Pro Player Niko Gkionis talks about changing teams
Nicholas “Niko” Gkionis is a friend of mine, pro soccer player, a special guest Online Soccer Academy player, and has guest blogged and appeared for JMSocccer10.com a few times. You can read his past guest blog posts by clicking here. Today he talks about why he recently switched teams in Belgium.
Since I last guest blogged a lot has happened to me. Before the winter break, I had earned a starting spot on the team and, as I mentioned in my last post, I scored a goal. I started the last three games before the winter break so I was looking forward to my prospects for the second half of the season. However, I realized things change very quickly in the world of professional soccer but to be honest I did not see it coming.
I came back to New Jersey for a short Christmas break and enjoyed my time catching up with family and friends. I was only home from Dec. 18th-28th so I could not spend New Years in the USA which I was really bummed about. Anyway, I came back to my team for training and realized some things had been changing at the club. The club had brought in new management to recruit players for the second half of the season and to help get the team out of relegation zone. I understand they had to do that because we were not in a good position in the league standings, but I slowly realized that the whole make up of the team was changing. There were also some external factors that played a part in me ultimately deciding it was best to leave the club.
I had a lot of interest from third division clubs so I explored some options there and ultimately signed with Excelsior Veldwezelt until the end of the season. This move will definitely be an interesting challenge for me. I worked it out so I can stay in the same place I am living now but the club is actually about 30 minutes away near the border of Holland. They speak Dutch in that area instead of French so I guess I will have to pick up another language!
I am with my new club until the end of the season and then after that I will have to analyze things and see where I go from there. My whole career has been kind of crazy in terms of moving clubs but its been working out for me. Everything happens for a reason right? We will see what happens though but during this whole ordeal I got down about a lot of things. However I realized I am not helping myself by being negative or worrying to much about things I cannot control. The slogan ”Believe in It” works in this case and it has nothing to do with my soccer ability. I just had to believe that things would work out for me. Who knows if they will but what I do know is I will be giving it my best shot.
Niko
