Sometimes soccer can be frustrating … very frustrating … like last Saturday in Maryland when 30 minutes into the game, Mike Burke appeared to be taken down in the penalty box. He had an easy 1v1 with the opposing keeper and it seems that a defender pushes him from behind. “Appears” and “seems” because the referee did not call a penalty.

In the process of arguing the no-call Mike Burke and our assistant coach Jesse Myers were thrown out of the game with red cards, both well deserved. However, in a split second the game changes from us having a penalty to go up by 1:0 and a red card for the Maryland defender because of his last man foul to a one man disadvantage for us. A situation like this is so frustrating, especially in a game like soccer, where one goal often decides the outcome of a game or an early red card gives one team a huge advantage.

Here is the incident for you guys (double-click on the video for full screen). Leave a comment and tell me what you as a referee would have called and why.

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.

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.

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!

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