Blue Sky Soccer: What's Kevin Taylor's status currently?

Amos Magee: He gets an x-ray on Thursday, which hopefully will come up positive and show that his broken metatarsal has healed, in which case we can get him back on the field. Then we'll see how quickly we can get him integrated into our team.

BSS: So if he gets cleared, he'd be able to start practicing right away?

AM: Yes, I think we'd certainly get him back with us on Monday when we get back from the road trip. Then we have that exhibition game on Saturday and that game on Sunday. So I assume that we'd get him some time certainly in the exhibition game, and then, depending on where our team is, in the other one as well.

BSS: What about Keisuke Ota? What's his status?

AM: He is available this weekend and he will be traveling with us. He's here in the country, he trained all week, looked decent.

BSS: How's he fitting in with the team? Are there communication issues?

AM: He's a really smart soccer player. It's funny, he picks some of our exercises and some of the tactical stuff that we do quicker than guys who speak the language. Which either a) says a lot about him or b) says something about these guys who don't pick it up as fast. I think guys like him. He's got a good personality. It's going to take some time to figure out his tendencies and figure out how we can best use him. Guys for the last three years were reluctant to lump balls up the field and have a big guy battle for it. That said, I think they're starting to recognize that we now have a really big legitimate target who will battle and fight and hold the ball for us.

BSS: The team as a whole is going to be considerably bigger isn't it?

AM: Yes, you add Kevin Taylor, you add Derek smith, you add Keisuke, there's Jon Greenfield. He's got some decent height to him.

BSS: He finished his indoor season on Saturday right?

AM: He did. After the grind of the indoor season I gave him a week off. He'll be here next week. We're really looking forward to getting him in. He gives us some real diversity. This past couple of weeks we're down to the bare bones. Now to have some options, and to be able to rest some guys, and to play fresh guys is going to be pretty exciting.

BSS: You were pretty happy with how things went for the two road games last weekend?

AM: Yes, but we didn't play particularly well in either of the games. I expect that we're going to play better as the season progresses. I sure hope so. But that said last year we played well and didn't get points. This year if the trend is that when we're not playing well we're still battling to get ourselves a point or three on the road I think it's fantastic. I really do think we've got a different mentality this year than we did last year. I feel even though we're younger, we have a better battling, fighting mentality, and I expect that some good things can really happen for us.

BSS: You've talked in the past about building camaraderie through bus trips and other hardships. Was that part of the plan for this preseason? It seemed like you guys were spending a lot of time on the bus.

AM: That was certainly part of it. But it was more that, unfortunately, we have to travel a little bit to get good games. We have no Division I school within three and a half hours of us. I designed our final bit of preseason so that we played Saturday in LaCrosse and Sunday at Creighton and drove in between. Then we played Charleston on Friday night and Carolina on Saturday night with five hours of driving in between. It's to create a mentality, it's so the guys understand what their bodies need to be able to do it, and it's the fact that we're collectively suffering together, and that does build camaraderie. I think we have good leadership in place here. We have good guys in place here. Our younger guys are pushing our more experienced guys. There's a real strength to us that there wasn't last year.

BSS: Is the roster pretty much complete at this point?

AM: We're close. I think we have 23 signed. I'd say we have one more that we'll get announced here pretty soon. That leaves us a little bit of freedom for two spots. We have a couple guys that we're continuing to look at, that we think may be able to help us.

BSS: One of the higher profile signing you guys made is a younger guy with a pretty strong pedigree, Rodrigo Hidalgo. How did that come about?

AM: Manny and I knew his agent from when we both played in Tampa. I saw his agent at the MLS combine, we talked, and I really like the guy. We actually were really close to signing a kid, Chris Aloisi, who ended up in Rochester. We lost out to them financially. But we reacquainted ourselves with this agent and we started talking about Rodrigo. I initially didn't think we could afford him. We were pursuing a couple other players. Again we lost out on some of these guys to some of the bigger budget teams. This guy, knowing Manny and knowing myself, I think he felt that this was a perfect place for a young guy to come and develop. We played Rodrigo a little bit out of position this past weekend because I felt like we needed some strength up front. But now that Keisuke is here we can move Rodrigo back into the midfield where he's a little more comfortable. He's still going to be a work in progress. He is only 19. I don't think he's quite up to speed yet. I think he's going to have some very good games for us, and he's going to have some pretty poor games for us. We're just going to continue to try and get better. We've got some good young players on our team and I'm excited to throw them out there. This past weekend we threw Lencho Skibba out there and he swam. He's 19 too. Rodrigo's going to swim for us at some point this year too.

BSS: A couple people have mentioned to me in watching practices and pre-season games that they were impressed by what a dynamic role Leo Gibson was playing in terms of being a vocal leader on the field. Is that something you've seen develop?

AM: One of the things I do as guys develop their games, and certainly the guys who stick around here during the offseason, I continually try to put them in leadership roles to develop that part of their personality. I did that with Leo and Leo took up some real leadership with our futures kids and some of our pro-am stuff. He was fantastic. He's still only 23, and he's getting better and better. I didn't think he was spectacular this first weekend, but even when he wasn't playing his best he's still working for the team, he's still providing us some dangerous moments. I think we're on the verge of seeing him explode. I hope it's this year, and if it's not this year it will be moments during this year, and then maybe next year. I'm very pleased with where he is, and I expect that he's going to get better and better.

BSS: What do you know about Atlanta?

AM: They're good. They're now moving themselves into the Rochester, Carolina, Vancouver, Montreal echelon of player budgets and acquisitions and stadiums and revenue. They've got this kid Machel Millwood who scored two goals against us in Atlanta last year who looked very dangerous in their first game. Then they added a big target to go along with him, this kid Dan Antoniuk, who I think scored 15 or 16 goals two years ago for Portland.

BSS: And he got two the first weekend, right?

AM: Exactly. They've got a couple of ex-MLS kids, they've got a Bolivian national team guy [Luis Liendo] in back. So they're formidable. I think it's going to be a step up from where we were last weekend. I think they're going to be a better team, a more dangerous team, than either Charleston or Carolina. I expect us to be better too.


Here is the Thunder roster that is traveling for this match:
Joe Warren
Nic Platter
Kevin Friedland
Derek Smith
Terry Alvino
Kyle Zenoni
Godfrey Tenoff
Freddy Juarez
Ansu Toure
Lencho Skibba
Leo Gibson
Rodrigo Hidalgo
Brian Farber
Keisuke Ota
Sasha Gatsmanov   

Paul Demko is a writer for City Pages and a contributor to their Balls blog.