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.

This morning, 8:00 am, we had our first “official” indoor practice at SCOR.
In the last couple of years we always had problems to find enough players that early in the season, but today we were a surprisingly high number of 18 players.

Players already signed and showed up were Burke, Deli, Ben, Luke, Murph, Ross and me.
VCU had a strong showup with 5 players from last season … Jake, Pat, Rosi, Evan and Gerson. Gerson even played in a team with the starters from last season, normally a sign for coaches interest.
Further players were two trialists and from the Kickers staff Kofi and Andy McIntosh.

All together a very interesting first session and definitely makes me excited about the new season.