http://www.bodensbk.se/fotboll/nyheter/2012/2012_02_13_ryan_gracia_tranar_med_bbk.html Anyone who can tell anything about this guy?
Was at residency in Bradenton for a while and was also part of the DC United academy. Played four seasons of college soccer at George Mason and was a senior last fall. http://gomason.cstv.com/sports/m-soccer/mtt/gracia_ryan00.html
My faint memory of him as a U17 was that he's very technical. Played a lot at Mason, which is a good program. Wasn't drafted by any MLS teams.
Well, at least the football blog of the local newspaper seem highly impressed with Gracia. They praise his gracious touch, irrational movement and good understanding of the game. All this after watching him play for 20 minutes
Don't know much details about the game, but Ryan scored one of the goals in the first of two games in Finland this weekend when we got a 3-3 draw against JS Hercules. We play OPS-j today.
Another two goals from Ryan in the 2nd game when we won 7-1 against OPS-j and in today's paper the coach says they want to sign Ryan after this. He also says it seems like Ryan wants to stay, so it's very likely that he'll end up staying with the club now.
A verbal agreement to sign has been reached between Gracia and Boden according to the football blog in one of the local newspapers (here and here).
Just got the word that Ryan has signed and he is playing in our friendly match which starts in 35 mins! I'm at the stadium now and it'll be interesting to see how he's playing.
Ryan played 76 mins today and was looking quite good in the first half at least in a match where the team showed some of their best soccer during the pre-season. I was surprised to see how short he actually is, but he makes up for that with some good speed and technique. He was playing as the offensive central midfielder in our 4-4-2 lineup.
Any particular news you're looking for? Both players have signed a while back and have been playing here since, especially Ryan has been looking better and better, scored a beautiful goal in our game on monday. The league kicks off on saturday. I met Ryan for an interview today which will be posted on our new website www.bbkfotboll.se sometime tomorrow in case there's anyone who want to translate it into english.
So we lost the opener 0-2 after Skellefteå scored two goals in the first half out of two scoring chances. Ryan however did well and he's looking more and more impressive for every game that goes. Today he had a few good finishes himself and had a great pass that should have resulted in a goal if our striker hadn't ran past the ball. Right now Ryan is imo our best offensive player by far.
What kind of a deal is he on? Is he playing full-time at this level, or does he have to supplement his income from the team with other work?
While I have no idea about the specifics of Gracias contract I can say that the minimum wage that the club has to pay him as a (non-EU?) foreigner is $2230/month. My guess would be that they have given him that exact salary, but maybe Jedda has better info.
Pretty sure he's a full-time soccer player here since he's one of the guys who does some extra training in the morning while many of the players with regular jobs on the side only does train in the evening. And maybe one of the mods could change the title to something better since he's not here on trial any longer?
USD, but I have no clue what Ryan is making here. I guess the club pays for the apartment and so on, but not sure exactly. Home opener yesterday and we only got 0-0 against one of the promoted teams (Selånger) in a game which was worse than the season opener playing wise. Ryan was very average in this game and a better performance from him could have been the difference between a draw and a win. But we still had enough chances to win the game, but once again we struggled to put the ball in the net.
I saw the BBK team won yesterday 2-0. How did the match go for Gracia and co.? I believe it looked that he was involved in both goals from what I read online.
Well, sort of. The first goal was a corner from Ryan which the goalie tipped out and another player buried it into the net. The 2nd goal was a bad rebound off the goalie from a shot that Ryan delivered and then our player had an easy job putting it in the goal. But in general I'm still expecting more from Ryan, cause we've seen him do much better already. We play our 2nd home game of the season in a couple of hours, so he has the chance to show that then
Haven't updated for a while, but Ryan has been struggling quite alot so far this season. Last weekend he got 2 yellow cards and was sent off in a league match, so he was suspended this weekend. It wasn't the best time for him to get suspended as our other central midfielder currently is away on national team duty for Sierra Leone, so Ryan had a great chance to shine this weekend. But David Simbo (the other midfielder) will still be away for our next 3 games, so this is a great opportunity for Ryan to try and lead the team when he will probably get alot more ball possession than he's had so far during the season.