July 16, 2013...Last day of our tours

Hello to everyone back home. This will be my shortest blog without photos. Today our first stop was Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. Everytime I visit, I see more and more that makes me emotional. Today was no different. We also saw the children of the Holocaust Museum as well. Talk about moving you to tears, this will do it. Words are inadequate to describe the emotions you feel. Everyone should experience this emotion of the Holocaust one time in their life. From there we went to Israel's National Cemetery (like our Arlington Cemetery), where all the great leaders of Israel are buried, along with young soldiers killed in the wars. This Cemetery is called Mount Herzl after the true visionary who wanted a Jewish State and did not live to see it come to fruition in 1948. His name was Theodore Herzl. Once we finished, we went to Hebrew University for a Bar and Bat Mitzvah ceremony, followed by dinner. Tomorrow we leave for our tournament accomodations in Jerusalem. We will attend the Opening Ceremony on Thursday at Teddy Stadium and then open our group play on Friday at 4:00 pm against Uruguay.

I will have my next blog after the Opening Ceremony. So until then, I will say goodnight from Israel, with much love for my family and Goldens.

Coach G

Touring at the Dead Sea, Masada and the Bedouin Tent

Good afternoon everyone! I hope everyone following along is doing well. Today, we did not train, nor will we tomorrow, as we needed two days off, especially with all he touring we are doing. We went to he Dead Sea for a couple of hours. It is always a special place to visit, as it is the lowest point on earth. After the Dead Sea, we traveled the short distance to Masada. We took the lift up the mountain and walked down. Talking about hot...wow, was it ever! I always love this part of our touring, because of the significance both places have in history. After one ane one- half hours on the top of Masada, we then went to the Bedouin Tent for dinner and then back to our Hotel.

Friendly game with our U-19 Youth Team and touring

Good afternoon to everyone. I hope your week-end was great and restful. Well, today started very early once again with a friendly game with our Under 19 youth team. I was excited to play them, mainly because our incoming freshman, Dylan Rose plays on tat team. However, he has been suffering from either a virus or food poisoning and only played about 10 minutes and did not have an impact on their team, as in his previous game, where he scored both of their goals to win it for them. The game certainly didn't start out liked we had hoped. We never could find any rhythm to create any kind of flow with our game. So, the half ended 0:0 and they certainly were playing better than we were in that irst half. We tried to correct our deficiencies and get a better grasp on our rhythm and flow in the second half. It seemed to work, as we came out and had total possession for the entire half and scored 2 quick goals and had another hit the post. With less than a minute remaining, we passed the ball back to our keeper, whodid not call or i nd he actually kcked it inhe goal for an "own goal". The game ended 2:1. I think this was a really good wake-up call for our team. They must be conistent theentire game and get into a rhythm and flow very early in he game to establsh how we will play.

We retuned to our hotel to haveourvteam photo taken and then startbour touring of Jeusalem. I was mistaken in my log yesterday about going to the Holocaust Museum today, as we will not go here until Tuesday. Jeusalem was great as usual and going to the Western Wall once again, is always special and moving. We allplacedvour personal notesin he cracks of the wall. After another long day, we finally returned to our hotel. We will not havevtainingtomorrow or Tuesday, as we need to days off. We have not had any off days since we arrived. We as coaches, should never be afraidof giving consecutive ays off to get ourselves rested both physically and mentally. I know thcwill help our guys. We will have another training on Wednesday afternoon after we move to our permanent hotel in Jerusalem for the games. We open our Group play on Friday against Uruguay at 4:00 pm.

Tomorrow, we will have another very long day, as we will go to he Dead Sea and Masada followed by a Bedouin Dinner. More than likely we ill rturn around midnight. So until I blog, more than likely on Tuesday, I will say goodnight to all, as it is now 11:00 pm. To my family, I love and miss all of you very much. Also hugs and kisses to Satch, Max, Kol and Kippi, our Goldens!

Coach G from Israel

July 13, 2013 Training and Touring

Good afternoon to everyone once again back home in the states. Today was a good day! We started the day with another 6:30 am training session. We worked on a couple of drills, along with joker, which we plsyec 3 touch and then we tried 1 touch to keep our tactics evolving with paying quickly and support te ball by moving constantly. They did extremely well with this 1 touch phase. It is really starting to sink in we will play and I am very proud of the entire team for making this adjustment in such a short period of time! We concluded taining with 4 v 4 in a very small grid and then we took penalty kicks.

We returned to our hotel for breakfast and prepared or our 2nd day of touring. Today we went o Beit Guvrin, which is the caves that were homes to many people. After thy went through the caves, we went to Latrun, which is the museum of all the tanks used in all the wars. I never get tired of seeing all these beautiful tanks, as I was a tanker during my time in the military. After seeing a short film, we looked at all the different kind of tanks by the era in which they fought.

Tomorrow morning, we will have a scrimmage game with our Youth team, which has one of our very top recruits playing on it. Dylan Rose is the player to whom I am referring. We will play at 7:00 am st our training field. We must get back quickly in order to eat breakfast, have our team photo taken and depart at noon for touring Jerusalem and the Old City, inluding the Western Wall! This is a very solemn and special time for all of us. We will also go o Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum. What an incredible day is in store!

So until tomorrow, I will wish everyone a wonderful week-end and to my family and Goldens, I love and miss you all so very much.

Coach G from Israel

July 12, 2013

Hello to everyone following along in the good old USA! Well, let me begin by saying we had an early morning training session of about 70 mnutes. We had to get bak to our hotel in order to eat breakfast and get reay to begin the first day of our Israel Connect Program (touring Israel at 11:00 am. Today we drove through Tel Aviv on our way to the old city of Jaffa (which is mentioned in the bible about Jonah and the Whale. Jaffa also has the 3rd largest Mosque in Israel, but is off limits to the Jewish people. We walked around the city and went to a flea market, which was interesting. We ten boarded our buses to go to Rabin Square, which is a tribute to the former Prime Minister of Israel, who was killed by an Israeli in 1995. When my wife and I visited our daughter Aly in July, 2011, while she was runnng professionally here in Israel, they were working to finish Rabin Square. Now, I got to see the finished product.

We now traveled to the Beach in Herzeliya, for 3 hours. It is a beautiful beach, but I went to a mall by the beach fo a little while, then went down to the beach and sat with my assistant coach, a player on the Futsal team and Ami Monson, the Program Director for Maccabi USA in he shade by a bar. It was a lot of fun just talking and joking around.

Tomorrow, we have training at 6:30 am and then we will leave the hotel a 1:00 pm for Latrun, where all the tanks are on display that were utilized in all he wars. Being a former tanker myself, this is always a special place for me. Then we will go to the excavation caves and see those. I will not go into the caves this time around, because of my hip. Been there, done that and never again!!

I will now post some photos from the touring today.

So, until tomorrow, take good care and stay well,

Coach G from Israel

Friendly # 2 with Australia

Good morning to everyone once again from Israel. I hope this finds everyone doing well and hopefully for those following our progress, you are enjoying my blogs.

Today, at the request of the Austalian Coach, we only played a 60 minute game instead of the full 90. I think they were a little banged up from the previous game snd just did not wantto push it. We started the game with a different line-up from yesterday to see other players who did not get as many minutes in the first game.it was a olid line-up and gave us a better perspective on who might becm our starting team for the Maccabiah Tournament, beginning in 8 days. What we found was, we are quite deep and have players who can contribute extremely well in a number of positions. What that tells us, is that we will not have any drop in ability, regardless who starts and who comes in off the bench. We met last evening to go over our coverage and shifts in the middle third of the field both offensively and defensively. It obviously sunk in, as we played much better in the our shifting and coverage in the middle third of the field. We shut down most passing opportunities for Australia, thus allowing us to double and win the ball more frequently in the middle part of the field. Australia started out by playing 5 defenders, 4 mdfielders and 1 strikers, trying their bet to deny us any offensive opportunities. We constantlt ran players through to try and open that back line up. On one run through, we sent the ball in and one of their players, knowing he was beaten, reached and knocked the ball down with his hand, resulting in a Penalty kick for us. This was 7 minutes into the game. We scored and led 1:0. 3 minutes later, another run through opened up a shot on goal that was deflected out and our attacking midfield player who made the run, slotted home the deflected ball to make it 2:0. That would ultimately bebte final score in our 60 minute game. However, with our runs, we continued having great scoring opportunitie, only to not be able to find te back of the net!

Australia had 1 clear scoring opportunity late in the game off a set piece from our foul just outside the box. We left a man unmarked and headed the ball wide. They got the opportinity off a poor pass in our defensive third.

All in all, it was another stp forward for our team in learning and understanding the philosophy we are implementingnin our tactics. As long as we continue to improve each day, our chances for success become more realistic and our dreams can truly be possible. I continue to be impressed by our team and it's willigness to let the team be the superstar!

Tomorrow we begin our Israel Connect Program of touring and connecting with our heritage. This program will take us to July 17th when we move to our permanent hotel in Jerusalem for the tournament. So, as we begin tomorrow with our touring, we will now have only one training session every morning. I will then blog after our tour for the day is over, not only re-capping our training, but also where our tour took us. I will also post photos from the tours.

So, until tomorrow, take good care and again to my family, I miss and love you all very much, along with our Goldens!

From Israel,
Coach G

Friendly #1 with Australia

Good morning to everyone in the states following our journey here in Israel. I hope everyone is well! This morning, we left the Hotel at 6:00 am for our first friendly game with our old friends from Australia. We started the game looking to establish some sort of rhythm to our 4:5:1 formation while working on pressing the game. We were very succesful in that scheme and had nearly 80% of the possession in the early going. About 10 minutes in, we scored our first goal after a big change from the left back to our right wing midfielder, who then crossed it to our onrushing attacking midfielder for a diving header goal! It was picture perfect in execution. About 15 minutes later we scored again with a one-two between our center midfielder and our attacking midfielder, reulting in our second goal of the first half. We tried to maintain our rhythm after making our substitutions and it remained productive with our possession game and vertical play. The half came to an end with the score, USA 2, Austalia 0. We talked at halftime about our possession game of playing on the ground in the central midfield and utilizing our skill to play quickly. We also talked about condensing the space between our back line and our front line in order to take away their ability to find passing lanes to play in and winning the ball in the middle third of the field and counter attacking. The 2nd half started and we continued our pressing and possession game. We had plenty of opportunities to score more goals, but could not find the back of the net. With about 10 minutes remaining in the game, we had a set piece from the left side about 30 yards out and we had a runner receive the ball in space and finish far post for our 3rd and final goal. A few minutes later, the whistle blew and we won 3:0. I think overall we had a good start to our preparation, but we still have a long way to go in "dreaming the impossible, in order to achieve the possible". This afternoon we will have a warmdown session to try and reduce the amount of Lactic Acid in our muscles. We had a good stretching session after the game in the pool, that was a good start in regeneration. We will play Australia one more time tomorrow morning at 7:00 am. I am hopeful we will be ale to continue to develop our rhythm and create the kind of flow in our game that we must have in order to be successful in the Maccabiah Tournament. It will take a great effort from our players to understand our philosophy and effectively execute it day in and day out. Taking 20 players from 18 different universities and having them accustomed to their style of play and then getting all of them to play our style is a big commitment on their part. But, I must tell you, they all believe in what we are trying to teach and play. They all know it is a great way to play and are doing their very best to do what we ask of them. That is what makes this team so incredibly special to be with. I could not be any happier with our effort, especially after only two days of training. I will write once again tomorrow morning after our 2nd game with Austalia. I will once again try to add a few photos from the start of the game. I am trying hard to understand this digital camera world. So until then, take care and be well and to my family, including our Goldens, I miss and love you all very much! From Israel, Coach G