We finally got our first home win of the season when we beat Assi 4-1. Ryan scored the 3-0 goal and hit the post which lead to open net for another player which meant 4-1. Then Ryan also had a nice shot into the goal which should have been 5-1, but was disallowed for some reason which nobody could quite understand. Ryan got alot more space to work with today as expected and finally showed more of what he can do. He actually got awarded man of the match aswell, even if we had another player which I personally would have given it to, but Ryan was up there for sure.
Oh, and I did an interview with Ryan after the game which you can watch here: http://www.svenskalag.se/userpage.asp?teamID=5094&UserPageID=15274
First half of the season finshed yesterday and after a pretty weak start with only 1 win in the first 4 games of the season the team has finished very strong with 4 straight wins. The problem at the start of the season was mainly that the team didn't score enough goals, but now we have 17 goals in 4 games after a brilliant 7-0 win at home last night. Ryan has as expected grown alot when our national team midfielder David Simbo has been away for 5 games. The new central midfield duo has worked much better than Ryan and Simbo, so it's gonna be interesting to see what direction the coach will go after a break for about one month now. Simbo can be used as a defender aswell and Ryan could probably be moved up as forward, but the guy that he would move to the bench there just scored 3 goals and has his best game for the club yesterday, so... Either way Ryan has looked great after a tough start and has started every game in the league apart from the one he was suspended. He's got 2 goals, 1 assist and 2 man of the match awards so far.
Local paper UNT report that Gracia has been training with IK Sirius (third tier) and will continue to do so until sunday. They are a bit vague about how much of an interest there is, apparantly Gracia wanted to train with a higher level club on his way home to the US during the midseason break. The manager points out that Gracia still is a Boden player and that alot of things have to work out for a deal to happen.
Yes, this is no transfer that is likely to happen now and they probably wanted to have a look for next season if anything. The Boden players has been on break for about 2 weeks and since Ryan is going home for his brothers wedding he's missing the restart for the rest of the squad (which was 2 days ago) and probably it wasn't a bad idea to get to train with a team during some time.
Like prowazekii already told you, Ryan scored last weekend when we got a 2-2 draw away in a match we should have won. Today we played the bottom placed team Umedalen at home and Ryan scored twice within 2 minutes. As the league leaders Selånger lost yesterday we closed the gap to them in the top and now it's only 4 points between us and them, so if we can keep getting some wins we'll hopefully be fighting for promotion at the end of the season.
Next week will be a big test for Boden against Marieham, will Gracia play in the center or outside midfield? Gracia seems more effective in the center of the field.Does Gracia has the quality to help Boden to move to division one?
Ryan scored for the 4th game in a row after the summer break when he once again got our only goal in a loss, this time away to Assi where we had a poor 2nd half. Sure Ryan has the quality to help our team, but right now it looks like we won't win our league and honestly our goal hasn't been to get promoted this season either as we're having sort of a rebuilding year and the finances aren't too good at the moment, even if the club isn't in any danger financially or so, but we've had to cut some costs this year. Next year is probably when we're gonna aim for promotion for real.
Oh and on wednesday we play the final in the local state championship (I guess that's a good way to call the tournament for you americans) against our big rivals IFK Luleå who play one division above us. Should be a good test for Ryan and the guys as it's pretty much the biggest game of the season for us this year. The winner also gets a spot in the swedish cup next season.
After being up 2-0 at half-time we lost 2-3 in the final. All in all the opponents IFK Luleå deserved the win, but still sucks losing like that. Ryan didn't quite step up today as we might have needed him to do, but the whole team was struggling in the 2nd half and we're not beating a team from a higher divison then.
Gracia will train with Paul Torres and Shaquille Phillips at Nyköpings BIS next week according to this article which also refers to Gracia as Bodens best player. The three americans apparantly all share the same agent.
Yep, the season in Boden finished yesterday and Ryan left this morning for Nyköping. It seems like he's already made the decision to move on from Boden now. I wouldn't say he's been our best player this season, but for sure one of our best. A great kid who I wish all the best in the future, he should be able to play in higher divisions in a near future.
Local newspaper SN write that the club was happy with how Gracia performed during the trial and that they are now trying to find a solution to bringing him in for next season. Another unnamed third tier club apparantly also wants to sign Gracia besides Nyköpings BIS.
Gracia has signed with Nyköpings BIS for the next season so he will join fellow american Paul Torres in moving up one division as the club will play in the third tier for the first time since 2005. The season will also start off in a very interesting way since the club progressed to the group stage of the swedish cup. In the new cup format introduced this year there will be a group stage played just before the regular league season starts and there they will face two Allsvenskan teams (IFK Göteborg and Kalmar FF) and one Superettan team (IK Brage).
good luck to these two young American players .Nykoping will be a good team for them to show their talent. The Swedish cup will be very exiting and interesting for these two players. Good luck!
Here's his profile page at Nykopings: http://www.svenskalag.se/member.asp?teamID=6422&memberID=226821
Gracia will be writing a blog on the local newspapers website documenting his time with Nyköpings BIS.
Fantastic result for Nyköpings BIS today in the Swedish Cup as they beat Allsvenskan team Kalmar FF 2-1 at home! A win that will go down into the clubs history books no doubt since you have to remember that the highest level Nyköping ever played at was ten seasons in the second tier around thirty years ago. They even got a segment on the sports news of the biggest national TV channel here in Sweden. Both Torres and Gracia played the full 90 minutes and Torres assisted on the first goal and was mentioned as one of the best Nyköping players. Now the club only have to win five more games and then they're in the Europa League qualifiers
Is that a ... gridiron? I thought ugly plastic fields w/conflicting lines on them were unique to the US.