DAVENPORT, Fla. – Two-a-days are often a grind, but there were plenty of laughs to be had at this afternoon’s training session.
After a light warm-up, head coach Jesse Marsch set the team up to compete in a game of handball, but with a twist. With referee (assistant coach) Denis Hamlett in the middle, the squad was split into two sides and placed onto a shortened pitch. With regulation nets at either end line, both teams took part in a lighthearted match that went down to the wire.
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The rules are relatively simple: pass the ball to your teammates with your hands and get the ball into the opposition’s net. Each player is allowed three steps before needing to make a pass, but instead of throwing the ball into the net, the ball must be headed in to tally a goal.
“We try to build some kind of spirit-building exercise in every week,” Marsch explained. “Sometimes during the season, it’s hard to honor that because the schedule gets going and we want to stay on task. But this is a fun job and whenever we play handball, the team comes alive.”
The sides were roughly split between younger and older players, with all three goalkeepers bunched onto the blue team, giving them a decided advantage, according to Derrick Etienne. In the end, the blue team came out on top with the winning goal coming off the head of Sacha Kljestan, just minutes after Ryan Meara’s would-be winner clanked off the post.
“You usually see the disparity in ball skill and talent between Americans and foreigners,” Marsch added. “Last year, at one point, we put the Americans against the foreigners and it got ugly, so we’ve never done that again.”
