Augsburg men's soccer assistant coach Evan Fuhs is sending daily diaries during the Auggies' team trip to Spain. Here's the team's diary entry for Wednesday, May 5:
Without getting to far from the FC Barcelona faithful, the team went to nearby Sitges to train on the beach.
After a few jogs down the beach and some push-ups, the energy got up and the session got rolling. Players found that the best way to keep the sand out of their eyes was to keep the ball out of the sand, so every touch was controlled back to a teammate in the air.
The beachside suburb was a wonderful labyrinth of sidewalks and streets, expanding up the nearby hills away from the sea. The team enjoyed a sidewalk lunch and had time to explore the area, during the afternoon.
Eventually, the players found their way back to the beach, located a lonely soccer ball and restarted the juggling games they had enjoyed in the morning.
After a brief siesta in the hotel, the team departed to play Pubilla Cases in downtown Barcelona.
Having traveled across the world, today the Auggies found themselves playing on their home field -- turf. Considering our comfort with the surface, the match started with momentum shared between the teams. Pubilla dominated possession towards the end of the first half, resulting in two goals.
After regrouping and reorganizing at halftime, the Auggies came out and put significant pressure on the opponent. As a result, they tied the score 2-2 with power and pressure their defining traits. Though Pubilla later scored the winner, the Auggies demonstrated that they could adapt and play an opponent of the highest technical quality, ending the match with a 3-2 defeat on the home turf.
Thoughts from Augsburg midfielder #T.J. Haag# (JR, Apple Valley, Minn./Burnsville HS):
Training at the beach was entirely a new experience altogether. The most basic of tasks were suddenly very challenging. Walking, running, jumping, and kicking had all became difficult to perform because of the added element of sand. Every step demanded more effort and endurance, which was quickly sucked out of each and every muscle.
Running became a tiresome struggle, because with each stride our feet would sink into the sand, taking away traction, power and speed. Kicking became challenging because we had no shoes on and the surface of the ball was covered in sand, which actually made it painful to kick at times. Heading the ball was difficult because sand was constantly flying in people's eyes.
However, we did come up with a solution, which was to focus on making sure the ball never touched the ground. To accomplish this task collectively required much more concentration from everyone.
Thoughts from Augsburg midfielder #Peter Osborn# (SO, Eagan, Minn./Eastview HS):
Tonight we played a game against Pubilla Cases from Spain. They were a quality team to play against and I had a lot of fun in the process. One thing that this team was able to do well was ping the ball from person to person all over the field at a quick pace. This combined with their speed, so that they were able to expose some gaps in our defense, at first.
Eventually, we adapted and learned how to cover those gaps. In the second half, we found our legs and figured out how to hang with them. We settled down playing the game at our pace, which made us all comfortable, and we were able to get behind them few times to put a couple in ourselves. In sum, the nerves are out of the way and I feel that we are going to come out strong for these next couple games.
