Every four years the World Cup Soccer Tournment Championships take place. This summer Japan and Korea are hosting this huge event. Saitama City Japan, is one of the host cities for some of the World Cup soccer matches. In celebration for this world-wide event, Saitama Stadium was built and is Japan's largest soccer football stadium. Opening events for the stadium include international matches between the foreign and Japanese teams, and the 1st Saitama International Youth Football Tournament, which we were a part of.

Pittsburgh All-Stars. Top Row: (L-R) Nginyu Ndimbie, Elliot Fishman, Jacob Schiller, Daniel Petersen, Chris Bolea, Ranjeet Pandey, Sam B. Freedman, Thomas Gray, Max Gold Bottom Row: Jules Coulson, AJ Foster, Vince D'Onofrio, Max Schlemmer, Tom Briley, AJ Fontes,Sam E. Freedman, Andy Feiler

Our Pittsburgh All-Star team members are comprised of boys from four Pittsburgh Travel Soccer Clubs including The Pittsburgh Dynamo, Beadling, IFC and Monroeville Soccer Club. Seventeen boys were chosen along with two coaches, Oliver Ndimbie and Jorge Fontes. Also a manager and five chaperones went with us. Our team was the only team representing the USA in the tournament.

Our team played at the beautiful Omiya Ardija Soccer Stadium in Saitama. The field was beautiful. I had to reach down and touch the grass to make sure it was real. Sunday, March 24 our team was invited to play an exhibition match before the Omiya Ardija professional soccer team game. We played the Omiya All-Stars and won 4 to 0. Then we joined the Omiya Ardija professional team players on the field for opening ceremonies. We sat with our host families in the stands and ate a McDonalds lunch while we watched Omiya win 2-0 over Kyushu Fukuoka with our host family. There was a lot of big flags waving and a lot of cheering for the home team on a beautiful sunny day. It was a lot of fun.

Omiya Stadium was surrounded by beautiful cherry blossoms

We were the guests of honor before a Japanese pro soccer game

3/25 Monday. We scrimmaged against the Chinese at Komaba Stadium. Another beautiful field, The fields are like paradise compared to any field I ever played on. We tied China 0-0. Me and a few of my team mates are feeling a little under the weather. In the evening was the big opening ceremony

3/27 Wednesday. Another practice game at Omiya Stadium against Mexico.We lost 2-0. But the referees from Mexico were totally unfair. They called all the penantles on us and gave them penalty shots. Our coach Mr. Jorge Fontes can speak Spanish and shouted about the calls in Spanish. It was funny to hear him yelling at the Mexican Ref in Spanish. They argued for a while and called the scrimmage off.

3/29 Friday. The tournmant begins. We played two games at Omiya stadium. The first game was at 10 a.m. Our team played our host families’ team, the Omiya Wings, and we tied 1-1. We took lots of pictures and watched the next game which Omiya lost 3-2. Our second game was at 4pm and we lost to Saitama East 4-0, putting us out of the finals.

3/30 Saturday. Friendship games at Kawaguchi Aoki Park. With the pressure off our team, we could enjoy ourselves a bit more and played a very good game and tied a very good team from Korea 0-0. Our second game that day was another really good game against China which we lost 3-2.

3/31 Sunday. Friendship game at Komaba Stadium, we lose to Korea 2-0