EDITOR’S NOTE: Bud Lewis and his Wilmington College men’s soccer team have embarked on an 8-day soccer tour to Spain. Each day Lewis will submit a diary covering the team’s adventures, both on and off the pitch.
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This morning the team got to sleep in until 8 a.m. and then we were off to Barcelona to the National Art Museum of Cantalona. The museum is located next to the Olympic village and sporting arenas from the 1992 Olympics held in Barcelona.
The museum houses some of Spain’s greatest artists’ work including Goya, Valasquez, El Greco and Picasso.
On the pitch, we played a very competitive U-19 team called Blanco Subur. We gave up a couple early goals from poor defending on corner kicks and the had a couple of wingers who consistently got behind us and created numerous scoring chances that we struggled defending.
Late in the first half, junior captain Niklas Martensson took a ball from midfield and beat several Blanco defenders and scored the lone goal for the Quakers
We trailed 3-1 at half and tried to get back on the scoreboard but Blanco Subur defending was very good. Blanco scored a couple of goals within a couple minutes midway through the second half and the final was a 5-1 loss. Fitness was a big factor in today’s game as we played this game on only 20 hours of rest.
I think we learned a lot from each of the three games that will help us with our preseason training. We only have a little over half of our players here in Spain so I know we could have been more successful in our last two games but this gave some of our players the opportunity to make a statement about their fitness and playing level.
