After a week of training and scrimmages at the Casa Grande Performance in Arizona, the guys are back to the confines of good ole Dicks Sporting Park turf field #8. The results of the trip were uneventful as far as results go (1-1 tie with CBus, 0-2 loss to Galaxy, and 0-0 tie with RSL), but the reason for the trip wasn’t for the results as much as it was giving borderline guys opportunities in game situations. Coach Smith said it best when he mentioned before he left on the trip that the soccer wasn’t going to be pretty or cohesive when you’ve got 11 individuals on the field that are each fighting for roster spots.

So, they’re back, and I don’t get the feeling that they like being back. Well, that is, atleast being back and training on the turf field at Dicks. Baudet’s current online status is “Heading back to snow and turf!!!!!! Not really looking forward to it!!” Another Rapids player, second year player and backup goalkeeper, Steward Ceus mentioned on his Twitter account that “ (training has) been real rough on the body. Training on turf doesn’t help.”

Likewise, the group seems amped to go to London and put in some tough training at the Arsenal training facility. That experience and those games will be more focused on building team chemistry and camaraderie than their recent foray in Arizona. At this point, Coach Smith likely has a pretty good feel for the contributors on the squad, which means that we will likely see more of the starters in the friendly matches in England.

If the group is producing 0-0 and 0-2 results in the friendlies in England and at the Charity Shield match vs Seattle, then we may have concerns about certain areas of the team (offensive creativity, health of wingers, etc). To be fair the competition in those matches will also be higher than that of our recent matches. For now, lets watch Coach Smith continue to push his guys hard and hope that the players respond in kind.

Be on the lookout for a couple of Green Army training reports and interviews in the coming days. Cheers!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 11:58 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.