projection is that I will be playing my second year as a defender this season

Here are some pictures I took during the tryout:

It is this time of the year again. The college season is on a break and the seniors are thinking about their future. For many soccer students a professional career is a dream. But what do you do if you have not been drafted in the MLS SuperDraft?
You could go to Europe and try your luck there, but the soccer season has already progressed to the second half and the majority of teams looking at this point rather for impact players than young prospects.

Here is your chance: a USL team combine. The USL season is only two months away and basically all clubs are offering a combine in the search for new under-the-radar players. Crystal Palace Baltimore had their tryouts last week, the Harrisburg Islanders will have one on March 11th and the Richmond Kickers will have their annual combine this upcoming weekend.

Before I got signed by the Richmond Kickers in 2005, I attended one of these tryouts myself. Back then Richmond was still in USL-1. I had no idea what to expect. I have never been to a tryout before. I still remember how I made a complete idiot of myself during warm-up, when we were working with ladders. The coach will give a certain kind of movement, e.g. two feed in two feed out, and you have to get through the ladders as fast as possible. Sounds easy? Well, I never did it before in my life. Playing in Germany those fancy foot-techniques were not on the practice schedule! While everybody was basically flying through there, I tiptoed through the ladder, carefully thinking about each little step, while the other players were piling up behind me. That was the first time that Leigh, our head coach, said a word to me: “You must be the German then?”

The rest of the tryout went very well, despite a bad ankle sprain on the second day that sidelined me for the following two weeks, and the Kickers signed me as the only player from that combine. I was following the steps of Clyde Simms, marathon man for DC United now, and Tim Brown, roommate of mine in Richmond and member of the New Zealand National Team. Both players were signed by the Kickers after attending the 2004 Combine.

This year’s tryout will be an interesting one again. I believe the coaches focus will be on the center back positions, as Adam Chavez and three-year starter Trevor McEachron will not return for another season. Anthony Catalano’s and three year starter Kelvin Jones’ return is uncertain. After the departure from Stanley Nyazamba to Columbus Crew of MLS there is also a need for an attacking midfielder, that fits into our system. In my opinion, the hardest position to find a spot this year will be goalkeeper (Ronnie and Mark are both returning) or attack (forward or winger) with the return of players like Mike Burke, Adrian Bumbut, Matthew Delicate, David Bulow, Fabian Dawkins and Ben Hunter.