Hello everyone! Well we moved from Ramat Gan to our competition hotel, The Ramada in Jerusalem yesterday. Everything went ok and we are now settled in. Today we began our tournament play against Venezuela at 4:00 pm and it was extremely hot. The end result was USA 3:0 over Venezuela. But that is only half the story. First, let me tell you how we scored. Our first goal was from a Penalty Kick, as a result of our player being taken down in the box. Stephen Elias stepped up and calmly put it home to give us an early goal at the 2 minute 26 second mark of the game. That was all the scoring in the first half, as we had over 90% of the possession, but couldn't find the back of the net. We were struggling as Venezuela was putting 10 players deep and we kept trying to dribble and we would lose the ball. At halftime we talked about how we are supposed to play with quick passing and not dribbling into trouble. The 2nd half began and we decided to play simple soccer by passing quickly and making hard runs to take the defense away, thus opening up lanes to get into and that opened up our scoring chances. We had a lot of good shots early in the 2nd half and eventually, in the 80th minute, we scored our 2nd goal. Elijah Lichtenberg played a terrific ball to Jake Rozhansky breaking into that open lane for a great finish! A few minutes later, in the 85th minute, Elijah played another great ball to Jake Rozhansky, who then played it across to Ryan Jones who hit it home for our final goal of the game. The other half of the story as I mentioned above, was that Venezuela was perhaps the dirtiest team I have ever coached against in my career. They kept baiting us by kicking, shoving and head butting us, to the point that a fight nearly broke out and they finally got a player thrown out late in the game. Our players legs were all bloodied by the cleats of their players. The continued to try and start something after the game to the point we took another bus back to our hotel, rather than ride with them on the bus that brought us both to the field. My good friend, Mark Knue had a group of people he was touring with and took us back on his bus. Oh, I guess I didn't mention this, but in this tournament the two teams playing each other ride over and back on the same bus! In the organizers infinite wisdom they never consider issues between teams and the Venezuelan's threatened our team with harm on the bus and in the hotel. So, I made the decision to ride backwith my friends bus. These were the issues I flew over to Israel in March to address, but I was unsuccessful in my efforts. I'm sure I will get in trouble with the games committee, but my players needed to be out and away from that environment. So, on Sunday, we play a very big and talented Great Britain team, who all play together in a league on the London Lions club. The following day, we will end group play against Australia, who are also a very big and talented team. We definitely have a tough road ahead to get to the Quarer Finals, but we will be successful and it was extremely important that we started off with a big win in our opening game. The next few days will be resting and regeneration days and the Opening Ceremony is tomorrow evening at 8:00 pm and one of our players, Evin Nadaner, who was MVP in the 2013 tournament, was given the great honor to help carry out Banner into the Stadium. So until later, here are a few pictures from our game:

Coach G. from Jerusalem