Coach Ziemer's Update From Europe

Coach Ziemer and his Seawolves are spending two weeks in Europe to train before the 2011 season begins. The trip is also an opportunity for team members and coaches to learn about the rich cultural heritage of Holland, Belgium, and Germany. Coach Ziemer was kind enough to send us his journal entries from the first part of the trip...

Friday, July 29

This has been quite the tour! It seems like we haven't stopped moving since we got here. We arrived in Amsterdam on the morning of Friday, July 29. Our tour coordinator, Jay Van Veelen, met us at the airport and took the players and coaches back to the hotel. We are staying in Scheviningen, which is a beach town on the outskirts of Den Hague (The Hague), Holland. Our place is called The Skotel and it a hotel school that is closed for the summer so they rent out the dorms. It is in a great location and it is very reasonably priced, which is very important, especially with the weak dollar against the Euro! Basically 10 dollars will buy you 7 Euros, so everything is really expensive for us. The Skotel is also the same place that we stayed with the team in 2006 on our last Euro tour.

The first day we got settled in and then went to Escamp, a local soccer club and trained to loosen up and get the travel out of our legs. After training, we took the tram into downtown Den Haag and went to dinner. Afterwards we gave everyone a curfew and let them walk around down town before returning home on the tram. They key to surviving in Europe is to get on their sleeping patterns. We left SFO at 2:00pm and arrived in Amsterdam at 9:30am, but for us it was actually 12:30am, so everybody was tired. We didn't let anyone nap all day and they couldn't go to sleep before 10:00pm. We made it and went to bed and most of us were able to get to sleep.

Saturday, July 30

We woke up on Saturday and had breakfast in the hotel and then went to Escamp to train. We had a really sharp training because we had to prepare for games the following day. Although the guys were still a little jet lagged, the energy was good and everyone was in good spirits. The original plan was to go on a quick bike tour of Den Haag, but it started raining a bit and we had been going non-stop since we had arrived so we gave everyone a couple of hours of free time to get their lay of the land. We met in the lobby and piled into our four mini vans and drove to Breda for a friendly game between NAC Breda and Olympiacos, from Greece. We went to downtown Breda and had dinner before heading to the Rat Verlegh Stadium, where they play. It is a perfect soccer stadium and although there were only about 10,000 people at the game, it was very loud and the atmosphere was lively. The game was a little slow, with NAC Breda keeping the ball well, but not creating many chances. Olympiacos played a bit on the counter and went ahead 1-0. The game crept along until NAC subbed in Alex Schalk, a local product who led the Erie Divisie U19 age league in scoring the previous year and was sought after by several domestic and foreign clubs, Manchester City and Bayer Leverkusen. He grew up in Breda and always wanted to play for the first team, so he stayed, but I am sure that we will hear from him again. Anyway, within minutes of subbing in, he scored a goal to tie it up and then then he scored the game winner with five minutes to go and the Breda fans went home happy. It is no secret that we play a Dutch Style of soccer with a 1-4-3-3, building up from the back and playing a possession game with wingers so it was great for our players to see NAC Breda play the same way. On the way back to the Skotel after the gam,e the players and coaches in each of the vans were talking about what we each noticed. It was a great learning experience and it will continue for the entire trip.

Sunday, July 31

Game day! We woke up and had breakfast at the Skotel and then headed to Quick den Haag, a local amateur club that has strong ties to Sonoma State Soccer. Beginning with Chirs Carniato living in Holland in the early 90's and attending the KNVB coaching school, many players played at Quick den Haag including Andrew Ziemer, Jeremy Sweet, Brett Cook, Mason Hill-Harrill, Carl Edwards, Eric Parish, Ross Middlemiss, Brandon Deshazier and former assistant coach Ian Mork. A good friend of ours, Pieter Fischer is our contact at Quick and we always feel very welcome there. We played two Quick teams and in the first game we started slow, going down 0-3 before we woke up and created a lot of chances. We didn't capitalize until the 80th minute when Brandon dela Cruz scored a nice goal and then Aaron Glover scored to make it 2-3 and we pressed for the equalizer. We though that we had it, but the linesman called offside and the game ended with a 3-2 loss. After 15 minutes we played well and if we had finished our chances we could have won by several goals.

In the second game we played very well and also created more chances than Quick. The game was back and forth and it looked like a heartbreaker when they scored with 5 minutes left, but Nico Spann scored shortly after, so the game ended up with a fair 1-1 draw. I was really happy with the way that we played, especially in the buildup and possession in the defensive and midfield thirds. In both games we need to be sharper in the attacking third, but we will continue to work on that.

After the game, they hosted a BBQ for us and we enjoyed a meal of steak, coleslaw, and potatoes with a nice dessert of ice cream, fresh strawberries and whipped cream. Each of the clubs over in Holland have a stadium field, several training fields and locker rooms and a club house with a restaurant and canteen. The players and coaches from both teams were able to hang out and talk before, during, and after dinner and it was a great way to learn about other cultures. In Holland everyone speaks English so it was easy for everyone to socialize. It is funny, but if you ask someone in Holland if they speak English, they will actually say "of course"". It makes you feel kind of stupid for asking and I usually don't, I just ask the question in English and they answer!

After the game we returned to the Skotel and went to the beach for a mandatory session in the North Sea. The water is a little cold, but not nearly as cold as Bodega Bay! We made the players stay in for 15 minutes and the waves weren't bad so we 't actually had a good team body surfing contest. That evening we finally had some free time and we let the players walk around and eat dinner on their own.

Monday, August 1

On Monday, we trained at Escamp again and the players were pretty sore, but we got them loosened up and worked on finishing, hoping to improve on our poor shot to goal ratio from our first two games. After the training we showered and headed to Amsterdam to visit Toekomst, the home of Ajax FC, the top team in Holland. The training grounds are impressive with 8 fields (some turf and some grass) and a club house and canteen that looks over the training fields. We got a quick picture and saw Mike Massewinkle, a goalkeeper coach at Ajax that has come over a few times to work the SSU/Hoek Camp in the summer. He was excited to see us and we made plans to visit him again.

We parked the vans under the Ajax Arena and headed to Amsterdam on the train. We arrived at Central Station, gave the players some rules and a meeting time and everyone headed out for some sight seeing. Amsterdam is a beautiful city with the canals and old buildings and it a great walking city because it is so flat. Of course everyone knows about the red light district, but there is much more than that. The coaches didn't stop walking for four hours as we hit the Leidseplein, Rembrantplein, walked by the Van Gogh museum before circling back and walking through the red light district. It was day time so a lot of the curtains on the windows were closed, but it is still a must see for anyone visiting for the first time. We obviously have nothing like it and it is interesting to walk through and see a different culture at work. We met at 8:00pm and headed back to Den Haag. As expected, all of the players had worked their way through the red light and everyone had funny stories and experiences. Everyone fell asleep on the vans on the way home (except the coaches who were driving!) and we pulled into the Skotel and headed to bed.

We are getting ready to head to a game so I need to end here. I'm sorry that I am behind in the blog, but the schedule has been extremely hectic. We are at the Skotel for an hour or two here and there, but I have been shopping at the super market for lunch and some dinners to save money so it seems like I never have a moment. I will get caught up so that you can experience our trip with just a slight delay. The players are having a blast and learning a lot. As always, I have scheduled too much (games, watching professional teams train, Van der Sar's testimonial game and more!), but I figure that this is a once in a lifetime experience so we are going for it!