March 31st. Last day of the off season. Tomorrow morning our regular practice starts at 9:00 am. Finally outside again. I am pretty sure there will be a lot of tactical explanation in the first session. How we move as a unit and how we put pressure on players. Its kind of the same every year. New players join the team and they all need to understand the system that Leigh prefers and likes to play. Especially young players need to understand their role in our team and what their responsibilities are once they are out there on the field.

During the last three days we had two scrimmages. On Sunday we won 1:0 against ODU. David Bulow scored an early PK after Luke got illegally stopped by the goalkeeper (great pass by Gerson!). A very strong wind effected the game and whoever was playing against the wind had problems getting out of their half. Overall not a very good performance from our side.

Today we beat VCU 3:1. Halftime score was already 3:0 after Ben Hunter scored two (PK and 1 on 1 with the goalkeeper) and Fabian hit a perfect volley out of 20 yards in the far corner. As usual against VCU, the game was heated on both sides. A lot of different players saw playing time today. Rosi started as a right back for Evan, who twisted his ankle in Sunday’s game pretty bad. Kenny Cutler joined us and started next to Luke in midfield. Also his first start for the Kickers this season had Fabian Dawkins. A second half sub that hasn’t played for us before was Trey Brown.

Make sure to come and join our team during Media Day and USA Viewing Party tomorrow at Home Team Grill starting at 7 pm. USA has a lot to prove after the disappointing 2:2 in El Salvador, which hopefully sets the stage for a good game.

Also, on a side note, Evan Harding won the FIFA 09 tournament at New York Deli yesterday. David Bulow lost in the semi finals while Ben Hunter had to say goodbye after the first round. In case you wondered what Pro Soccer players do in their spare time, playing FIFA is definitely one of the activities.

It was cold, but at least it didn’t rain. We won our scrimmage last night against William & Mary 4:2. David Bulow, who arrived the night before after driving two days from Colorado and sleeping on a couch for a couple of hours, scored twice and assisted one. Deli also had two goals and one assist. Offensively we looked much better than in the game against Longwood. With a bit more effectiveness in front of the goal, we could have scored a couple more. Defensively I think we looked not so good. Some miscommunication and a very good forward in #14 Alan Koger made our life harder than it should have been.

The starting lineup was Mark-Evan,Henry,Kelvin,Me-Burke,Gerson,Luke,Ben-Deli,David.
In the second half a cold sicken Burke was replaced by Pat. I did something to my ankle and got replaced by Ross. Fakundo and Kofi in Midfield and Rosi as a forward also saw some playing time.

Regarding player notes, Fabian Dawkins flew into Richmond last night and will join us. It is confirmed that Eliot Paschalis will not come back for another season and might retire from professional soccer.

On a side note, my U9 teams Kickers Central ManU and Kickers Central Liverpool played each other yesterday afternoon. There is a lot of trash talking involved in the days leading to the game. Best trash talker goes this time to a 7-year old Liverpool player who ran around during warm-up yesterday calling all ManU players Man-Poo. Creative!

Last weekend my U11 Boys and U14 Girls teams traveled to Stafford to play in SASA’s St. Patrick’s Day Tournament. For coaches or parents interested in the tournament, here is a small review.

Fields
No complains from my side. The two complexes I played at, Colonial Forge HS and Dixon Park, were in superb conditions. The grass was short, no bumps anywhere. That definitely helped in a preseason tournament, when some of the touches are not that defined yet. I heard from other coaches though, that some fields at other locations were in very bad conditions (Willowmere Park and Pratt Park).

Referees
Again, no complains. The referees were what referees are at the youth level. Some were very good, some not so good. Some experienced and talkative to the young players, some very young and insecure about making any call. My favorite referee moment was our last U14 game, when the linesman on our side announced every sub with a loud “The white team would like a substitution, please!” to the referee. He said that roundabout 20 times in the game. I thought it was nice. Some of my girls thought it was annoying

Scheduling
This is a very important topic to me. Going with two teams to a tournament is always difficult regarding scheduling conflicts. I help creating the Kickers Youth Tournaments schedules and know how hard it is to make it work out, so that everybody is pleased. I let the tournament director know way in advance about my situation. However, my teams ended up playing at different locations (25 minutes away from each other) and at not favorable time slots. They were scheduled back to back on Saturday morning, which made me miss 20 minutes of my girls game because of the travel. On Saturday afternoon, they were scheduled at the exact same time, so I had to miss my boys game completely. On Sunday morning then they were scheduled back to back again, which made me miss the first 20 minutes of my girls game. I know its hard to do a schedule, but also feel that some of those scheduling conflicts could have been avoided. Only with the help of some very nice parents (Thanks Dan and Paul) I was able to manage those conflicts.

Overall, the proximity and the great fields are a big plus for me and I will definitely consider going there again. However, the scheduling was not done in favor of multi team coaches and I will this time probably take only one team.

Yesterday we played Longwood in a preseason scrimmage. We won 2:0 by goals from Deli and Ross. Deli scored with a great turn after some confusion in the Longwood box and Ross hit a great 15 yard dropkick after Deli laid the ball with the head off.

Ronnie played the whole game. In the defense we had two signed players giving their first appearances this year. Henry joined the team, played 90 minutes and looked very strong out there. Maybe not as physical and fast as Trevor “The Truck” McEachron, but definitely with better feet. Kelvin looked solid as always. Overall our defensive line completed by Evan and me looked alright for that early in the season. In the second half Evan got replaced by Aziz (not sure about the spelling). Azis is from Guinea, but played several years in France. Very fast and played some nice long balls.

In the midfield Gerson played 90 minutes in the holding position. Also in midfield Burke, Ben, Fakundo, Rosi, Ross and Luke saw some action. Up top we played with Pat and Deli. Pats speed and Deli’s strength in the air looks like a good complement. Joey Worthen took the game off and ran a couple of laps instead, not risking any injury that early in the season.

We had a very good practice this morning and you can feel that the players, now that the first preseason game is over and more and more players join the team, get excited about the next couple of months.

Here are some very exciting news for our fans out there. Obviously I can’t say too much as long it has not been officially announced by the Kickers, but I can hint a little bit

The talks with a center back (hints: my neighbor during the last season or Counting Crows) are going in a very positive direction. This would be another huge signing for us and eliminates the risk of going into the season with two rookie center backs.

A Kickers staff member will also join our team this season. He played for us (actually set the record for oldest rookie ever played in USL ) before and will certainly improve the quality and depth of our team. A very competitive performer, he will add stability to the defensive midfield position, as the return of Eliot is getting more and more unlikely.

A new player at indoor practice is Trey Brown from the Winchester Impact Indoor Team. He is certainly a strong indoor player. It would be interesting to see how he performs on the big field. Maybe the coaches give him a chance in one of our preseason scrimmages.

The schedule for our preseason scrimmages can be found here.

Here is a little update about our preseason. We haven’t had any more exhibition matches since our 2:0 loss against Crystal Palace Baltimore two weeks ago. We are continuing to practice three times a week indoor at SCOR … and I am pretty happy about this with all the rain coming down.

Joey Worthen is finally back in town and will be at tomorrow’s practice for the first time since he left us after the 2005 season. He played two years (2004-2005) for the Richmond Kickers, scored 7 goals despite being sidelined with an injury for most of the 2005 season. When I started for the Kickers in 2005, I was signed as a left Midfielder. Joey was the other left midfielder on the team back then and he helped me a lot understanding the system that we played and how to play the wide midfield position. Now, I am excited that he is back and maybe we will be playing together on the left side in one of the games … me as a defender and Joey as a midfielder.

The numbers were a little lower on Mondays practice with some players and the coach being hit by a virus. Better now though than after the season has started!
Joseph has not been at indoor practice recently, but Fakundo and Noel are still participating.

In the next couple of weeks more and more players should be coming back to Richmond. David Bulow is expected to be back by the 24th of March. He will be sharing the same apartment with me that we shared during our 2006 Championship season … now that’s a good sign

Today we had our very first preseason scrimmage. Scheduled to play at UR stadium we had to reschedule the game due to the weather. The game was now played on a turf field in Woodbridge, Virginia, at 1:00 pm, a nice little trip for a Friday.

We lost the game 2:0 by two second half goals. Both goals resulting out of defensive miscommunication, which is absolutely understandable at this point of the season. The team still has not trained together outside and our center backs were all relatively new to the position. Gerson saw rather more time in center midfield for VCU during the last season, Joseph is also more a center midfielder type of player and Evan played right back for us the last two seasons.

Overall under these circumstances not a bad performance I would say. Our first half was definitely stronger than the second, probably also a result of tired legs in the second half. Palace had nothing in the first half that would challenge Mark. We had a couple of decent chances, a close header from Pat and an open shot 15 yards out from Burke. In the second half we probably had the best opportunity of the game up to this point, an open header from Deli 6 yards out that was saved by the goalkeeper. The longer the game went on the more dominating Crystal Palace became and this resulted in two goals.

We switched around our complete lineup at halftime and did a couple of more substitution later on.
I played 90 minutes as a left back … a clear indication of where Leigh sees me this season

Here are our lineups for both halfs:

1st. Half
GK: Mark
DEF (from left to right): Sascha, Gerson, Joseph, Evan
MID (from left to right): Burke, Luke, Fakundo Herrera, Ben
FW: Deli, Pat

2nd. Half
GK: Mark
DEF (from left to right): Sascha, Joseph, Evan, Luke
MID (from left to right): David Rosenbaum, Gerson, Ross, Ben
FW: Deli, Burke

Subs
Matt Cooper for Ben (60th)
Noel Sanjuan for Burke (60th)
Pat for Deli (70th)