Super classico!!!

We won 2-0.  Here are some pics.  Really wet!  Really cold!  Really fun!!!  This was the guy sitting next to Greg.  After they scored he was totally crying.  It's life out here.

Ciao

Saturday

We spent the day watching partidos (games) between kids from the ages of 7 all the way to the B team.  The whole experience of what we have seen and learned in priceless.  This will benifit me as a coach more than getting every USSF soccer license available.  We are heading to the Super Classico right now.  The match starts at 10:15.  As of 8:00 the sidewalks are packed and spilling over into the streets.  Every bar we walked by is packed out the door and every one is singing at the top of the lungs.  Every car you walk by is honking their horns.  If you are wearing a Real Madrid scarf or anything close you will get a beating.  We have on 3 sweat pants each and 5 layers up top and it just started raining too.  Probably cold enough to snow by game time.  As gametime approaches, they tell us the streets will be packed side to side.  It looks like times square on new years eve.  I attached a couple pics from the games today.  I attached one of the first girl I saw in any games.  She was a stud and wore #9 and scored the only goal in the friendly that they played against a local club.  She was 9 years old.  There are less than 10 girls in the whole escola.

Ciao

Friday

Today was our long physical training sessions.  A lot of the coaches are really sore.  I held up well.  Learned a ton of things.  We just finished a question and answer session with the president of the escola and the head trainer of the academy.  We sucked all the info we could out of their heads.  Here is homework for all my soccer girls,  I want an email from you before I leave about who your favorite player is and why.  If you want, you can attach your favorite you tube clip too if you want.  Tomorrow we will be at the ciutat esportiva for all the academy games.  I will definitely wear out my camera batteries tomorrow.

Ciao

Thursday

Another busy day.  We started at 7:00,  first was tactical theory and that ran over until we were to go watch the 1st team practice.  It was awesome,  They walked right past us and each was totally polite and all greeted us.  Some of these buys are making $30 million a year and all were pleasant.  They trained 2 times today and the one we watched was an hour.  They worked hard and also laughed and teased each other during practice.  It was really fun to watch.  Sven Goran Erikson, the mexican national team (ex-england national team) coach sat next to us during the session.  Most all the ex-players all speak 3 to 5 languages.  After that excitement we went back to watch the 7 yr train at the soccer school.  We watched and participated for an hour or so and the headed back to the academy to watch and learn more.  We finally returned about 10:30 and went to dinner and saw the 8 year old barca team from dubai, UAE (team is full of all nationalities, kind of a all star team) that is staying in our hotel.  All these young men are totally polite and travel around the world playing in tournaments representing Barca.  The european football world is amazing.  It is not a sport, it is their life.

p.s. We were not allowed to have camera's at the 1st team practice, but I accidentally snapped a couple with camera by my hip so you could see

Ciao

We just got back from the training complex, or the ciudad de deportivo (city of sport).  That is where the scrimmage was.  WOW, the polish boys only touched the ball a few times.  The result was 10-0 and Barca didn't even seem like they were trying.  Amazing stuff!  The next thing amazing to happen was we got to meet an amazing footballer, Hristo Stoichkov.  He was part of the Barca dream team in the early 90's.  He also played in the mls at the end of his career for chicago for 4 years.  He has also been the bulgarian national team coach and most recently the coach of the professional team, Celta Vigo.  He talked with us for 20 minutes about different things in the soccer world and will be catching up with him on the weekend.   The amazing news is we were approved to watch the 1st team practice tomorow.  This is amazing, the guys that work here and are putting on all the clinics and tours have never seen them practice.  It s a huge honor.  We get to see that after our training session tomorrow.  It just keeps getting better.

Ciao

Quick post

Here is a quick post about today so far.  We went to the offices again and went through theory stuff for an hour and then headed to the pitch to train for a few hours.  We went thru amazing stuff today.  After we were done we got a vip tour of the stadium which included locker rooms to the press box.  After that we went to the FCB museum.  Wow, that was overwhelming.  Lots of info.  Later we will go watch a training session with the ninos (7-8 yrs).  We're told they will blow us away.  After that we are going to the scrimmage I wrote about yesterday between the 12 yr old academy team and a polish club.  Should be awesome.  The pics are of me at the stadium and infront of the welcome sign for the champions league game.  It says welcome in Ukraine.

Ciao

Segundo parte de Miercoles

What an amazing day of football!  First we spent 3 or 4 hours going over organization and theory of football.  Like I said earlier, it was in espanol, but it still blew my mind away even though I only got about half of what he was going through.  After that we went and watched the 16 and 17 year olds train at a 80 million dollar facility.  These kids are professional at this point and receive a salary and live at the "Massia"(apartments).  We also met Cicihno Dos Santos, who is the father of Giovanni and Jonathan.  Both part of the mexican national team, and their brazilian dad played professionally for years.  Mazihno was the other footballer we met.  He was part of the brazilian world cup team in 94 when it was in the states.  Greg and I are pictured with Both Cicihno and Mazihno.  After we met those amazing jugadores, we headed to the stadium to watch FCB warm up for the champions league game and also watch them go on to loose 3-2 to Shakhtar (Ukraine).  They played all the reserves in order to rest the first team for the super classico on saturday.  This is the biggest game of the year, It's comprable to the super bowl here and will probably have as many viewers.  Take a look at the pic's and I'll have lots more in the morning.  We are training technical all morning.  Tomorrow evening we get to see a Polish club that is traveling down for a scrimmage against 12 year old FCB team.  This was the most amazing soccer day of my life and It will only get better.

Ciao!

Tuesday

Wow, I should've paid more attention in spanish class.  Our complete presentation was in spanish today and it was amazing.   I have never learned so much football in one setting my entire life.  We also toured the mini-estadi(the mini stadium, impressive translation) where we will play a game on friday eve.  We will prep in the locker rooms and everything.  Should be pretty amazing.  We also met some guy, whose name I cant pronounce so I will get the exact spelling before I attempt, who played in multiple world cups and also played club with diego Maradonna.  Cool stuff!  We are now going to the main stadium (Camp Nou) for a tour, then going thru the Academy training session ( young kids-8yr olds) then we go to the Champions league game tonight against Shakhtar (Ukraine).  We are learning the chants and songs so we can sing along.

Ciao!

Monday morning

The sun doesn't come up until about 8:30 here, so as you can imagine everything starts pretty late.  Woke up, had breakfast, worked out in the gym and finally things are starting to get going here.  I'll post again tonight.  We are going to Salgrada familia today and visit Gaudi's tomb there.

Out,

Josh

More sunday detail

Here is my Julie detail.   When we arrived at the hotel, we were too early to check in so we had to leave our bags and walk about.   You can see the Camp nou from the front of the hotel, about a half a block away.  As you know Europe is very dirty and everyone smokes 4 cig's at a time.  I am still trying to ignore those 2 facts when we are out.  So we walked aound the outside of the stadium and saw their training pitch and the dormotory for the barca players that dated back to the early 1900's.  Those were 2 of the pics I uploaded.  Ques? Should I put this much detail into my blog?  Anyway, moving on, As we continued around the stadium we were allowed thru the front gates to wander and take pics of the front.  There is a glass fascade around the front that has the last name of any player to ever play for barca etched into it.  I was looking for Johan Cruyff but couldnt find it.  Meanhile a crowd was gathering as players drove into a underground garage.  We saw Rafa Marques, Thierry Henry, Bojan Krcic and a few others.  All drove range rovers and Audi's.  They were all polite and smiled and waved.  From there we went to the barca megastore, good name for it.  Should of called it "you're not leaving for less that a grand".  Not catchy of a name though.  I bought official captains armbands with the crest on them for the 97's.  I bought a new beanie and a barca Tye for church.  This store was 2  levels  and had everything from barca underear to toilet paper to cleats to jerseys to awesome clothes.  It was impressive.  Hard not to buy any more, because they have cool clothes not available in the states.  As we were leaving there a fan from Polska  was watching were he was walking and walked into a giant plate glass wall, which was right next to the exit.  Needless to say after we found out he was ok, we busted a stich laughing.  So we looked at another dirt pitch that their academy teams recently trained on until getting upgraded to a new 80M facility.  (insert jeffersons theme song now)    That is where we will be training.  So we started heading back.  On our way back we saw the first team was coming out onto the training pitch we had walked by earlier.  That is the photo with them jogging in orange.  Their warm up jog was 4 to 5 laps, sorry girls.  I got to watch the keeper traing.  It was cool.   It was all stuff dwayne, my old keeper coach from the U of R taught me.  It was just a high level of skill and speed.  Manny was whinning much louded at this point about wanting to check in to our rooms.  I think his cologne was wearing off and knew our eyes would stop stinging and we would see who his true identity is.  On the way back, both Eddie and Greg decided that Manny and I shouldn't room together.  It was something about world war 3.   Otherwise we got back to the hotel room and managed to order food and exchanged some $ to Euros.  Needless to say,  I was exhausted So I blogged and went to bed.  I am still pretty tired from the surgery, so the fact that I was up for 40 hours wasn't weighing well on me.  So they went out and I went to sleep.  I slept for 4 hours until I woke up and couldn't sleep and so I am writing this.  Hope you enjoyed.  Just took a sleeping pill, so I am out.

We made it!  We tried to make things difficult by missing our Dallas connection, but we arrived in Barcelona at roughly 8am on Sunday morning.  We came thru customs and took a cab to our hotel.  It's a different world here.  We dropped our stuff off and walked over to the stadium grounds.  Wow!  The Stadium is Ginormous.  While we were touring the grounds we saw players like Henry, Marquez, Puyol and Bojan drive into the garage as they arrived for training.  They beat Valencia yesterday and are now training for Shahktar (Ukraine) on tuesday.  We watched them train for a while, It was really eye opening.  I will upload a couple photos from our walk around.  One photo is of the stadium, one of the old academy dormatory, and another of the first team jogging by us.  I miss everyone!  I love you Julie and kids.  I'll miss my soccer girls too, keep checking in to see what we are doing.

Josh