Wednesday, January 25, 2006

 

I arrived in Lisbon Saturday after an exhausting weekend in Philadelphia at the NSCAA convention.  Spent most of the first day in a car, which seems like a drag, but was actually great.  Portugal is a beautiful country. Rolling hills and valleys filled with greens and reds and the Atlantic Ocean off to the left as we drove north. 

I spent an afternoon at Francisco Marcos' beach house that sits overlooking the beach and crashing waves - quite spectacular actually.  Since I have played or coached in the USL for 12 years, I feel like I have had some part in building that house. I think he would probably agree.

I finally arrived in Coimbra which is a gorgeous city.  It is a hilly city that sits a little inland from the Atlantic. It was the capital of Portugal in the 12th century and is split majestically by the Rio Mondego River.  The Universidad de Coimbra sits atop a hill that rises out of the river plain.  It is the oldest university in Portugal and one of the oldest in all of Europe dating from the early 16th century. As we drove into Coimbra, we passed Conimbriga, which is the most extensive Roman ruin and archaelogical site in all of Portugal.

I checked into the hotel with my guide for the trip, David Caetano. David is a Portuguese-American that starred at University of Rhode Island in the early 80s. He was drafted by the Cosmos and went on to play professionally in Portugal for Benfica and Maritimo. He is a knowledgeable and helpful guide.

Academica de Coimbra, my host club, has Monday off so David and I instead go the national training site of Rio Maior and watch the U21 Portuguese National team train.  Several up-and-coming stars were training, including Ricardo Quaresma and Hugo Almeida from Porto, and Joćo Moutinho from Sporting.  Almeida is a tall, skilled, strong target, just the sort of player the Thunder needs.  Unfortunately, besides playing for one of the big three clubs in Portugal (Sporting, Benfica and Porto) apparently Hamburg (2nd in the Bundesliga) has inquired about him as well.  I guess the Dark Clouds Supporters in Minnesota will probably not be chanting. "He made-a, she made-a, we Almeida a goal for the Thunder!" anytime soon.  Goodness, let's hope they could come up with something better than that...

Tuesday we finally saw Academica train.  They are battling to stave off relegation as they sit near the bottom.  This is an important week as they play V. Setubal, one of the top six teams in Portugal, on Monday in front of a national audience.  This is clearly the REAL Monday Night Football.  The training session was a short recovery practice as they begin to build into a longer than usual week. 

That's it for now.  I will return to tell you about Academica's fantastic coach, the esteemed Professor Nelo Vingada.  And oh, by the way, Almeida scored against Slovenia in their friendly tournament game Tuesday night.  His price goes up...

Amos

------------------------