Maccabi USA Grand Masters Soccer: 5/6/18

Friday, May 11, 2018

MUSA Grandmaster O55 Appointments and Tryouts

It is with great pleasure that we announce the following appointments for the 2019 Pan Am O55 Men's Soccer Team.

Alec Mahrer and Ken Kramer have been appointed Co-Chairmen of the team that will compete in Mexico City.

Alec is currently a high school coach in NY and has been involved in soccer all his life playing in the German American League in the late 60's through the early 70's and was a member of the 1979 US Maccabi Pan Am team competing in Mexico City.

Ken Kramer has been involved with the Maters program for 4 years having participated with team in Las Vegas and most recently in the Copa De Mayo tournament this past weekend.

Congratulations to both of you and good luck in Mexico City.

The first responsibility of the chairmen is to select a coach and both Alec and Ken wasted no time in selecting former Masters coach (Israel '05) and player (Israel '09) Eric Brief who guided the team to a silver medal in his previous stint as the gaffer. Eric hails from New Jersey and will look to assemble a team that will better his previous result at the helm.

Congratulations to Eric on his appointment and we wish him great success through the entire campaign.

The Chairmen, Eric and an initial planning team have tentatively set an official tryout date for Aug 18-19 in New Jersey. If interested, please save the date and we will forward more details as they emerge. There is also a possibility of a west coast tryout that may coincide with a combined 35 and 45 tryout but those dates have not been finalized.

We look forward to seeing you all at the next event...

Gary "Gazza" Bernstein

Tuesday, May 8, 2018

Copa De Mayo, Sunday 5/6/2018

Game 3 was played midday on Sunday and in similar fashion to previous games, MUSA gave up an early goal to go 1 behind after just 10 minutes. With only 4 subs, the team rotated every few minutes to keep the team as fresh as possible and it finally resulted in an equalizer at the 20th minute. After a succession of passes, the team made their way down the field and Dan Indech delivered a cross to the far post which was met by Gary Bernstein who deposited the ball into the upper corner from a tight angle.

As the half wore on, MUSA gave up another goal as the team struggled to mount any real pressure on the Pija Goal.

The second half was more of the same as mistakes cost MUSA another two goals and went on to be defeated 4-1 in what could have been a very different result.

Unfortunately, the next opponent was a no show and the MUSA was only able to play 3 games with a record of 0-2-1. The team walked away from the weekend with a better idea of what it will take to be successful in Mexico and if it wasn't for injuries to both Ramin Lalezari and Boris Tumarin, the team could have faired a bit better.

The team also saw newcomers Pierre Lotzoff and Boris Tumarin make their debut's for MUSA in what is just the beginning of the Mexico run up.