We are ever closer to the turning point, and this afternoon there is a game. The players´ accept fatigue like a sibling´s new pet, but today the routine changes: we have been gifted an afternoon of soccer. Today is vastly different from yesterday—apart from the monotonous aches and hotel breakfast—the thermometer has fallen along with the duration of the morning training.
So this afternoon we will play at Roda´s ground, where the coach hopes that the players can teach something. They know it too, and thus, the mind is hours ahead of the body, already preparing for the exercise at the Parkstand Limburg Stadion. We may have said that a player lives for this, for the stadium, for the points on the table, but that a friendly is not a competition; yet this is more than what it seems. We are creating an environment and these traits are as necessary to a game as trees are to a forest.
Those in the know, know more than I. The start of the Dutch league happens in mere days, while that in Spain and Mallorca, in weeks. Hence, we watched something like a race between horses and camels, who each had the ball for about a half. The result was just, but I still didn´t like it, but that is beside the point. Conclusions will be drawn and manifested unjustly. To correct those defects, they must work it out on the training field before competing for points.
Moving on, the dinner did allow the guys to recover some of their jovial spirits, while their legs were resting. And accordingly, there is little on the docket tomorrow, a morning training session and gym work, followed by spa recovery, and nothing more.
The game may have lacked Colunga, who had a minor injury qualm, but it did see the debut of Valens in goal, and the re-incorporation of the happy and proud new father, Cabrero.
