A tough week of practice is over. After the tough 2:2 against Harrisburg last weekend, we should be expecting kind of the same match-up tomorrow against Pittsburgh. Jesse had the chance to see Pittsburgh last weekend against Crystal Palace, when they were able to sneak out with a scoreless tie. They packed it in with two lines of defense and looked for a lucky punch in the form of a restart.

There should be no reason to expect that Pittsburgh will be changing this tactic tomorrow. They will get their tall guys behind the ball, similar to Harrisburg, and looking for the quick counters (like Harrisburg’s first goal) and restarts (like Harrisburg’s second goal). Our job will be to make sure we do not give up those opportunities by staying more compact defensively. Obviously this has been one of the priorities in this weeks practice and I am confident that we look much better in those terms.

Its gonna be the hottest day of the year so far and it surely is a great thing to have no injuries on the team right now. There probably gonna be some changes in the starting lineup tomorrow, but competition and depth is definitely more welcome than last seasons scenario, when we went to an away game in Baltimore early in the season with only three subs, one of them being a goalkeeper.

Anybody saw Pepe (Real Madrids defender) losing it completely in their league game against Getafe? First he was kicking the person lying on the ground as hard as possible, then hitting one of the opponents with the fist in the head and because that wasn’t enough, he started to call the referees all kind of names. He got suspended for 10 games.

So it has been a short while since my last post. The preseason has now officially ended with two days off over Easter. Next week we will use completely to prepare ourselves for a tough season opener against Harrisburg City Islanders.

But here is the recap of the games that we played in the last week:

On Saturday, April 4th, we played our biggest test so far against Carolina Railhawks. The final result was 1:0 for us by a last minute from Deli. To be fair though, Carolina had the better chances and the result could have been easily the other way around. Ronnie pulled out some great saves, most notable an open header from 5 yards that he managed to tip over the crossbar.

Three days later we played University of Richmond at their and our stadium. It was the first time we played there and were able to test the field for our season opener next Saturday. It looks better than last year at this time, but still a little bit bumpy. We won the game 2:0 and looked pretty dominating in the first half. Leigh rested some players like Deli, Burke, Luke, Ronnie, Kelvin and myself. We had Maxwell, a trialist, playing the game in the right midfield position. He looked good and had a great assist for Bulows second goal.

Our last test was against UVA on Friday. After conceding a goal 20 seconds in the game, we were unable to score a goal for the first time in preseason and lost 1:0. I am sure that loosing the dress rehearsal will give our team the needed eagerness to look better next weekend. A couple of players still work on some minor preseason injuries, but nothing too much to worry about for next weekend.