Hi, I am new to this site. I desperately want to go overseas and play soccer. Can anyone give me some insight on the best way to go about doing this? who i should contact and that kind of stuff? it would be greatly appreciated. thank you.
In Europe you mean? Well i guess you have to decide what country you want to play in first, or club and if it´s a higher league or lower league that you are aiming for in that specific country. And i don´t think they recruit they same way in every club in Europe, if thats where you want to go.
It also depends on what position you play. If you are a goal scoring forward there are several clubs in Norway that would love to give you a tryout. The next transfer period in Norway starts July 1st and one Norwegian club in particular, Grand Bodø, is desperately seeking strikers.
olympique lyonnais is an ambitious club who counted several members of the USWNT in their ranks a couple of years ago. they're french champions and qualified for the next UEFA cup. http://www.uefa.com/competitions/womencup/news/kind=1/newsid=540251.html http://www.olweb.fr/index.php?lng=fr&pid=204001 the club site has LOTS of articles about the women's team, but unfortunately few of them are in english. the local consul has lots of experience helping with work permits because of the USWNT ladies and the numerous american basketballers who play here. and lyon is a great place to live.
Well, it worked for Erica... http://www.fcg-frauen.de/news/news_weiter.php?id=1420 http://www.ich-spiele-fussball.dfb....t/article/5/neuzugang-beim-fc-guetersloh.html And you can follow her experiences: http://blog.fcg-frauen.de/
I really want to tryout for the womens professional league in sweden and i have no idea where to find out this information. Is there any way to find out this information???
I was overseas this summer and spoke to a european coach about just that. One thing to consider is that you might be in a city that is very different from what you are used to- many Americans can't handle that- if you look at the populations of the major cities in Scandinavia- well they are small and many of the teams are in these very small cities. Some of the clubs make you do other jobs to play. So when you hear about players playing professional over there- it usually isn't much more than- here is an apartment to share, if you are very lucky a car to share, you can eat for free at these restaurants and a bit of money. The really big money is the for the national team players and not trying to bash you but it sounds like that isn't your level that you come from. Back to what the coach said- he just said so few Americans can handle it over there with this and they have a lot of natives to choose from as it is- so ask yourself how cheap are you willing to work. Is this just a chance to spend 3-4 months overseas- are you willing to spend nearly a year there in this environment- many are not. Don't mean to be a downer- just thought you should think about it before you go and then want to get back home. Good luck, I hope you do it- it is a great experience.
Regardless of the size of the cities, you will find that Scandinavia (and Sweden in particular) has a very limited selection of stuff to buy and services avaliable, even in Stockholm, compared to the US especially but also in relation to the rest of Europe. Getting used to that is a bit of a shock to the system, they say. I really can't say I miss anything, but then I'm not used to anything else. For info on how Americans cope with Sweden, try www.amerikanska.com Not a very active site, due to the hostile moderation, but they say there are few old threads worth reading.
i work a lot with a swedish company, and have been many times to göteborg, a few times to köping and once to stockholm. i don't want the below comments to be interpreted as sweden-bashing, the people are very nice and the "swedish model" has a lot to be said for it as a lifestyle. the first impression one has of göteborg or stockholm is very positive, but once you've been there a few times it's hard to believe these cities are as big as lyon (in the case of stockholm almost twice as big) , or that köping is as big as, say, autun. tourism is obviously not a big industry in sweden, and i think swedes live and enjoy life largely at home; for visitors life can quickly become very dreary. i was in oslo once and got a similar impression. what makes it worse is the latitude, and not so much the weather, or even the dark winters, as the light. winter and summer it has an oblique, dusky quality that is gorgeous at first but becomes unnerving as the hours go by. if i ever had to stay there for more than i few days i'm sure i would quite simply go mad.
The population of the area area belonging to the actual Stockholm council is only about 750 000. That includes a rather hefty slab of surrounding burbs. To make the numbers reach the million or two the people of Stockholm talk about you need to count every little crappy council at a radius of 100 km or so. Of course Stockholm seems small. It is. After the debacle that was the late sixties DDR-style demolition-and-construction spree, new development died completely after the introduction of new legislation that made everybody and their grandmother a part in the decision process whether you get to build anything on your land or not. This legislation was brought in to protect the few quaint little buildings and churches that against the odds survived the previous decade. Unfortunately it has made the process of construction in the city proper completely impossible and forced new development to occur in the vast forests surrounding the city and create little sattellite communities with no 'natural' connection, i e streets, to the surrounding areas. Ie, yes, it is small. Can be quite pleasant, but you need to expect to adapt to the lifestyle or go mad.