Welcome to a short edition of the District City Fancast. This is John. I've got a pair of quick interviews pre-recorded for you all to listen to. One is a quick chat with Cesar Ben Pierman after the Windsor Stars friendly on April 24th, and the other is a little bit longer chat with Danny Deacon and Omar Sinclair, whom I grabbed at the supporter prom the other night.
A quick talk to them about what brought them to City and what they're looking forward to. Hope you enjoy. D.C.! D.C.!
D.C.! D.C.! D.C.! D.C.!
D.C.! D.C.!! John here with Coach Ben Hansel in front of you. How do you feel about the team there?
It was good. Obviously, first go at it since the tryout. We had five or six guys from the tryout there, and today was all about evaluations, and I thought, you know, a couple good performances at that time. It was very good.
Great to see Tyler get a goal. Danny came in there and did pretty well. And then, you know, some of the guys from the tryouts did pretty well as well. You know, Martin scored against his former team, so that was kind of cool for him.
You know, and then I think that's, I told the guys, that's step one. Next weekend's two, and then you've got training and everything going on from there. So, kind of just keep pushing forward, and then, you know, we've got to keep getting more and more evaluations. And the biggest thing right now is we've got to improve our fitness.
Okay. Now, it sounded, earlier when you were training, it sounded like you said that the team, I mean, obviously, you're starting with a still sort of fluid, so there might be some more games that you're looking at from new players coming in. Yeah, definitely. I think next weekend, you know, in another kind of friendly match, we should have probably more than 15, 16 guys.
And then, you know, once May hits, the whole group gets in there, and we've got a big group of guys, and, you know, you've got to get it narrowed down for the Muskegon-friendly, and then, obviously, for the Open Cup, and hopefully six games in the first two weekends, but at least five. So, that's going to be pretty happy. So, are you feeling reasonably comfortable with having a good team in your mind for the Open Cup by the point? I think so.
I think both teams will be in the same boat. You know, both teams have a lot of young college guys, and schools finishing up right around then. So, if we have everybody, you know, there'll still be shaking hands and meeting each other. But, you know, there'll still be five or six guys that won't be involved there until after that game.
All right. So, next. Thank you. Come on, you boys and go!
Come on, you boys and go! Come on, you boys and go! Come on, you boys and go! John here at the Soccer Prom, and I've got two new players from City with me.
I've got midfielder Danny Deacon. Hi, how are you? And center-back Omar Sinclair. Yeah, hi, how are you doing?
So, I've got to ask, what brings you guys to Detroit? You know, I've played twice now against Detroit, at Detroit, and, you know, simply, it's probably the fans that brought me here this year. You know, there's nothing really like this in MPSL. It's kind of crazy that there is this much fan base and fan support in a league like the MPSL, and, you know, I mean, I'm always here in the summer, usually with Erie, but, yeah, I'm happy to be in Detroit this season, and I look forward to scoring a few goals in front of those fans.
This really helps. So, Omar, how about you? What brings you here? Well, I go to Saginaw in Michigan, like, and Detroit's always got a few Saginaw lessons from there, and this is my first year in America, so they said that, like, like, Manny said, like, the fan base is like, it's brilliant to play in front of them, so I don't even like the fan base more than anything else brought in here.
But it's not a bit, like, so, yeah. Well, we certainly hope. So, I mean, how hard a sell was it? I mean, did you guys, without going too deep in it, did you guys reach out to the city?
Did they reach out to you? Was it a coaching thing, or? With me, I think Ben actually got in touch with my head coach, and, I mean, if he'd have come to me, obviously, I was always thinking about Detroit as, like, a summer option because I played here, and, yeah, he's just so good. But, yeah, I mean, Ben reached out to my coach, he put me in touch with Ben, and that was it, really.
I mean, as soon as he asked me, do you want to play for DCSC? I was like, yeah, why not? I mean, we have hated Erie over the past couple seasons because you all were the only ones who could beat us at Cast Attack. I mean, do you have a feel for what the secret was to beating City at home?
I don't think it was, like, a secret or such, but, I mean, we knew what it was going to be like. You know, we had some of the older veteran guys, like Danny Moe, who would play there every year, and he just knows what it was going to be like. We knew what it was going to be like. We kind of took the energy in from the crowd and used it in a positive way.
And, yeah, I mean, just, like, I mean, I'm sure it's safe for other people. When you get out there, it's just, it may be bad for other teams, but we just use it as, like, positive energy. And, I mean, the fans are great. And when you're out there, you're not really thinking about the fans, you're thinking about your own game and stuff.
And, I mean, yeah, I think we were kind of about the team for DCSC because, I mean, we pulled off some good results against you guys. And, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think we sort of certainly felt that way. I mean, how about you?
I know you talked about coming in from SCSC, where we absolutely got a bunch of guys there that we know and really love from that team. Was it, did Cesar come up and look at you and say, you know, how about that one? Or did he reach out to Coach Wagstaff? Or how did that work out for you?
Well, at first, like, I didn't know what I was going to say in the summer or not. But, yeah, Coach Wagstaff once was playing in the summer and stuff. And then, like, I was in touch with the Michigan Bucs as well. And then DCSC just came and, yeah, so you should have something to be like something I just put up with you.
I'm like, everything just, like, gelled together just at the right time. Like, the fan base, they're playing at your football. It's just, yeah. So, I mean, neither of you is an American.
I can tell that from the accent. I'm just, I'm good that way. I mean, you all know what soccer sports look like and you know maybe a little bit of what soccer sports do or don't look like in the U.S. When you see the videos and then you've played in front of us, is it something that you look at and say it's unique?
Or, I mean, how does it fit within what you've played in front of before or even maybe back at home? Yeah, I mean, it's definitely unusual. And when I first came out to America, I actually saw on YouTube, like, a video of DCFC and I was kind of taken aback of it because, I mean, I didn't really associate that with American soccer, you know, especially, like, a semi-pro kind of club, like, the amount of fans that you actually get to games. But, I mean, yeah, I mean, it's like, I'm back home.
Like, soccer is that mean spot and the fans are crazy and every Saturday it's like, it's just something in the air. It's just like football feeler kind of thing and that's how it is. But, I mean, yeah, I mean, DCFC is like the closest thing to a game. I can't just be back over here, you know, like, yeah, I can't really, it's just great, you know, so.
Omar, how about you? I feel like I'm just curating that. Like, Danny's like trying to hold it to you. Yeah, it's just, it's like taking you back home, like, like, obviously, America is like mostly, like, renowned for American football and, like, basketball and that, and, like, stuff is on its way up and it's just nice to just have, like, the same atmosphere as you were at home.
Like, you just have die-hard fans, you just love the game and just love players. It's just great, like that, yeah. Excellent. Well, thank you guys.
Appreciate the time tonight. We're really looking forward to seeing both of you with Rouge and Gold. What do you think of the kids? I like them.
They're really good. They're a good fit. I like them. They're simple, but it's good.
So, anyways, thank you, gentlemen. Appreciate it very much. Hope to see you. That'll do it for this short edition of the Detroit City Fancast.
Hopefully that was worthwhile. I am John Lassina, as always, at John Lawson Twitter. My colleagues, Sean Grogan, at RiseAM underscore, and Dean Simmer, at MojoDean. We're going to be trying to get together and do more of these.
I know I've said that before. Dean's new daddy duties, me with a new job, often two hours away, and whether it be nice enough for Sean to play soccer outside, I mean, that's been tougher than we thought, but we are going to try to get these done. Some of them might be done by phone than in the past, but we do want to talk to the new players. We want to talk to the folks that you've talked to before, and we want to chronicle this season of the city.
So, you can always find us at DCFCFC on Twitter, DCFCFancast at gmail.com, at DCFCFC.com. We'll talk to you soon.