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Can't believe how long it has been since I visited the site and updated my blog. So much has happened and yet, not much has changed. We had a tough fall soccer season results wise although the quality of play improved so much. Once again we fell short getting into the playoffs but we closed the gap with the top teams with some close results. Our winter 2014 season is going well. A win this Sunday and we will finish 2nd and receive a bye straight to the semi finals. We have a solid core and so far all indications are going in the right direction about the quality of the recruiting class we will bring in for the fall. I will try and get back to this site more often moving forward and share my thoughts
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Hi there
So I let some time pass before commenting on Spain's 3 - 0 loss to Brazil at the Confederations Cup. It was a well deserved win by Brazil and it exposed some weaknesses in the Spanish team, but I will put it in the context it belongs. In 2009, Spain lost to the US early on in the same tournament and yet went on to win the 2010 World Cup. In recent memory, no winner of the Confederations Cup has go on to win the World Cup in the following year... this can probably be explained for many reasons but that isn't the point for me. Spain will recover, they have a very deep roster of players they can choose from and this tournament will have hopefully helped the coach adjust his game plan and roster and realize that some younger players have to be brought it. Not to mention, time to find a viable central forward that can put pressure on the opponents' back line. No one can go undefeated all the time and if Spain were to lose, better to do so now than next summer when With so much going in the world of soccer I started thinking how long it had been since I had written on my blog. However when I got on the site, I didn't realize it had been almost two years.
So as I return to start writing my blog, two Stingers season have passed and in 2012 we actually went down to the final league game fighting for a playoff spot, Spain won the 2012 Euros, making them the only nation to capture 3 major tournaments in a row and the Impact joined the MLS. As I write, the Impact are in 1st place of their division in only their second year in the MLS, Spain is playing Brazil tomorrow (June 30th) in the final of the confederation's cup a game that soccer fans can't wait to see, the CIS entry at the 2015 FISU games in currently in Poland preparing for the games which will take place in Kazan , Russia and I am just over 6 weeks away from starting my 12 year coaching at Concordia.... how time flies. I go back to FISU as it is those games in 2009 that were the primary reason for me starting this blog. I had the privilege of be a coach for both the 2009 and 2011 games and it is something that will remain with me moving forward. I wish this year's coach Liz Jepsen (who was with me in Belgrade) all the best of luck as she steps into the head coaching role. I am sure they will do Canada proud. As for my coaching, I am looking forward to the 2013 stingers season. We have a strong core of returnees expected and some outstanding potential rookies. As I write, we are expecting 47 players to be present at the start of camp. I hope it will bring out a strong competitive environment. I won't write much today but I promise to return regularly with updates, comments, opinions about everything related to soccer. Nothing earth shattering to write about other than the fact that we are now June 28th and 5 weeks before I head off to the pre-tournament camp (yes 5 weeks today) and 6 weeks, 2 days (but who is counting) until we start the tournament with our first game vs Great Britain.
Preparations are fast and furious as we try and get all the required documents submitted and will then have to go about securing our travel VISAs required for entry into China. Not an easy task with only 4 locations in Canada that can issue.. but we will manage. The summer has been slow to get started with fairly crappy weather..... especially on the weekends when you hope to have some free time to enjoy. Preparation for the fall season of the Stingers team is also underway, as we expect 40 participants to show up for training camp. If they all do end up attending, it will certainly be the highest numbers of players we will have started out with in a long time. Hopefully this will raise the level of competitiveness at tryouts and people will work that much harder to earn their spots. We have also changed the format for team selection stretching our usual 1 week selection period to 3 weeks.. not to mention having 5 exhibition games as part of the evaluation. More to follow Hi everyone ! Even with our season over, I still have a few further coaching related duties to handle over the last few days. I attended the CIS nationals held in Toronto which had a field of teams with UPEI, StFX, U of Montreal, U of Toronto, York, Queens, UBC and Trinity Western all participating. The championships themselves started out kind of slow, but the games picked up as the weekend progressed, and culminated in a strongly contested final between U of Montreal and Trinity Western. This game was one of the best played games in terms of competitiveness I have seen in a long time. It has a bit of everything (well no scoring so not everything), great technical skils, physical play, intensity, rivalry... all in one. It ended 0-0 and went to penalties where TWU won 4-3 including what many observing coaches claimed was one of the best saves they had ever seen pulled off by Kristen Funk of TWU (the same Kristen Funk that was at FISU with me). Well the second week back and life has returned to somewhat normal. Not much soccer related stuff going on and hence the title of this blog. Stingers soccer starts in just over 3 weeks and I am in the midst of making some last minute preperations, getting our pre-season trip ready, planning training seasons, playing fantasy line up (well this just means trying to figure out what the squad might look like this fall), and touching base with returning and new incoming players with the goal of making sure they arrive in the right mind-set and level of fitness so that we give ourselves the best chance possible to have a succesful season. Which that being said, also means eveluating how I want to measure what will be a succesful season. Funny how soccer, which is supposed to be part time and seasonal seems to occupy a significant amount of time year round and even more on my thoughts. Well a week has now passed since I have returned home and to be honest, getting back to reality wasn't all that easy. Hard to come off the high of such an intense life experience especially after having put so much time and effort into the planning and find that it is all over. Well as this posting title says... it has been a while. As much as I am dedicated to coaching and the various activities surrounding my involvement in it, unfortunately I have been quite busy with other issues recently. Well I have finally gotten around to adding a blog where I hope to add some posts regularly. I will share my thoughts, comments, experiences and opinions on various subjects relating to soccer and soccer coaching. Hopefully you will enjoy my posts and might become regular visitors. This website and blogging thing is all new to me, even if I am quite comfortable with the technology so I just hope that I will present topics of interest which people will enjoy reading. |
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
January 2023
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