OK, so I am now beginning to come out of hibernation in regards to my college soccer team. I am the only part time, temporary coach in my conference, so once the season is over I slip into semi hibernation. In the Spring I appear from my cave and work furiously on helping all of our possible recruits to make the decision and commit to our school and our team. I am in that mode right now.

The goal this season is not to rest on our laurels after last season’s historic results. All of our main players (we used about 15 of the 25 players regularly) except one is returning. It would be easy to be complacent and feel that we just needed to add a couple of players and we would be fine. Instead I committed to bringing in 12 new players, 6 international players and 6 domestic players. Why? Well, I want all of our returners to know that even though I am so proud of them after last season’s efforts, each and everyone of them will have to fight for their place this season.

I remember the captain of Liverpool, Alan Hansen’s answer years ago (when Liverpool used to win the Premier League regularly) when he was asked what was the key to Liverpool’s success. He said that all of the players had to fight for their place. He said that at the end of the season when the players went on vacation after another trophy laden season, he would be sat by the pool relaxing and then read in the news that Liverpool had just signed a player who plays in his position! That would then instantly motivate him to make sure he was ready for the new season.

I can give you an example of the opposite of this as well. My beloved Blackburn Rovers won the Premier League in 1994/1995 (yes we did!). Ray Harford had the opportunity to sign pretyy much any players he wanted. What a sales pitch, “Come and join the Premier League Champions and play alongside Alan Shearer, the best striker in the world!” Instead he said that the current squad had been good enough to win the Premier League, so he was going to stick with the same players and did not need to bring in any players. So, as you can guess, we did not win the league, we actually finished 7th!

So far we have added 2 new players to the roster, both from England. One is a 6’4″ center midfield player who turned down a pro contract in England to further his education in Southern California (at least the weather is better!) The other player is a 6’2″ central defender. We have offers out to a number of players and over the next month our recruiting class will take shape.

Next week we begin our Spring practices and the message will be that the players need to get in shape and do everything they can to be ready on the 25th August. I want them arriving to preseason ready to go and fighting for their lives.