In the long run of time between posting match recaps, I had many pings and doots on my phone to announce scores. Most of the time, I checked the screen to look for news, but, if I’m honest, when Alebrijes were in action, each ping felt more likely than not to bring news of another goal given up. But was that really the case, or was I conditioned to expect it after some seriously rough rounds of action for the Oaxacans?
Match Results: 6 W – 5 D – 8 L; GF 21/ GA 33
The results don’t fully support my anxiety…well.. at least it didn’t in the spring. Alebrijes was pretty even in their results and they even managed to make it to the playoffs where they scored a Quarter Final upset against Cimarrones on penalty kicks. They couldn’t keep the good times rolling in the next round, but after a lot of struggles, it was a nice turn of events.
This summer into fall however, the ratio of phone alerts to bad news for Oaxaca went back to what I’d expected. Over the first five games of the new season, Alebrijes got one point, scored one goal, and conceded 17. (That includes two separate 6-0 pastings.)
Recently things have been looking up as the squad picked up back-to-back wins including a 1-0 win over top 4 side Venados.
Other Stories:
There’s really not much to say…but again, my hat goes off to the Oaxaca Social Media team, who continues to come up with my favorite images and memes of all our teams.
Julio Cruz was the focal point of the attack in the Spring, but as is often the case, the quality of the outcome for Oaxaca begins and ends with the defense. Octavio Paz remains the man between the posts, but the defensive corps in the spring showed some tremendous strength with Fernando Morales and Francisco Lopez offering strength as defensive midfielders and Edson Santos stepping up in the role of a corner back. (Lopez showing was so strong he got poached by regular promotion contenders Venados.)
Obviously the recent season hasn’t been the defense’s finest hour, though part of that comes down to Paz being on the bench, and his replacement ceding 11 of the 12 goals from those twin 6-0 losses.
Ok, I’ve said it plenty of times by now: but I really struggled to keep up daily writing routines when I was teaching full time. That’s what happens to me when I spend most of the day supporting 70 other people’s writing, and the rest of it trying to be a parent. Now that I’m back to teaching, I’m back to struggling. But I remain determined that I keep up with a practice that I quite enjoy: writing about sports.
So even when it’s hard, and when it takes me a while to do, I’m going to write updates about the teams I love and their struggles and successes. This time, a trip to the French Alps and Grenoble
Match Results: 14 W – 4 D – 13 L; 47 GF / GA 34
Women’s Results: 9 W – 1 D – 2 L; GF 30 / GA 7
The women of Grenoble had high hopes that they could move up into the second tier of club soccer, and they did just about everything in their power to make that happen. Jade Decilap, Claudia Fabre, Romane Pilot and Melanie Chabrier were the top leaders for the scorers, and Julie Tissino was excellent in goal to give them a chance to win every time out.
Unfortunately, the two defeats came to the two top sides in their League 3 Pool: Toulouse and Clermont. Those defeats were what left them in third place when the season came to a close. But with the season about to kick off again, hopes are high that this year is THE year for Grenoble.
Men’s Results: 4 W – 3 D – 11 L; GF 17/ GA 27
There’s simply no way to sugar coat this…the Men of Grenoble collapsed. They were vying for promotion in the first half of the season. But as soon as the calendar turned to February they simply could not buy a win. Worse, one abysmal month saw them score 1 goal and give up 8 en route to 5 straight defeats. Suddenly promotion was a fantasy and survival was in question. Vincent Hognon was dumped (understandably so) and Laurent Peyane took over…with just enough change in results to keep the team afloat. Over the summer Oswald Tanchot was given the opportunity to turn things around, and so far things have been…fine. Not good, not bad, just…fine.
Other Stories:
Really the bottoming out of the men’s side captures most of the drama of the year, but the women had to make a swap as well: elevating long standing assistant Nasreddine Behloul should provide some consistency for a strong team, but how much it pushes them to the next level will remain to be seen.
The other big story is the bittersweet departure of club icon Brice Mableu. It makes sense for one of the biggest difference makers on the club to look for a bigger stage to showcase his skills…and if Grenoble as a whole can’t go up to the top league, at least Brice can (with Saint Etienne). There were other changes too with Amine Sbai leaving for Saudi Arabia, Mathys Touraine going to Paris (FC), and Loic Nestor suffering a ligament tear that likely ends his 24-25 season before it began. Grenoble will have to do their best with a newer look.
Star Players:
The difference makers for les Femmes are the most noteworthy stars: Delicap, Fabre, Pilot and Chabrir are tried and true team leaders, just as Mableu, Nestor, and Jessy Benet have been for the men. While Mathys Touraine had a great season, he was less impressive during the downpour of defeats…but that’s true for everyone. The newest featured star is probably Julie Tissino who anchored the impressive defensive run for the women as well.
I fully and freely admit when I have fallen down on the job…and while I did in general this spring, with Vozdovac I feel extra guilty.
But rather than turn away or ignore the reality, let’s take a moment to dig in to what happened, and what’s next for the shopping mall Dragons
Match Results: 7 W – 7 D – 15 L; GF 32//GA 37
To begin, you have to know the club’s position coming in to 2024. Vozdovac was never the top dogs, despite playing on the roof of the Stadion Mall, but…they had become a reliable fixture in Serbia’s top flight. Over the first half of the season (Fall 2023) they had 28 points, good enough for 7th place out of 16 teams. Not awe-inspiring…but not out of the usual for the Dragons.
Then…just…oof.
The team said goodbye to the deeply valuable Borisav Burmaz who left for Romania and raked in a million pounds for young Nikola Zeceviv. While the transfers make sense as part of Vozdovac’s long term strategy, they did put a big strain on the team coming into the final stretch of the season…a strain doubled by players having to learn a brand new system when the club parted ways with manager Marko Savic right before the season resumed….and the strain showed.
Suddenly, the steady mid-table side became consistently bad. They netted only two points from 10 matches after getting 28 from the first 20. If they had done what they did before, they’d be back up in the race for European spots…but the bad times just got worse as they faced other relegation teams.
The back breaker was a May defeat to Zelznicar Pancevo. The decisive goal may well have been an own goal incurred by Vozdovac’s midfielder Matija Mitrovic: that goal lost the game…that loss left them one point behind Zelznicar at season’s end…that ended Vozdovac’s run in the top flight (but not Mitrovic, who signed with…[checks notes] Zelznicar…who also hired [checks notes] former Vozdovac boss: Marko Savic (sigh)).
Without the hope (however faint) of European football, Vozdovac ended up having to cut back on players and couldn’t rely on other teams sending players on loan to their team. And yet, the squad looks to be in good shape as they start their season in the second division (aka the Prva Liga Srbija). While the tickets haven’t been great yet (200-300 per game so far), they have won 3, drawn 1 and lost 1 putting them in 4th place (scoring 9 and only ceding 1). Keep this up and the Dragons may soar back into the top flight next year.
Other Stories:
Obviously, relegation really captures the main thrust of the season, but its’ worth noting that Vozdovac continues to raise eyebrows with their strong support for young players, training up talents…who then go on to play well for other clubs not named Vozdovac. But after a year that saw them bring in loanees from France and England…only to drop down…the incoming players were once again: local, and free, but in an effort to bounce back to the top tier they also brought in veteran talent and an old friend in coach Dejan Celar (who had spent 2 years as an assistant coach back in the 2010s).
Star Players:
This is Junior Flemmings…not a Serbian man with many surprising ‘J’s in his last name.
Jamaican international (and French league loanee) Junior Flemmings was easily the brightest spot during the spring slog. But there were solid showings from Mihajlo Neskovic (winger), and Bogdan Jovic (midfielder) as well as Nikola Djurcic and Vurkasin Djurdjavec in defense. But don’t get too excited…none of them are back for this season…about the only returning players for the dragons are newly deputized strike team of Bogdan Petrovic and Milan Koleravic so…fingers crossed for that.
It was hard to keep up with these posts when I was teaching full time, but I had hopes of figuring out a system as I prepped for a new school year. I did my reviews, I caught up on details, and made a full sheet of notes about our frequently victorious team from Norway: Rosenborg.
Then…I started preparing for the new school year…and…well…three more weeks went by necessitating still MORE catch up.
Such is the nature of the beast: and here now, a chance to catch up with Rosenborg BK
Match Results: 27 W – 4 D – 17 L; GF 85/GA 55
Women: 15 W -1 D – 6 L; GF 42/GA 20
The reigning cup winners came into the season hoping to finally break the hoodoo around a much deserved League title. And while they certainly look every bit as reliably awesome as usual, it seems to be another year of playing the bridesmaid in the Toppserien.
Simply put the Oslo side Valerenga is too potent having run away with the division a full 17 points ahead of Rosenborg at the time of writing. The black & white side is in danger of slipping to third place overall and ending up outside of European qualification spots as Brann refuses to give them any room for error. (There are still good chances that the team will muster a repeat in the Cup competition as a recent win over Viking has put them back into the Semi-finals in September)
Men: 12 W – 3 D – 11 L; GF 43/GA 35
The Menn were off to a great start in April. Storming through two rounds of the Cup competition, and owning a 3 win, 1 Loss rate in the league. Then May hit and the guys hit the skids, shortly followed by a pretty clear set of selling off established players (including Jayden Nelson, and Leo Cronic), stripping the team down to just the essentials, including a spurt of talented teenagers.
After I made those notes of a rough summer, the team had a tremendous resurgence at the end of August, including bringing back old friend Emil Ceide from the Italian side Sassuolo. But he’s been forced into the role of a super sub while the next generation of young stars bomb up and down the field leading the team to a four match winning-streak.
Other Stories:
Both teams have some very big games on their docket.
The men played against European super club: Manchester United in a friendly and managed a 1-0 win. To be fair, it didn’t count for anything, and the “Red Devils” are more “pesky imps” at this point than the dominant side of my childhood. But a win is a win, and a win against a reknowned opponent is awesome. (Reports that Manchester are eying some of Rosenborg’s young talent is both financially exciting, and personally aggravating).
Meanwhile, the Cup title and second place finish last year puts the Kvinner back in the European spotlight with a qualification match against legendary Spanish club Atletico Madrid. The Spanish triumvarate of Barca, Real and Atletico have been making major moves to build Female superclubs as well so…catching them at a down time for Rosenborg is, in Minnesotan terms “interesting”/”terrifying”)
Star Players:
Sara Horte held down the defense superbly for Rosenborg…which means her defection to Valerenga is bittersweet. She’s looking strong for another run to the title, but she might do it against our prefered side.
Meanwhile the youth movement is in full effect at both clubs with Svarre Halseth Nypan (17), Jesper Reitan Sunde (18), and Marius Broholm (19) leading the men while Froya Brennskag-Dorsin (17) has had superlative moments for the women in a way that reminds us of long-time blog hero: “Julie Blakstad” (cue trumpet fanfare)
Both Men and women do have some reliable veterans showing up as well. Cesilie Andreasenn and Emilie Natunes remain fulcrums of the attack while Rugile Rulyte remains a constat in between the pipes. Meanwhile the men continue to trust Edvard Tagseth, and Ole Christian Saeter to be what they always have been: club legends.
Elfriede Jelinek is the first female writer we’ve covered in our Nobel Laureate reread project, and she is a truly distinctive voice in contrast to what else we’ve read in this project.
Jelinek was born in Austria shortly after the fall of the third reich but with a family that connected both to Austrian high society and Czechoslovakian Jewish community. She began her writing career as a poet before moving into fiction and then drama, all the while maintaining frequent poetic interludes that border on free verse stream of consciousness (the kind that is…challenging to parse). While she has long been widely appreciated in German literature, but less widely known in translation. She was taken aback by being given the Nobel in 2004: “for her musical flow of voices and counter-voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society’s clichés and their subjugating power”. She was not alone as one member of the Swedish academy resigned following her prize calling her work: “whining, unenjoyable public pornography”, and “a mass of text shovelled together without artistic structure”. She’s also had a documentary that calls her a “linguistic terrorist”.
Jelinek still writes, but as someone who struggles with agoraphobia and paranoia, she did not accept the award in person (like Jean Paul Sartre 40 years before).
Works
“Erika distrusts young girls; she tries to gauge their clothing and physical dimensions, hoping to ridicule them”–The Piano Teacher
“We made these nothings [athletes] into greats, into disturbers. Into heavyweights. We commoners, we who can never get used to our lives. The quiet want to be loud, but the loud don’t want to be quiet”–The Sports Play (Die Spielstruck)
“As much as football can cause war, it can also cause peace; football is a kind of Geiger Counter of civilization, a catalyst for good as well as bad.” (2012 Interview)
Message
Elfriede Jelinek is a truly combative writer. While the Nobel committee first cited her musical flow, I found myself considering another aspect of her writing the committee also noted. Her works “present a pitiless world where the reader is confronted with a locked-down regime of violence and submission, hunter and prey.” The psycho-sexual drama of The Piano Teacher (as seen in the well regarded 2001 film) is all about hunter and prey. While sports is all about two opponents, her play about sports builds that to an extreme degree leading to violent confrontations and ideological duels. To me, her writing seemed to revolve around a rather dark and dire message: we must constantly struggle–with one another for power, and with ourselves for control.
Position: #3 Left Back
That combative confrontational tone put me in mind of a defender, especially an aggressive one who might both attack down the flank and also have to rush back to stop others, so I’m going to play Elfriede as a fullback. (I’m also tipping my cap to her socialist politics by putting her on the left side, and using the colors of my favorites at Freiburg who also have a fondness for defensive Austrians.) While there’s some real powerful ideas in Jelinek’s work it is also QUITE difficult to understand and “mass of text shovelled together” seems a fair critique to me. I’ll gladly acknowledge she can do some impressive things, but it’s often hard to wade through the confusion to find it.
Now there are definitely flaws with my assessment so…for the 14th time, I invite someone, anyone to write a comment rather than just leave a like. Would I see it differently if I saw her work performed on the stage or the radio? Would it be different if my German was stronger? If I wasn’t blinded by my masculinity? Seriously, anybody, help me out here…
Next Time, 2024 Honoree ??
We’ll cover the possible contenders at the start of October and review the winner in November. Then start this whole mishagosh over again in January with the 20 year cycles of ’05 Winners
I never wanted to exercise during the long Indian summers, but I’m not a professional football player. So, let’s catch up with men who were paid to be in good shape and play well: Punjab Football Club.
Match Results: 7 W – 3 D – 5 L; GF 29/ GA 21
The fall of 2023 was a clear step up for the Shers (big cats…like Lions…but…I’m gonna keep saying Tigers). Throughout their first four months in the Indian Super League, Punjab did not play like the team of old. Try as Luka Macjen might he could not be everywhere on the field and the team looked like it would be heading for an ignominous end to a splendid opportunity.
Then came the new year, and French born Madih Talal joined the club immediately exploding with assists and inventive play. Almost instantly the squad doubled their prior win total, and before the season ended they came away with 5 wins in 11 matches, after just 1 in their first 14.
Though the team finished outside of the playoff spots, their huge improvement led to a much needed boost in confidence and set them up for another run. Though Talal and old standby Juan Mera left the team, Luka Macjen returned to be the club’s talisman and buoyed the squad to a tremendous showing in the Durand Cup. (Last year as their first taste of top tier soccer, the Shers looked outclassed: this year they won their group handily, before bowing out to bogey team Mohun Bagun in a penalty shoot out.)
Other Stories:
As mentioned above, the Sher’s said a lot of goodbyes at the end of last season. Rather than recap them, here’s the team’s Instagram goodbye
Punjab also shuffled their coaching staff, but kept things Greek bringing in Panagiotos Dilmperis to lead the squad. And in a moment that just tickles my personal fancy, they also signed Mushaga Bakenga who was formerly in the EliteSerien and started his career with Rosenborg Ball Klub, making him the (I think) second player to wear the kit for two of our favorite eleven teams!
Star Players:
It’s no great surprise that Luka Macjen is at the top of this list…he is talismanic to the point of being Punjab’s most bankable (and memeable asset)
We also want to shout out the obviously impressive Juan Mera, and the supremely influential Madih Talal but we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention the defensive stalwart Nikhil Prabhu.
Ok, I’ve said it plenty of times by now: but I really struggled to keep up daily writing routines when I was teaching full time. That’s what happens to me when I spend most of the day supporting 70 other people’s writing, and the rest of it trying to be a parent.
So rather than write one post covering six months of eleven teams in action, I’m going to break it up with posts as best as I can, I’ll fill you in on how the games have gone, who has excelled and any other news and stories worth knowing.
Match Results: 20 W – 8 D – 12 L ; GF: 103 GA: 49
Minnesota United: 10 W – 6 D – 11 L; GF: 40 GA: 41
The Loons have veered between world beating confidence and inexplicable distress. At the season’s start, there were some excellent showings despite upheaval in the roster and confusion on the coaching search (more on that in a little bit). But the team came together after the introduction of new manager Eric Ramsay and came into May as one of the top three teams in the Western Conference.
And then the wings fell off the high flying Loons.
That’s not fully accurate: the wings fell off the Loons and caught on fire and crumbled into ash and then got vacuumed up by a strangely aggressive cleaning crew who took them out and spat on them and called them names.
Just in case you think I’m being hyperbolic, please consider that over the first 14 games of the Loons schedule they won 8, drew 4 and only lost twice. But in June and July the Loons only won and drew 2, which means they quadrupled their loss total by dropping 9!
Minnesota Aurora: 10 W – 2 D – 1 L; GF: 63 GA: 8
To the south of St. Paul, Minnesota Aurora continued to light up their competition. They poured in 21 goals over two matches with Kenosha, and another 26 in the four matches against Chicago Dutch Lions and Bavarian United (a side out of Milwaukee).
Once again Aurora seems to be a proving ground for talented young players en route to the professional ranks as they dominate the games and share the love in racking up goals. But, once again, heartbreak awaited them in the knockout stages. Fortunately, instead of getting to the final match before the suffering began, the Minnesota side was dropped out with a sudden shocking twist of fate against Indy Eleven.
Other Stories:
There were a few shifts in personal in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Nicole Lukic, who oversaw the first two supremely successful Aurora seasons left before things got started to take over youth squad recruitment for the US Women’s National Team. The USWNT is arguably the most prestigious soccer program in the country (many World Cups/Gold Medals will do that for you), and Lukic had a tremendous run bringing in great young players to the Twin Cities, so she should be superb there, while Aurora barely missed a beat in the league with Colette Montgomery taking over.
The men’s situation was a bit more…uh…chaotic. You may recall that Sean McAuley was going to be in charge temporarily…then left to get rid of that “temporarily”. Cameron Knowles stepped up, but was still labeled as an “interim” manager even after the squad looked strong for the first few matches. Finally, the Loons landed a high profile manager from the other MUFC (Manchester United Football Club). Ramsay is young, but has a bright future…provided these summer doldrums don’t undo him.
As if coaching upheaval wasn’t already chaotic, Minnesota United had to deal with some transfer sagas as well: Kervin Arriaga has been a great defensive midfielder the last several years, and now he’ll get to try to show the same thing in Europe (albeit for Partizan Belgrade…against our pals at Vozdovac). But Kervin’s upward trajectory is nothing in comparison with the death spiral of the supremely talented Emmanuel Reynoso. From the fulcrum of the club who could demand his heart’s desire, Reynoso has spent two years preferring to hang out back home in Argentina rather than training with teammates. I don’t blame him, I’m a home body too…but when you hang out with guys who attack random teenagers with guns …uh…that’s not so cool. Ultimately Minnesota moved Reynoso to Mexico just to be rid of the discomfort…even though dropping him probably didn’t help the squad get better…but it did make the club less violent so…I’ll take it as a win.
Star Players:
Sophie French and Cat Rapp once again dominated defensive lines all throughout the uppermidwest. This year they were helped by newcomer Sage Wimes, and midfield maestros Katie Duong, Addison Weichers and Mariah Nguyen.
Adorable DSC pictures, just because.
The Loons seemed happy to give up the “hope for Reynoso to do something magical” strategy and found a good balance in their team. Tani Oluwaseyi has emerged as another goal scoring threat (even while the boys’ favorite Bongi struggles with lingering injuries). Oluwaseyi even managed to make the Canadian national team alongside permanent highlight reel goalie: Dayne St. Claire. St. Clair had help from Joseph Rosales’ very good defense in the backline and the all around creation and goal scoring accumen of Robin Lod and Hasani Dotson.
Ok, I’ve said it plenty of times by now: but I really struggled to keep up daily writing routines when I was teaching full time. Case in point, I’ve sat down to write about teams half a dozen times during this week of back to school business, but with meetings, plannings and trainings, it’s only now, on Friday night, that I’m actually taking time to write.
With the Bundesliga about to kick off tomorrow, it seemed the ideal time to take a beat and check up on our friends in Freiburg
Match Results: 8 W – 9 D – 15 L; GF 46/ GA 59
Herren: 6 W – 6 D – 8 L; GF 34/GA 36
After years of over achieving and being the sweetest little club in Europe, Freiburg ran smack dab into the buzzsaw that is incessant competition of the high achieving behemoth clubs of Europe. Without an oil magnate or soft drink bottler to buy up fringe players, the Boys of Briegsau were run ragged by the demands of another run in the Europa league. Once again, they faced their bogey team of West Ham United, and, after winning 1-0 at home they were pounded 5-0 in London. Exhausted and worn out they still had the chance to make another run for Europe, but they didn’t have the legs to make it happen. Winning only once in the last two months, they slipped to tenth as they said goodbye to their local legend.
Frauen: 2 W – 3 D – 7 L; GF 12 / GA 23
While the men were struggling down the stretch, the women were…struggling down the stretch. From their usual position just outside the top tier, the Babes of Breigsau lost 6 straight matches to plummet down to the bottom half of the table, finishing 9th overall (yes one spot better than the guys, but also only out of 12 teams, while the men were part of 20).
Other Stories:
Am I considering paying $35 for a Streich autographed card…yes…yes I am…
What can you say about Christian Streich that I haven’t already written. He was folksy, kind, and thoughtful. He was loyal, genuine, and pretty funny. He was the cherry on top of choosing Freiburg when this project started.
He retired at the end of the year, and all reports indicate that he’s doing nothing so much as just being with his family and relaxing: no angling for further appointments, no sanitized studio punditry, just keeping on as a normal dude.
Julian Schuster will take over this season, and he seems to be doing his best to become Christian Streich 2.0, going so far as to say “there’s a lot of Christian in me”. I look forward to tearfully wishing Julian a job well done in 2036.
Star Players:
As ever the standbys of Freiburg’s formidable teams were there: Vincenzo Grifo, Janina Minge, and Hasret Kayici remain stalwarts attacking, scoring, leading. This year their co-stars were a little more varied.
On the defensive side of the ball, Samantha Steuerwald is becoming the women’s defensive dynamo but Marie Mueller played so well in the last part of 2023 as to earn a move to legendary American team The Portland Thorns. Meanwhile Matthias Gunther was clearly valuable, especially as the men’s long slide to struggle coincides with his exit to an injury.
But it was also deeply gratifying to see Ritsu Doan (who we also grew to adore when he was playing for Japan at the World Cup) take the next step up with Freiburg as the most frequent target for Vincenzo Grifo. Ultimately, he couldn’t engineer enough offense to single handedly keep the foxes/griffins in Europe, but he did his darndest.
Time for another round of self-flagellation and obviously past-deadline Sports “journalism” as I recap the year so far for the Royals of Legon Cities.
Match Results: 8 W – 3 D – 9 L; 17 GF/20 GA
Legon ended January atop our annual table by winning their one and only game. From February to April they continued to look strong, or at least…strong enough. The tonnage of 1-0 games suggested that the team was challenged each and every week, but the number of wins was heartening as the Royals pushed towards the top half of the league and started a deeper run in Ghana’s MTN FA Cup (the premier tournament in Black-Star Country)
A somewhat friendly draw in the tournament saw the boys from Legon continue to progress, beating lower tier side Korfoidua (home of my Ghanaian dad, Braimah Dediako) was part of an impressive run all the way to the semi-finals. Two more wins and the Royals would have their first piece of hardware under their new name.
Perhaps that distraction pulled them away from the League competition. Coach Paa Kwesi Fabian oversaw a miserable May and June as the defense crumbled and the losses piled up enough to let the Royals slide, once again, back down toward the relegation zone. Losing the Cup semi to a strong side from Nsotraman left it all in the balance, and once again the Royals escaped by the skin of their teeth…one point kept them above the drop and sent them into the offseason preparing to survive as usual.
Other Stories:
If there is a silver lining to the lousy spring the Royals endured, it’s that there were no points taken off of opponents, no bureaucratic mumbo jumbo, and no last second interventions to save them. The team truly earned their spot, which is more than can be said for prior years when they were lucky to have rivals engaging in shady practices. This time, the lack of a subplot made the survival just a little sweeter.
Star Players:
Alidu Mohamed is a rising young star, at just seventeen, the winger provided three goals, two assists, and three man of the match awards. But the Royals will lean on him still more in the coming season as the team’s clearest leader, Samuel Tenadu, who notched 10 goals for the club, has left to join the Porcupine Warriors of Asante Kotoko.
But while the goals and creators get the highlights, a large chunk of Legon’s success came down to the matches when their defense was able to deny opponents a path. The clearest connection between Legon’s best moments and a player’s performance wasn’t Mohamed or Tenadu, it was Center Back Frank Atoko. We’re always happy to acknowledge a strong center back performance, and all the more so when he makes an argument for everyone earning better wages and the awesomeness of journalism/writing. So Frank, thank you.
Ok, I’ve said it plenty of times by now: but I really struggled to keep up daily writing routines when I was teaching full time. That’s what happens to me when I spend most of the day supporting 70 other people’s writing, and the rest of it trying to be a parent.
So rather than write one post covering six months of eleven teams in action, I’m going to break it up with posts as best as I can, I’ll fill you in on how the games have gone, who has excelled and any other news and stories worth knowing.
Match Results: 9 W – 4 D – 8 L; 36 GF / 41 GA
The last time we saw the Staggies, they were hoping to avoid another late season slog to stay above the relegation zone. There was a tremendous home win against Rangers, but a rough February and March led them to another round in the relegation region of the Scottish Premiership.
With every match increasingly important, the Staggies had to turn it on, but a brutal 4-0 loss to Motherwell left them behind St. Johnstone’s in goal difference and forced them to another relegation playoff, this year against Raith Rovers. Fortunately, this time there was no need to push for penalty kicks as they won both legs and secured another season in Scotland’s top competition.
After a number of offseason departures, the Stags had a perfect group stage in the League Cup looking the part of a top team. That completely came unraveled against Spartans, a League 2 side, who stood their ground and ended up leaving the Stags a little shell shocked, though not totally amazed given that they only have gotten 1 goal in their last 270 minutes of play.
Other Stories:
Derek Adams got a well earned boot out the door in February and the Stags turned to Don Cowie, who (fun fact) was born just 1 day before your mom! Unlike your mom, Don trained and debuted with Ross County and launched a strong career that took him all the way to the vaunted English Premier League before he ended up back at County right at the start of my blog writing days. As a local lad made good and proud to return home he has oodles of good well and also seems to be not a jerk (which is a big step up from the last couple Stags managers)
Star Players:
It’s impossible to talk about the salvation of the Staggies without mentioning the work of midfield maestro Yan Dhanda and the team’s strongest goal scorer, Simon Murray. They gave a difficult job their all and the Staggies wouldn’t still be in the premier league without them. As they move on to other clubs and challenges we wish them the best.
Equally important in County’s survival was captain and fellow central midfield stalwart Connor Randall, along with goalie Ross Laidlaw. But perhaps most influential has been the emergence of two more powerful defenders in Ryan Leak and loanee Will Nightingale (who has served as something of a brick wall for most of the Leagues Cup).
MacKenzie's Boot Room 