The first day of the MLS Combine was highly beneficial to all of the players with the training session at Holiday Park lasting about two hours. The four teams went through a 10-15 min warmup followed by various drills and eventually a light scrimmage. Some of the teams played goal to goal on a small field including keepers and the other teams played without keepers.
I had the opportunity to watch all of the teams, but I focused most of my time watching Adidas Tunit. I didn't know every player on the field, but some of the players that stood out to me were Chris Pontius, Peri Marosevic and AJ Delegarza. Pontius looked strong and quick, Marosevic the same(even though he lacks the size) and Delegarza looked sharp and quick. Pav Castaneda also played well. He showed good ball control, endurance and movement on the field.
Richard Jata had good skill and control in the small sided drills and his passing was extremely accurate in the final scrimmage. Even though Jata started out slow, in my opinion he finished the day well and was one of the top performers on the field for the Tunit squad.
I was impressed by a few other players and dissapointed with some as well, but I'm hoping it was due to a lack of competition in the last two months.
Saturday will be interesting to see how the teams work together on the field because after watching them scrimmage, some of the teams were getting pretty physical with one another. Alex Gonzalez was absent for the entire training session, but I heard he was supposed to arrive in time to play on Saturday.
Overall, it was great to see all of these players training together at the same time and I'm looking forward to tomorrow, in what will be a highly anticipated first matchup between Adidas Tunit and Adidas Predator PowerSwerve at 2:30pm.
Check back in tomorrow for updates on both games!
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