FC Edmonton set to begin two-day trek to Puerto Rico

You can’t find a road trip that’s tougher in any of the North American leagues than having a team from Edmonton having to go to Puerto Rico (or vice versa).

It’s a longer trip to fly to the Caribbean island from Edmonton than it is to go from Edmonton to Hawaii.

FC Edmonton travels to Bayamon for two road games against the Puerto Rico Islanders, the NASL’s second-place side. The first goes Saturday, the second kicks off Aug. 30. Trips to Puerto Rico are tough for all comers; in CONCACAF Champions League play, the Islanders have got the better of visiting MLS and Mexican League sides, too.

FC Edmonton is in fourth place in the NASL with six games left on the schedule; but, the Eddies are only a point up on sixth-place Fort Lauderdale and seven up on the seventh-place (and out of the playoffs at the moment) Montreal Impact. So, getting some points out of the Caribbean trip is important. Lose both, and have the charging Impact — who play in Minnesota Saturday — win two more, and the gap is just a point.

But, before you can play the games, you have to get there. FCE didn’t train Tuesday as it prepared for two days of travel. On Wednesday, the team will fly to Minneapolis, then connect on a flight to Atlanta. The club will spend Wednesday night in Atlanta, before heading on a flight to Puerto Rico. By the end of the trip Thursday, the team will have spent three days away from the practice field. If you could fly from Edmonton to Puerto Rico direct, you are looking at about a seven- hour flight. But it is broken up into three chunks — and FC Edmonton isn’t flying charter.

“The fact that we get there on Thursday helps a lot,” said Shaun Saiko, FCE’s leading scorer with seven on the season. “We’ll have two days to get over the jet lag and train a little bit. It’s obviously going to be a tough game against a team that’s playing very well, in that tough heat. But there are also the kinds of games we want to put our stamp on to show that we are ready to make a run for the playoffs.”

The one break FCE gets in the schedule is that it gets both of its road games against the Islanders done on one trip. It’s one thing to do it once a year; it’s even more draining to do it twice. By the second game on the island, FCE should be used to the playing conditions and have gotten over all the jet lag.

But, Saiko points out the trip would have been ideal if FCE could have squeezed in a road game against Atlanta or one of the Florida teams on the way down.

It’s a road trip the likes of which Saiko has yet to experience; before returning home to Edmonton, he played for two years with Middlesbrough’s reserve and youth sides. And there are no such things as long road trips in English football.

“I’ve never been on a trip like this; before this season, all the road trips I had were by bus, not by plane. But traveling across the continent, then out into the islands… it is a long trip. But if we aren’t training, at least we will be getting some rest, even though the travel is going to be tough.”

And then, FCE has to begin the long journey back to Alberta that begins on Aug. 31, and be fresh enough to face NSC Minnesota in what is a key matchup on Sept. 3. Again, there will likely be long days of travel with no chance to practice in between the second game in Puerto Rico and the home date with Minnesota.

After the Puerto Rico trip, FC has four games left on the season, three of them at Foote Field.