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!

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!

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

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.