My college team is going to sweden to train in august, and we are going to be playing the following teams in friendlies: FC Krogen La Scuddetto Svarteborg FJALLBACKA UIS anyone have any info about these teams? I'm leaving on the 7th, anything would be appreciated.
Sounds like crap teams, I mean name a swedish team "La Scuddetto"??? You must be playing soccer at a really low level
6.division in Sweden. Although, that means nothing. I trained with a 5.divison team in Finland, and they still had skills!
I have friends who play for a division 4 team in Stockholm...They are actually quite good. They are amatuers of course, but as good, if not better than a few college players I know.
Svarteborg, Fjällbacka and UIS all plays in the same division, division 6 North Bohuslän. Bohuslän is a coastal area north of Göteborg. The table is here http://www.svenskfotboll.se/Table.asp?TournamentId=14489 look for UIS/Skredsvik, Svarteborg Dingle IF & Fjällbacka/Rabbalshe. As mentioned above Svarteborg has a homepage at http://www.svarteborg.nu/ Fjällbacka also has one, http://www.fjallbackaik.com/ If you click on the link "Gästboken" at the sites above you come to the teams Guest book, if you want to, you can ask there if they know about any upcoming games against an American team. English will do fine. The standard in the lower divisions in Sweden vary a lot from region to region, in urban areas like Stockholm, Göteborg & Malmö most teams in division 4-6 are serious and train a lot, but in more rural areas the quality of play can be rather poor. The teams in north Bohuslän are mostly village teams. My guess that you will not see to many bicycletas and backheel passes from them, but a lot of running and long balls. More Scotland than Brazil. I do not think "FC Krogen" and "La Scudetto" plays in the Swedish league system, maybe they are rec. teams where the players do not have to have a license from the Swedish FA.
Alej You are leaving in 2 weeks but when you return please let us know how your team did, and how good your opponnents were.
We did really well, finishing 3-0-2. La Scudetto-6th dvision team. Lots of skills, but had old players and weren't very fit. Conn College 3, La Scudetto 0 Boo Fc- A regional U19 team from around the stockholm area, great skills, but mostly 17,18,19 yr olds, so we were able to push them around. We dominated, hitting the crossbar twice and the post once, but couldn't get one in the back of the net. Conn College 0, Boo Fc 0 We then traveled to outside Gothenberg, Hamersgund(?) I think was the name of the town. Svarteborg Fc- Very fit and physical, with good skills, similar to a good NESCAC team, which is what we needed. After playing a flat first 15, we picked it up. 2nd best team we played. Conn College 3, Svarteborg Fc 1 Fjallbacka Fc- Worst team played probably, not very good tactically or skill wise. We rested our starters, as this was our 4th game in 4 days. Conn College 2, Fjallbacka Fc 0 I forget the name of the last team-it might have been UIS-but i think it was something else. We played in a stadium in Gothenburg, Beautiful Div. 2 facility. They were probably the best team we played, at the top of the table of Div. 6, physical, great skills, fast. We were drained after playing 4 games in 4 days, with this being our fifth in 5, but we got an early goal. They tied it, and the rest of the game was back and forth. Conn College 1, Other team 1 Overall great exp, we really got a chance to improve, and look to win nescac this year. (conference we play in, www.nescac.com)
Thank's Alej, great reading! But how in the world did an american college soccer team come up with the idea to go to Sweden for pre-season training? And how did you manage to find competition at what seems to have been the right level?
very luckily we had a connection with the yale women's head coach who happens to also play on a 5th div. swedish team and has been there many times. His fiancee is also from sweden, so it was like we were being taken around by the locals.