bliss

Yossi and Jon's work on the try-outs was phenomenal and yielded great results. There will be pictures and a bit of a write-up here, and on the main site tomorrow.

On Saturday the U10 lads battered their opponents, and got a positive 4-2 result. Our 6th place seed in the play-offs is now safe. Interestingly though, in spite of going ahead 1-0 we came from behind at 2-1 down to finish the job.

The lad got a hatrick of free kicks over their wall and in - quite spectacular and a brilliant achievement for him. Overall though the lads played better than at any time this season, so as for the play-offs - it's on !

I rather let myself down a bit though.

We were awarded one of the free kicks right on the cusp of the 3rd and 4th 'quarters' - that is, the free kick would re-start the 4th. As I look across the field, our opponent's assistant coach is on the field setting up a defensive wall. I bring this to the attention of the referee who then asks me what I want him to do, I respond that he should get back in his technical area, and off the field - since at quarter-breaks especially, the coach should be off the field and certainly not in the 18 yard box.

The assistant waves off the referee (and me) with an accompanying explanation that 'it is the quarter break'. Obviously complete bullshit, I give him the 'wanker' hand gesture. I don't really regret it, though I got the evil eye from the lad's Mom. The other parents weren't bothered though, and it got a few smiles.

Nabil, The lad Wesley, Dylan, Lucas, Will, Joshua, Bruce, Freddie and Joseph 'Roy' Kean.

try

A little respite before the storm I suppose. But, not really.

The U10 lads have their final regular season game before play-offs - if they win tomorrow morning they'll be seeded 6th going into the post season.

Sunday morning at 9 is the final training session with the Thanksgiving Tournament Team, and then at 12:00 noon is the start of the Dinamo Recruitment Session at Griffith Park - and the launch of the Women's Team. That event closes with a 'friendly' between Dinamo Zenit and Dinamo Internazionale - so that should be a kick.

As important as anything is the game tomorrow between Torquay United and Rotherham at Plainoor. It's tough for us to win at the moment, but the lads seem to be showing their mettle back in the 92 so that's something. Great news also that Chris Zebroski is back ! That first season in The Blue Square was brilliant - him and Sillsy - magic.

Pete Rentz and I (way more Pete than me it must be said) have been buggering about with the new website and it's almost ready to go - dinamofootball.com - I still have to get the Zenit and Turbine badges done - maybe I'll get to that Tuesday.

blast from the past

Harvey Edgington and I used to play football in Carlisle on the ground behind the old technical college, we worked with the British Deaf Association to highlight issues relating to profound and partial deafness, and we lived in the same building full of bedsits on Currock Road just off Beaconsfield Street.

We both moved to London when our fund raising project took off. Harvey and I worked with the phenomenally gracious and generous record producer Rupert Hine to collate, polish and sequence rare demo recordings and original versions of songs by artist's like Eddy Grant, Howard Jones, Elvis Costello, Pete Townshend and Peter Gabriel. Rupe did the music business stuff, me and Harve grafted the 'phones and lobbied the music publishers, writers and so on.

So you can probably tell by the line up that it was early '80's. Harve and I went out on the road giving 30 or more radio interviews across the regional radio networks. We'd regularly visit the footie grounds in the towns. The old Stoke, the old Hull, the actual St James' Park - there was no'@'. Darlington, Hartlepool, Wrexham - Harve was a Stoke supporter (he must be well chuffed at the moment) but regularly accompanied me to Carlisle games when we lived up there, and to Torquay away games in London when Stoke weren't on hand. Of course, we'd regularly go off to Highbury and White Hart Lane since he lived closer to Arsenal and I was closer to Spurs.

Well, the album went mostly unnoticed selling between 30,000 and 50,000 and so I went off to College (my beloved Sheffield) and Harve went into film location management and sourcing. So it was quite surprising to see that 'Sometimes A Great Notion' had found it's way onto CD - the original only being available on Vinyl and Cassette (what's a cassette, Dad ?) - in June of this year. It's also available to download at Amazon.co.uk. Spooky.

Original pictures (the inside sleeve has a picture of a right pair of rum looking duffers posing by a stepladder at the studio at Cadbury's - who did the shoot for free) - more's the pity, and a nice new paragraph by Mr Hine ! We were spoiled with time spent at Farmyard Studios during The Fixx's Reach The Beach Sessions, and during the recording of Eighth Wonder by Martin Ansell. Trevor Morais beating the Simmons kit, Stephen Taylor being a genius, and Rupert conducting the whole proceedings like a fabulous literary invention. All just like yesterday.

harder work than it needed to be

Friday night and we're on our second LAPL game in 5 days, back at Crossroads we're 2-0 down to Penmar at half-time. We're really not concentrating, or working anything like as hard as we need to, and though we're a couple of first-choicers light (Nick, Jeff, Mike, David, Theo all out) credit to Penmar - they capitalize.

A bit of a sterner half time chat than I've delivered before and some healthy soul searching from the lads and the attitude was chalk and cheese from the first half. Very quickly Sean had us back to 2-1 and Penmar were on the back foot, they thought they could hold what they had by packing the midfield 4-5-1 but Boyley's runs down the left were penetrating and both Dave's really worked hard.

Boyley got 2 and we won 3-2, but we'd made it hard for ourselves with our first half performance.

The U10 lads got beat 4-0 yesterday, 2 coming in the first 'period' when we had the dedicated late arrivers, 1 in the second against the run of play and 1 in the final 15 minutes. We missed three sitters and a penalty and played like we had not really woken up. One game left in the regular season and then the play-offs.

Of course, parallel to this is the Arroyo Seco Cup in Pasadena over the Thanksgiving weekend. I have three of my regular team in the tournament team, and 6 other really talented kids. It'll be fun.

super

knocks and missed pens, ups and downs

So there was the Hollywood United game and all the anticipation that went with it, and we did brilliantly to draw 1-1, with Anthony LaPaglia having the game of his life in goal for Hollywood - and them unleashing the hounds of their 'A' team against us in the second half when they were 1-0 down.

It was quite a high really, as we enjoyed a couple in The Daily Pint afterwards.

Saturday's U10 lads were not really up for it in the first half and the lad was sick and so chose to go in goal for the second half. But they woke up, worked the ball really well and narrowly missed a few opportunities. They got the better of it in the end though, and won out 1-0 so I was feeling pretty good.

Earlier Torquay had put Cheltenham out of the FA Cup so Saturday was a great day. Stockport in the next round.

Sunday was fantastic, of course - with Dinamo Red Star being unbeaten Champions of the Super Metro Division.

And then Monday at the Santa Monica Airport field. FC 90 on an end of season roll, and Alex's boys have been beating all in their path - including Avanti. So I shouldn't be too upset that they beat us too.

Against the run of play, they nicked one behind the defense, and for all the breakaways we couldn't finish. Worst of all, Baldy got a knock in the box and ever the captain tried to take the resulting penalty and bloody missed.

winners

From Super Metro Final Summer 2009

From Super Metro Final Summer 2009

In just 5 years, The Dinamo Football Club has gone from a scrimmage at this very field to the final of the Super Metro Division - the highest expression of the beautiful game in the Los Angeles Municipal Sport Program. Dinamo Red Star was unbeaten in the 14 game regular season and in the play-offs.

The spectacular final was won 2-1 by The Star with goals from Matty Hoffman in open play and a Tyler Rutkin penalty. Kudos to Jason and the Dinamo Red Star Lads !

Dinamo Red Star 5 Dog Town Athletic 4

losing

The U10 lads are in a bit of a slump as it turns out. Last weeks loss and yesterday a 5-3 loss. Now the lads are 4w's and 3l's with no D's. It was one of those games that didn't auger well - the other team only had 6 so I agreed (not my best decision in hindsight) to match them 6 on 6.

Of course, it was disruptive because we've been playing well with a 2-1-2-1 outfield - so I have to take part of it on the chin. That aside, the lads were lethargic and sluggish with only a couple of them really working as hard as I would have liked.

I know it's important for kids to have a nice menu of activities and variety - but taking my Dad hat off and being a coach, some of the lads have three sports on a Saturday and even with the early kick offs some have a flag football game before the actual footie.

I know a bunch of them have baseball later in the day, so they're sometimes distracted by that too ('saving my arm, I'm starting pitcher...').

Still, there's the SuperMetro Division play off semi-final later today as Dinamo Red Star play Dog Town at Rio De Los Angeles State Park - and Jason has a full squad, so it should be exciting -I'll try to remember to take some extra socks.

Torquay bagged a home win (after 5 draws on the trot in the league) and captain superfantastic Chris Hargreaves did the business in front of goal against his old club Northampton. It could have been the other way round had Northampton's Adebayo Akinfenwa scored against his old club, us. Of course, my old acquaintance Ian Atkins managed them both - and it was nice to hear him interviewed by Alan Richardson yesterday morning on BBC Radio Devon. It'll surprise many people but Ian has a truly encyclopedic knowledge of football - he's as comfortable talking about Danny Blanchflower as he is the architecture of the Shakhtar Donesk Stadium, the defensive frailties of Paris St Germain or Kevin Davies' presence at set pieces.

I only got to that interview because the Daylight Savings and the end of British Summer Time were out of sync by a week. I was up at 7am ready for the game, and of course it was 2pm in the UK. Still got a bit of a consolation today as I watched the City / City game - great stuff - a very entertaining game - and Alex McLeish is definitely onto something, now they've found a way to play two up I think they'll build and comfortably survive. I do like him, too.

what does support mean

Do you change teams when the results go bad ? Poor old baldy, the tribulations of supporting Newcastle United. Nick was the talismanic epicenter of the LA Vale team that was unbelievably successful in 2007 - arguably the most successful football team in Los Angeles ever.

2009 and Nick is the talismanic epicenter of the FK Dinamo team, top scorer, captain, pre-match motivator and all round great bloke, basque anarchist, intellectual, debater, supporter, friend.

That's why - in working with Admiral - the FK squad wears black & white stripes. Of course, there's a nod and a wink to the club's Dinamo Internazionale heritage and the great Vandanel black & white striped jersey - but this was a quasi WBA strip with white shorts and black socks. We were going to stick with the great Vandanel people but we had two entire kits held up in US Customs, and could never rely on delivery cycles (no fault of Vandanel) to get urgent shorts, socks...

The Admiral people worked hard to get our business, and overnight shipping and the like was a great incentive to switch out in 2009 - nostalgia informed - of course - but like hearing Andy McMaster sing 'Airport' by The Motors (even though he was Scots) - the reminder of Kevin Keegan and the amazing Terry McDermott, to say nothing of Tony Woodcock, Kenny Samson, Phil Thompson, Trevor (Dirty Leeds) Cherry, Bryan Robson and the ever dignified Mick Mills was, frankly, a bit overwhelming.

We're black we're white, we're fucking dynamite, Dinamo, Dinamo. Not to be chanted by the U10 boys even if they know it.

So when the cunt that owns the club wants to sell the naming rights to one of the most recognizable stadia in the world, what do you do ? Budweiser St James' Park ? St James' Park brought to you by Boddingtons ? Newcastle Brown St James' Park ? Isn't this the ultimate middle finger to the fans ?

Or is it all an evil plan to attract even more attention to Michael Jackson, Uri Geller and Exeter City (the arch rivals of my beloved Torquay United) ?

http://www.footballshirtculture.com/history/the-history-of-admiral-since-1914.html

http://www.englandfootballonline.com/teamunif/Unif1980H.html

I'm perturbed.

So the team went down. I bought Oasis albums when I knew it was more filler than killer, and shelled out to see them live. Paul Weller - god - has done a couple of duffers - but you don't stop supporting your team when they get on a run of draws or losses do you ? You suck it up, you tough it out, you shout to the top and talk of the shit refs and the unluckiness, the run of play, the deflections, the ball-to-hand's and the what not.

Baldy is inseparable from Newcastle - he is Newcastle. I worked MetroCentre not long after it opened, and had an incredible experience in the North East - working out of Manchester 15 years ago, and the Bigg Market, like Dublin, left an indelible mark.

Whether it's a nod and a wink to Baldy - FK's esteemed captain, or the Admiral of old - I'd like to think we're in some way shoulder to shoulder with the St James' Park (the real one) fans. I don't know whether he knew it, but he kissed the brand and the badge four times Tuesday night.

There's something deep and fundamental that connects early 80's England, Newcastle and St James' Park, LA Vale and FK Dinamo. No question - it's Nick.