Weekly Review 8th – 14th October 2012 “Rejected. Recovering from Failure”

15 October 2012

Klose - Life has been turned up on it's head

“End of training berry said.. “I need to give you something” . Immediately I got nervous. I was thinking to myself, Does he mean “I’m going to give you a contract!”

Here are my weekly notes:

Monday
– Main weakness now I’m finding is that I’m not being strong enough on or off the ball
– ball coming across my body and shooting is good. Difficult technique.

Tuesday
nothing to report
Thursday
A good day
– getting better
– Played a 8 v 8 I think. the reserves vs first team reserves. In the first part and did a few very good slide tackles and a good ball or two. So coach switched me to the first team reserves.
Friday (the worst Friday ever)
– End of training Berry said.. “I need to give you something” . Immediately I got nervous.. Does he mean “I’m going to give you a contract!”
Rejected.
I said to him I feel like I’ve been getting better every week. He said he has to tell the head coach if I’m capable of playing first team football or not. Berry can’t say the wrong thing, so if Berry isn’t confident he will say no to the head coach.
I asked what my weaknesses were. Berry pointed out one thing. Strength. Have to be stronger on and off the ball. Instead of Henk (Huge tall striker in team) pushing you over, you have to push him over.
He said I have very good shooting.
The good thing about him saying this is
1. He confirmed my own thoughts about my weaknesses.
2. If I just get stronger on the ball, then my weaknesses are no longer evident.  And that’s not too hard to correct, because I already am strong, I just be much more aggressive during training
— This is an email message I wrote to the guy who organised this trial after —
I talked to Berry yesterday after training and he told me the news.
I’m very frustrated because I was improving every week in training. I had never played at an intensity and professionalism that they were playing at. I grew up in a small town with 300,000 people in Australia and so the coaching and quality of players were bad. When I lived in Hungary I played for a club which was for expats living in Hungary, I’d be playing with players that were sometimes 3-4 years younger than me, not to mention I just trained with players playing for fun. The only way I’ve improved is through doing my own personal training everyday and through the help of coaches which I did training with one on one like John Moses which was all organized with my own effort. Hopefully this says something about how much I want to ‘make it’.
Most of the players in Volendam have been given the best coaching and playing with very good players all through their youth years. I was shocked to see how far I’ve come on my own when in training I had to mark one of the players who had once played for Ajax.
I have never played anywhere near this level (maybe on previous trials) so imagine what good coaching and all the time playing with professional quality players could do to my game. Potential is really huge I think!
So at Volendam trainings I was soaking up everything like a sponge and if was given more time I feel like I could be one of the best players in the group and progressed from there. I guess Berry had to tell the first team manager something about me and if he couldn’t make a confident decision that I could be a first team player then I had to stop this stage. But I don’t think the manager understands what my background is and why I need more time to adapt and improve. Thanks for the opportunity.
Nick
— end of email —
Why am I not strong? 
I have the strength and I have been going to gym since the start of the year. I can be really fucking aggressive and strong if I want to be.. like when I’m really pissed off at a player for being a dickhead in training. It’s because I don’t want to hurt the other person, or get them angry at me. Okay sounds gay. I’m switching up my attitude.
The other thing is to wear shinpads in training, so I can put my legs in confidently without the knowledge I could get a shin kick.
Successful people say its hard to make it, but no one said it was going be this hard. How much longer is this going to take? I’ve been working harder and smarter than any footballer I know for the last 3 years now. 3 whole years. I deserve it already, give it to me. Coming home at 11 and midnight.. Traveling hours everyday.. Where the fuck is my reward already?? Volendam could have literally made my goals and dreams come true. Do I really have what it takes? That’s what I was asking myself. Football is just testing every bit of my patience and I was feeling very demoralized.
What do I do now?
Have to force myself to get back up. Get my boots back on and give it all every training. More importantly, push, shove and win those fights for every ball, because everytime I lose a fight, I’m shaming myself because I’ve just given the other player who doesn’t work as hard as me the ball. He doesn’t deserve it.
JOS are in the 4th division and have a spot for me at least in the reserves and they look like a well run club. It’s a step down from the time when I could of potentially played against the Ajax and AZ reserves. I have to wait for my chance again, meanwhile, I can always improve!
Also have to look at the benefits of not playing with Volendam.
– It saves 3 hours of traveling 3 – 4x a week, aswell as money.
– Reduces stress
– More time to focus on college life
– Frees up my schedule because the last few weeks it’s been hectic. Not even time to play FIFA!
Next Week
 15 hours.
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In 2009, I was an average soccer player with a dream. I started this blog to document my journey from local underdog to getting offered over $100,000 in soccer scholarships, a contract to play professionally and the experience of playing in Europe.
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