Here is an Email from a great fan that I would like to share with you.

The Mystery of the Richmond Kickers…

…or…Who are Those Strange Soccer Players?

It was a dark and stormy night…in Bermuda. The Richmond Kickers lost to the Bermuda Hogges. Why? There’s one little mystery. The far bigger one, however, is: Who? Who were those guys in the Kickers’ uniforms? [...]

What’s up? Mexican swine flu? Mass mutiny of players? Phenomenally unlucky run of injuries?

When virtually the entire back line is Sudden Unannounced Appearees, a true fan certainly would wonder what is going on. What happened to that team that, only a couple of weeks earlier, was being touted in print by its coach as extremely strong, perhaps the best he’s had here in his multi-year tenure? [...]

A REAL (paying) fan cares about the answers to these questions.

Of course a real fan deserves to know what’s going on and I will be glad to answer some of the questions, especially because I know how busy some folks in our front office (Shelley!) are.

We are currently bothered by a couple of injuries with Kelvin tweaking his hamstring in the game in Western Mass and me pulling a muscle in my quad area during the last practice before the Western Mass game. Also, Rosey, Deli and Joey are all struggling more or less with minor injuries, but were able to play through it so far.
Both, Kelvin and me, have started training with the team again this week and we both are hopeful to be ready for the classic Richmond-Charlotte game this Friday.

Bermuda away is always a problem. Bermuda is not US Territory, so all players traveling need to either have a valid US Passport, green card or a valid US Visa stamped in their foreign passport. While all of our foreign players have valid visas, only the ones that have been to an embassy outside of the US after they signed for the Kickers have it actually stamped in their passport. Gerson, Henry, Yomby and Adrian could all not go to Bermuda exactly for that reason. Adding passport troubles for Evan Harding and injuries for Kelvin and myself, Leigh suddenly has only half of the team available. That’s why Leigh and Jesse brought in a couple of loan players at the last minute. John DeRaimondo and Anthony Peters came from DC United. Anthony is a high towering center back while John played center midfield with Luke. Mbuta came to us from New York Red Bulls and should be familiar to some of you for his season last year with the Crystal Palace Baltimore. He could have scored a couple of goals, just couldn’t get the right touch in front of the goal. Jeremy Tolleson was our other center back. He started the last two seasons for the Cleveland City Stars and just recently followed his old coach to the Carolina Railhawks. Oh, and I almost forgot our secret weapon: Leigh Cowlishaw.

Leigh subbing himself in

After scoring a goal in last season’s win against Bermuda, he couldn’t sneak one in this year. He was however involved in two of the goals in our 4:0 win against Bermuda’s U23 on Sunday. Goals in that game were scored by Bulow twice, Luke and Deli.

I hope this satisfies your thirst for information. I am looking forward to seeing you all out there on Friday!

Since my last entry we have won our first game (2:0 at Western Mass), but also lost our first game (1:0 at Bermuda). It sounds ridiculous, especially if you just look at the results, but we actually played much better soccer in Bermuda than against Western Mass and we probably deserved more to win the Bermuda game than the Western Mass one. But this is soccer. One of the most famous German sayings goes “Der Ball ist rund” (The ball is round) which is as simple as it gets, but holds a lot of truth.
Anything can happen in a game of soccer.

In Western Mass we scored with our first and only chance in the first half. At Bermuda the opponent scored with their first chance.
In Western Mass we are able to put another in 30 seconds into the second half, basically destroying all the hope Western Mass might have gathered during halftime. At Bermuda, we show great effort and create tons of chances, but can’t put the ball in the back of the net.
In Western Mass, Bulow gets in behind the defense to chip the ball nicely over the keeper. At Bermuda, Burke’s similar approach gets stopped by the keeper.
In Western Mass, Deli is able to run between two defenders, keep control of the ball and put it in a corner. At Bermuda, Deli has an open volley shot from 25 yards with no defender or goalkeeper in the way, but he misses.
Also, in Bermuda, Hunter’s two shots are cleared of the line twice, one of them by one of our own players facing the wrong way. Also, in Bermuda, we are able to swing nice crosses in to Mbuta who is able to redirect the ball to goal from 5 yards, but both times, the goalkeeper is somehow in the way. I say somehow, because at any other place near him, he wouldn’t have been able to make a save. I don’t even think the keeper would have been able to avoid getting hit by the ball if he wanted to.
In Western Mass we are able to win despite being outshot, but at Bermuda we loose despite 11 shots more than the opponent.
In Western Mass we score two goals with seven shots. At Bermuda we score none with 21 shots.

This is how soccer goes sometimes and it’s hard to find an explanation. There are so many things that determine what happens in each situation on the soccer field and all we as players can do is keep working and make sure we do the best we can do at every time.
We only have 5 points out of 4 games, obviously less than we expected to have by now. The good thing is though that our play is not bad. I still remember last year when we played early in the season against Baltimore and Charlotte, when we deserved to loose by a couple of goals and played horrible. Last year we still managed to finish the regular season tied for first. I have a feeling that this season will be similar.