Jet lag or no jet lag, Lawrence Olum is back from a successful trip to Africa and ready to step in as Sporting Kansas City's first-choice defensive midfielder.
“As much as they talk about flying and all the time difference, it is what it is,” Olum told reporters on Wednesday, a day after returning from Africa Cup of Nations qualifying with the Kenyan national team. “You have to deal with it and just move on to the next game.”
Sporting's next game – and their first since Uri Rosell was sold to Sporting Clube de Portugal on Tuesday – is on Friday at Houston. That leaves little time for Olum to adjust from the eight-hour time difference between here and his home country, but he said he's been working on that already.
“I was doing that even way before, when I was back home,” he said. “Hopefully it won't be a big problem with the two or three days that we have in between.”
Kenya advanced in qualifying on a 2-1 aggregate, winning 1-0 at home and drawing 1-1 away against Comoros.
“It's a great experience for me, playing on home soil for the first time in a meaningful game,” Olum said. “I got to play in front of my friends and family for the first time, so that was a great experience. I got to play with the best talent the country has. It was different. It was exciting. I loved every minute of it.”
Kenya had wanted to call him up for previous qualifying matches, Olum said, but budget constraints got in the way.
“They knew I was playing out here,” he said. “They knew I was doing good things in the States, but just because we're a small country, it was always a problem getting there. But finally, they knew how important those games are for the country. It was the right time for me to get there.”
Sporting manager Peter Vermes criticized the timing of the call, coming as it did on short notice and with Sporting already thin in the back line from injury and international absence, and Olum also acknowledged the process could have gone better for his club.
“I got the notice about three or four days before (the final call-up), but it was never confirmed,” he said. “It was confirmed on the last day. That's why it was kind of short notice. I wasn't sure I was going to go the first time, until they sent the ticket. It was a little bit out of timing for everybody, but we moved past that and we're here now.”
And now, Olum finds himself tabbed to start in the defensive midfield – the position he has played off and on for Sporting since arriving in late 2011, switching between there and central defense. He has big-match experience in both positions, playing the 2012 U.S. Open Cup final at center back and coming on in last year's MLS Cup final after Rosell went out in the seventh minute with an ankle sprain.
That experience and Olum's skills make him a solid full-time successor to Rosell, Vermes said on Wednesday.
“He's calm on the ball,” Vermes said. “He's good on the ball. He's also another guy that's big and can help us on set pieces and things like that, so he's a little different from Uri in that respect. Uri never was a big guy for set pieces, so Lo gives you a little more of that, and in the run of play, he covers a lot more ground. He's got a lot of good passing abilities. Technically, he's very good.”
Steve Brisendine covers Sporting Kansas City for MLSsoccer.com.
