Tonight in my men’s recreational soccer, my team Brazil took a 2-1 lead in games won against arch-rival Argentina, in a variant of soccer that you play in a swamp.
It had been raining all day, and was raining when the game began. We had 11 players to start, and the other team only 10, so we dominated and pretty quickly built up a 5-0 first half lead. But is was interesting slogging – literally. We have a few perennial dribblers who always want to see if they can go through 5 guys first before laying off a pass. I’m surprised it took them as long as it did to adjust to the fact that when going through a puddle they would keep going but the ball would stay put. Even the passing was interesting with all the water - too soft and the ball jerked to a halt; too hard and it would skip and overshoot.
At the half an 11th player for Argentina finally arrived, and then they started to kick our ass. We were lucky to manage to keep it to only 3 goals, despite the fact that their keeper was a little wobbly and had let in a couple of soft ones in the first half. We have two colourful latinos on our team, Victor and Carlos, the keeper. The referee had the patience of Job for all the bitching and complaining, and I’m surprised (and grateful) that we weren’t down one or two men in the second half. Carlos is particularly dramatic, and when Argentina scored their first goal, he went on a 5-minute tirade – mostly at our team. The rest of us were looking at him going “what, you’ve never seen a skilled player before? News flash – sometimes they score.” But all in all, it’s not a bad thing to have a little passion on the team.
I haven’t been feeling well for the past week and played like a slug (some might say I always play like a slug). But for all the pointless running around and misfired passes, I was able to make two small contributions. I delivered a corner kick that my team-mates, after a brief scramble, put in the net for our fourth (and winning, as it turns out) goal, and after Carlos got injured toward the end of the game, I was able to hold a clean sheet for the remaining 8 minutes as replacement keeper, stopping a final flurry of shots. Although that wasn’t terribly graceful. I was able to push away a long curling ball going toward the right goal post, but it went to an opponent who was starting to turn on the ball to shoot. I was close in on him and stopped his first attempt, and by then was on my stomach flailing around in a puddle trying to keep him from shooting it again over me or passing it off. I stopped it once more and then as I was starting to get up a final shot ricocheted off my head straight up in the air, and when it came down one of my team-mates was able to finally clear it. I thought I heard the comment “interesting style”.
Unfortunately Carlos’ shin was injured pretty badly. I didn’t see the play, but an opponent slid into him cleats first as they were both going for the ball. He later showed me his leg, and yep, those were cleat marks. Aside from that, the bad news is Carlos likely won’t be playing keeper next week and I will. Carlos in fact, still enraged over the whole thing (the other team also happened to score on the play), told me he wasn’t coming back at all. But he says that every week, so who knows? 
Cheers,
Allocator
a.k.a George Parkanyi
1 Comment
July 6, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Go, Brazil!