Finally, this weekend the German All Stars Casuals team will kick off the new season with the first league match against the Londoners after the actual first match against the Scandinavian Vikings has been cancelled due to ongoing rain. After GAS won the league title of division 2 last season, the team was promoted and is now back in Bangkok’s highest expat league. After roughly two months of pre-season preparations, the whole club is looking forward to challenge the best expat teams of the country again (see fixtures here). Although everybody is well aware that this year will be much tougher, the overall anticipation is very big. While the main objective will be to stay as far away as possible from the relegation spots, the pre-season with some good results has given sufficient self-confidence to attack in the coming months.
Accordingly coach Gerd prepares his squad for the new season: “After winning the second division title and the affiliated promotion into the first division we are facing a challenging upcoming season. With mainly the same squad like last year, supplemented with a few newcomers, we will try to adapt quickly to the higher standard of our opponents and will try to collect enough points to be clear ahead of the relegation places. The skill of our players and our team spirit should make this possible, although we had quite a mixed pre-season preparation due to unavailability of the training pitch for several times and also due to the absence of some key players caused by injury or by business engagements.
However, the majority of our squad provided an impressive will and presence so far. During our 2 days training camp in Pak Chong, they also showed that they are eager to be part of a team which might be able to provide the one or the other surprise in the coming season. Let’s try to work hard and disciplined during our practice sessions and in the league games then there is no doubt that our opponents will start to get an unpleasant feeling again when they know that in their next game they will have to play against the German All Stars Bangkok.”
As usual, many players used the summer break to spend time abroad so that in the beginning of the pre-season only a limited squad joined the trainings. In the end of August, the team had its real first test against the International College of Ramkamhaeng University. Despite a couple of injuries and very short preparation time, the team showed fighting spirit and took many positive conclusions out of the 2:2 draw. A week later, the next test match against the new division 2 club United Nations FC, GAS celebrated a convincing 2:0 victory.
In early September, the casuals squad then escaped to Khao Yai for a 3-day training camp with perfect conditions at the Rajpracha Sport Resort (see pictures below). After two training sessions on Saturday morning, we played a local team from Pak Chong. Despite having 3.5 hours of practice in their bones, the casuals proved again that fighting spirit and a well-organized playmaking will be the keys in competing in the new league. After an impressive 4:0 lead and cramps every minute towards the end of the match, GAS won this last test 4:2 as well.
Overall, we can draw very positive conclusions from our pre-season and all look forward to another great season!
From Pre-season training camp, posted by German All Stars Bangkok on 10/28/2013 (170 items)
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