First Game
We start off with a random preseason tournament
First Game
Well here we go. We’re in the “NCAA Early Season Tournaments California Invitational,” an 8-team random tournament that has a few teams from California and a few teams from other places.
The press reported that a low turnout was expected. In an unexpected twist, we played UCLA, but we played in Berkeley, California. I’m not certain why the tournament was arranged like this.
Nobody expected us to win.
In fact, the board specifically expected that we would lose this match.
And, well, we proved them all wrong. We won.
Striker César Aldana chimed in with two goals, one in the first half and one in the second. A UCLA player was sent off early after receiving two yellow cards, and UCLA scored a ridiculous own goal in the 91st minute to seal the deal.
I can’t say much about the players yet, as this is my first time seeing them in actoin. Aldana looks okay, though I’m not sure he’s quite like the superstars that we had in the Yanbian save.
Paul Jiminez, one of our very young centerbacks, apparently praised me after that match. I’m not entirely sure why, but there you have it.
It’s going to take a little while to learn this new crop of players. Please be patient!
Stanford
And, just like that, we’re up to the semifinals in this short tournament.
It’s only been about 3 days since that UCLA match. Due to transfer restrictions (we can only buy 4 players in each transfer window, which is insane), we don’t have the number of players we need to have a constant rotation in our squad.
That means, of course, that I expect we will lose this next one.
Bizarrely, we’re playing this match in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which is where USC usually play — but we’re playing against Stanford. I’m really confused about these arrangements.
And, yeah, we’ll see how this works tomorrow.