Well after almost a year of preparing for the FISU games as a staff, we have 5 full days and 2 games remaing in this adventure. We play Russia later today (5:30 pm local time) and a win would put is in a game for 5th and 6th place against either Brazil or China (again!). A few days removed from the disappointment of our loss against France, we now get refocused on trying to finish strong and match Canada's best ever result of 5th place. It should be noted however that those 2 fifth places finishes were out of 6 teams (1993) and 12 teams (2005). Should we be able to finish out with 2 wines, we would have accomplished something special especially considering the reality under which our team is selected and brought together. As I had previously written, a majority of teams against whom we compete have been preparing for more than 6 months and some for a year, not to mention that they are fully subsidized by their national sport federations. For example, France has been training since last June, they do not pay anything and have 5 senoir national team players on their roster while our players must pay their way to these games. We the chance to have some additional support and time to prepare, we feel strongly that we could have progressed further in this tournament. France appears to be the strongest team so far and may end up winning it all. If they do, I think our team can hold their heads high about having been on the brink of eliminating them.
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Well it is with much sadness that I must write that our run for a potential medal has come to en end. This evening we lost to France 4-1 in a game where the score truly does not reflect how the game went. Their last 2 goals were scored in injury time as we were pushing trying to tied up the game. Hi again ! I am back on Sunday July 5th and we are the night before the big quarter finals versus France. I will come back and some thoughts about our trek through the games to this point but for now, once again, we will have some guest blogging. Our two youngsters, Jil Dietrich of Trinity Western University and Brie Shaw of Queens will tag team blog today after the success of Fro and Jackie the previous time. These two are our youngest players and can provide some interesting points of view.... Yo yo yo, hanging out here in the Big B, chillin' with the ladies of Canada soccer.... ok I think I am spending way too much time with the ladies of the team that they are rubbing off on me :-) The food here is absolutely impecable, if you're into undercooked eggs, milk that tastes like powder, and chicken that may in fact not even be chicken. Its actually not THAT bad, but I can speak on everyone's behalf when I say we've all had better. They've come up with some interesting menu items for us. I think my favorite is the "ham" they served for breakfast, which almost made Liz (one of our assistant coaches) throw up on the spot. The breakfast hall gets PACKED in the morning, but our coaches clearly planned for this before we got here because they have so graciously allowed us to wake up a WEEEEE bit earlier than everyone else in the village so we can avoid the lines. By a "wee" bit early, I mean they make us wake up at 630..... thanks guys, thanks. It is probably appropriate to follow that comment by sharing with you all how EXHAUSTED we all are, and have been since we were in France. I've never napped so much in my life. Could it be the early mornings!? noooooo......... My "partner in crime" has now so elegantly graced me with her presence, I'd like to introduce you all to the god-like specimen we call Fro. She's known for a little move she calls the "Frodo-smash." The move entails a high speed collision between Fro and the unsuspecting victim, whereby due to the laws of physics (and more specifically, momentum), the victim often gets projected meters away from where the original impact first took place, leaving Fro standing on her feet giggling (insert evil laugh here). Seriously though, she's our leading scorer thus far in the tournament, and interestingly enough, she plays center back. I'm investigating the possibility of changing her position to forward... Hor Hay doesn't think its such a good idea. Now.... lets discuss the gypsies. We're told they live in shantees, which are glorified piles of garbage on the side of the road (a little bit hidden by trees), and directly en route to the cafeteria (we've even seen the roofs). Their true identity has been covered by the Serbian police (they put fences up so we can't see them), but we're all fairly sure that they do in fact exist. This is a lie, we KNOW they exist because I (Jack-attack) saw one of them defecating under a bridge but on a pile of garbage on the way back from training the other day. That was special, but not as special as the sheer white dress that exposed a LIIITTTLE bit too much of the ladie's upper regions in the mall the same day. They dress "different" here. Chelsea (another fellow musketeer) saw a wonderful demin/leopard print bating suit ensemble at that very same mall on that very same day. We're brining a whole new vision of fashion back to Canada. Next on the list.... PANCAKES, which are in fact CREPES, which are in fact BAD FOR YOU because they are filled with cholocate and cookie crumbles. Fro and Jackie (further identified as the dynamic duo) spotted Hor-Hay sneaking one too many pancakes just the other day. Since the dynamic duo have come to truly care for little Hor Hay over these past two weeks, we felt as though it was in his best interest to inform him of the adverse side effects of too many pancakes. They do in fact go "straight to the money maker".... a.k.a your gluteus maximus. While we were on the topic of health and hygeine with dear Hor Hay, Jackie so graciously noticed/pointed out that young Hor Hay needed to clip his dragon like toe nails. This was done promptly by the next sunrise. Thanks to Jackie's attention to detail, we no longer have to cover our eyes when Hor Hay exposes his feet. Lets talk about Graham. Graham.... Graham.... Graham..... most of us (meaning, all of us) are finding it challenging to distinguish the sarcasm from the pure emotion. We all suspect that Graham either permanently has something stuck in his teeth, or he secretly has braces and doesn't want to show us his pearly whites, due to the simple fact that even when he finds something RIDICULOUSLY funny, he makes a conscious effort not to smile and laugh, but to simply say "that was really funny Jorge." IN FACT, Graham taught us an important lesson today. Upon a "slip" of the tongue by Frodo, he informed us of the interesting fact that shit is actually in the bible. How cool is that?! We would talk about Liz, but that's going to take up a whole other page and we figure you might be bored. SOOOOO, its been an honor, nay, a privilege to share in this moment with you all. We want you to know that we're taking great care of dear Hor Hay, and we see him not as a father figure, but a grandfather. If we end up in prison in Singapore because he not so secretly just informed us that he is changing our flight home, please call KIM or HOWIE SMITH orrr MAMA FRO for instructions to retrieve us. Thank you for your undivided attention. Until next time. One Love, The Dynamic D
Hi there, back again for a second post this morning (and hopefully not the last). I am trying to get caught up with some guest blogging and my goal is to have various players post as much as possible before the end of the games. However time passes so fast that I can't make any promises. Well it is quite amazing what a difference 48 hours and some can make. After stepping off the field following our game versus Serbia where we lost 2-1 in a game we felt we had outplayed the hosts, the mood was quite somber and the opinion was that we might have just played ourselves out of contention for the medal round. This feeling was compounded when we saw China totally dominate Poland and easily win 3-0. Well we had our first game yesterday and it didn't quite go as we hoped. Serbia was a solid team who played well and followed their game plan but the result (we lost 2 - 1) was more an issue of our team being nervous and not playing to our strengths not us having been outplayed. We had some early chances when the score was still 0-0 but were unable to finish. Serbia capitalized on two chances that resulted from some mistakes on our side and they made us pay. |
AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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