The first day, July 18, was a long one. I spent an hour and a half flying from Newark, NJ to Charlotte, NC. From there I transferred from Charlotte, NC to London, England which was an eight hour flight. I arrived in London about 9:15 a.m. July 19 or 4:15 a.m. Pennsylvania time. After I met with the Sports Tours USA representative, I and others on my flight were transferred by bus to Manchester which was a 5 hour drive. The first day seemed the longest due to the length of time flying and driving as well as getting used to the five hour forward time difference.
Our team only got to practice together a total of four hours, but in those four hours we came together quite well. We learned how the coach wanted us to work in his 4-4-2 system, which are four defenders, four midfielders and two forwards.
Our coach, Charles Barone, was originally from Argentina, but now lives in the United States. He played professionally as well as coached professionally, so I was expecting good things from him. Unfortunately, he did not give me much of a chance to show my skill and ability which may have been the reason why he did not play me as much.
In the first game I started at right defense and was then moved up to right midfield. I was then subbed out with about twenty minutes remaining in that game. In the next two games I came into the game as a substitution with about twenty minutes remaining at the right midfield position. In the fourth game I started at right midfield and played the entire game. In the final game I did not play because I became sick the previous day and did not feel well enough to play.
In the tournament, we played two teams from Cambridge, England, two teams from Manchester, England, and one team from Charlotte, NC. I would have to say that we played better than all the teams we played against, but we just could not finish the ball and score. Also, the teams that we played knew how to capitalize on our mistakes and that is how we lost some of our games. In our first game against Cambridge B team we lost 4-0. In our second game we lost 2-0 to Charlotte, NC, who ended up second in the tournament. Our third game we played a team from Manchester and lost 3-0. We played our fourth game an hour and a half after our third and beat another team from Manchester 3-1. In that game I started a play that moved the ball to three players and ended in our third goal. Our last game was part of a playoff bracket to determine fifth through tenth in our age group. We were placed up against Cambridge A team and won 2-1. Our record in the tournament was 2-3 and we placed fifth out of ten teams, which we were quite pleased with as we played teams that were together for years and we had only played together for a few hours.
Although I did not play as much as I had anticipated, I did have a superb time while in England. I enjoyed our site seeing opportunities as we visited the cities of Manchester, Chester, Liverpool and London, which I must add were very beautiful and architecturally amazing, as you will see in many of my picture. We also visited the stadium of Manchester United, one of the greatest soccer teams in the world. That would have to be one of the highlights of my trip as I had always wanted to see their stadium in person. We got to tour the entire stadium including the player’s locker rooms and got to go down to field level just to see how nice the field really was up-close and to really get a feel of how big the stadium really was.
This experience has been one I will never forget. All the many sites I may never see again in my life will never be forgotten. From this trip, I feel that I have become more experienced in soccer and a better all around player. I also believe I will become a better all around person from this experience because I had the chance to visit another country and kind of get a feel of what it is like to live there as well as appreciate what I have here in America much more than I used to in the past.