Quick Riga Chat

So for who is keeping up a little bit of the places I’m going for football knows I was in Turkey until March this year. More about this later…But in March I made a quick decision to move to Riga, Latvia. The deal was actually made within 2 days, so that’s really quick.

I was speaking with my manager and he told me Riga FC is building a women’s team for the first year to participate in the highest league here. I could join them and be part of this new project, make minutes and stay fit till summer window and make a transfer to another club if I wanted to. This sounded like a good plan since I didn’t really know what to expect of the level and how this whole new team would turn out to be, but hey I can train and play another 4 months and stay fit for my next club, so why not?

First of March I took my bags and left Gaziantep for Riga. Didn’t know much about Riga or Latvia, so I did a fast google search of where Latvia is on the map, what language they speak and of course how far it is from there to my home in the Netherlands. All looked good, so I let Riga and Latvia surprise me.

“Business class perks”

The first flight from Gaziantep to Istanbul I was business class…wait what?? Haha I checked again. And for real I was business class. For the first time in my life I was flying business class, so I had to send my family all pictures and video’s of the extra things you’re getting when you fly business. It was a nice experience! Next flight from Istanbul to Riga I was “normal” again, just economy…haha I’m kidding but it was a good flight and great experience that day. Arrived at the airport in Riga and my manager picked me up and brought me to the apartment; brand new. They just renovated the building and all the apartments within. It looked great! Pictures and video’s again to the family, and of course that I arrived safe and well in Riga.

Next day I had some test to see my muscle balance and if all was good I could sign and later on in the evening train with the team. All went well with the test, so in the evening I met the team and did my first training (also their first training since the team was gathered recently). An interesting first training I would say. A lot of different levels in the team. Some girls with great talent others with less. All of this had to be combined and be a strong base, because the championship is starting within 3 weeks. Big task but we’ll see how it goes day by day. At this point I was the only international player in the team and one Latvian/ American was training with the team to later on sign with the club. The coming weeks 3 Brazilians would arrive to enforce the team.

TEAM first game

After weeks of practice and trying to melt all the strengths together we played our first official game of the league (we played 2 friendly games before that). We won 4-2, so that is promising. We kept on building; with ups and downs, but I can say we came a long way. For clarification we’re with 8 in the league. We play 3 times against all teams. In the first round of the championship we only drew 1 game! Now we are in the 2nd round of the season and so far lost 1 game against our biggest rival RFS (derby). We’re in 2nd place at the moment with one game less than RFS. If we play the game that was moved and win we will be in first place.

Another thing is that we advanced to the final of the cup, which will be played on October 2nd, probably. This final will be between us and RFS (we won 1 time 1-0 and they won us 1 time 1-0 as well) so, this will be an interesting game. We’re looking forward to this game. But first we will play them in the 3th round of the league on September 25th away. This is an important game for both team aiming to be champion.

So I would say there are important weeks coming up for my team and me and may the best one take the cup and the championship (my team ;) )

Us now