Forty students participated in the final day of soccer tryouts for SLU Madrid on Friday at Santander Park, hoping to secure one of 12 positions on the A-Team.
Players took the field as coach David Aldeano gave a quick opening pep talk, and the players were off doing their daily laps around the pitch. Warmups consisted of passing drills, dynamic exercises, and an activity where players must keep the ball in the air without letting it touch the turf.
“It almost feels surreal,” a 19-year-old student beginning university abroad with the NU in program at Northeastern. “I played soccer in high school, but being able to play in Madrid is a whole different experience. Everyone here loves this game. They live and breathe soccer. It’s just such an energizing environment to play in.”
The Billikens’ season begins in the coming weeks, where they’ll play other universities in Madrid. Of the 40 hopeful players trying out for the team, 24 of them will make it into the program, 12 on the A-Team and 12 on the B-Team. Each team has practices on Friday and Saturday, with the latter being an optional open practice, open to all SLU students.
Game days this season are scheduled for Tuesday and Wednesday evenings, but being part of the team “isn’t an unmanageable time commitment,” said Armaan Thomas, a SLU student at Northeastern.
Between two three-hour practices and two games per week, players spend about nine to 10 hours a week for the team. Thomas, 18, is coming off a successful high school season, where he helped lead his former team, the Overlake School, to a Washington state championship title.
“It’s not super easy for study abroad students like us to make it on the A-Team,” remarked Thomas. “They tend not to consider us as much as permanent students. It’s like an investment for them. They would rather have a player come in freshman year that they can spend four years developing than someone who’s leaving in December.”
Despite this, many students who will be departing this winter are very eager to play soccer for SLU, including Brandt Barker, also a Northeastern freshman.
“What I love about this program is the intensity. It feels just right. It’s definitely more intense than a pickup game. You will work hard, you will be running, and it’s intense. It’s not unbearable by any means, but it’s not exactly leisurely.”
“It’s all relative,” said Barker, 18, on the team’s potential success this season,
“We’re playing within one of the hardest divisions that SLU could play in this year. The division’s going to be tough, but we have good players. Some of our returners previously had stints with American colleges, so they’re all very talented. We’ll be able to rise to the challenge.”
With a mix of new and returning players, the team faces strong competition in their division and will need to work together to achieve success this season.
