Today we had our very first preseason scrimmage. Scheduled to play at UR stadium we had to reschedule the game due to the weather. The game was now played on a turf field in Woodbridge, Virginia, at 1:00 pm, a nice little trip for a Friday.

We lost the game 2:0 by two second half goals. Both goals resulting out of defensive miscommunication, which is absolutely understandable at this point of the season. The team still has not trained together outside and our center backs were all relatively new to the position. Gerson saw rather more time in center midfield for VCU during the last season, Joseph is also more a center midfielder type of player and Evan played right back for us the last two seasons.

Overall under these circumstances not a bad performance I would say. Our first half was definitely stronger than the second, probably also a result of tired legs in the second half. Palace had nothing in the first half that would challenge Mark. We had a couple of decent chances, a close header from Pat and an open shot 15 yards out from Burke. In the second half we probably had the best opportunity of the game up to this point, an open header from Deli 6 yards out that was saved by the goalkeeper. The longer the game went on the more dominating Crystal Palace became and this resulted in two goals.

We switched around our complete lineup at halftime and did a couple of more substitution later on.
I played 90 minutes as a left back … a clear indication of where Leigh sees me this season

Here are our lineups for both halfs:

1st. Half
GK: Mark
DEF (from left to right): Sascha, Gerson, Joseph, Evan
MID (from left to right): Burke, Luke, Fakundo Herrera, Ben
FW: Deli, Pat

2nd. Half
GK: Mark
DEF (from left to right): Sascha, Joseph, Evan, Luke
MID (from left to right): David Rosenbaum, Gerson, Ross, Ben
FW: Deli, Burke

Subs
Matt Cooper for Ben (60th)
Noel Sanjuan for Burke (60th)
Pat for Deli (70th)

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.