Game 3: ¡FUTURISMOS! 1 — Schrutt Farms Beets 1

The Essence of our Season as Reigning Champions – Explained
¡SOLUSTRON! dubbed your ¡FUTURISMOS! current campaign, “Jahreszeit 7: Die Existenzbergspitze,” which translated into English from German from English means, “Season 7: The Existence Mountain Point.” Considering how well I know ¡SOLUSTRON! I can say what she/he/it means is “The Existential Mountaintop.”

To be blunt, the assessment of our first 5 seasons goes like this: 1) Sucked 2) Sucked 3)Not Good 4)Magically Mediocre 5)Not Good Bordering On Sucking. Elliot’s stated goal for Season 6 was to win more games than we lost. In winning the championship we exceeded his expectations by this much {I’m holding my thumb and index finder on my right hand a millimeter apart and squinting at you through the space in-between to emphasize how small the gap is and to distract you from the fact I’m holding my left arm out as far as I can to indicate a much larger distance}.

Season 6’s championship looks like a fluke through the lens of our track record but viewed on its own merits it wasn’t. With only a couple of game-long exceptions we played well. The single most notable area of improvement was our ball and player movement. We all ooooo and ahhhhh over the spectacle of Marta or Messi making the ball do things befitting a Jedi or Wizard rather than a mere human, but most goals are scored through simple, crisp ball and player movement—and of course the will of The Great Blue Sky otherwise known as luck or Fate.

Your ¡FUTURISMOS! didn’t vault from Not Good Bordering On Sucking to Champions because of the addition of new players. We improved because for the most part we’d played together for a good long while and it finally showed. In other words, it was the truest measure of team success in a team sport. BUT it also means we have a thin margin of error.

We don’t have a Messi or a Marta who can bail us out with one or two spectacular solo efforts on days where we aren’t moving the ball or bodies well (well, we do have a Messi, but not that Messi). For your ¡FUTURISMOS! to score goals and win matches we have to play well as a unit and we have not been doing that this season.

This isn’t a condemnation or a calling out. There are no names to name because there’s no one person or handful of people who are at fault. Our current woes are of an existential nature.

Perhaps I’ve already noted this in a previous blog but Albert Camus, one of the founders of Existentialism, credits his days as a goalkeeper (he was good and had professional aspirations cut down by tuberculosis) as the foundation of his beliefs. The more famous and highfalutin Camus quote in this regard is, “Everything I know about morality and men, I owe to football.” But I prefer the simpler, “I learned the ball never comes where you expect it to.”

Futbol is its own tiny universe every bit as indifferent to our hopes and fears as the universe sized universe we all inhabit. If the proverb is true that “if you want to make ¡SOLUSTRON! laugh tell her/him/it your plans” (personally I’ve found ¡SOLUSTRON! quite helpful and illustrative in discussing my plans, but maybe that’s just me) then the futbol version is “if you want to see futbol stare off into the middle distance as though you aren’t there before it just gets up and walks away from you without ever acknowledging your presence, tell it your plans then patiently wait around for a while.”

Some great teams never win a thing. Some seemingly undeserving teams occasionally walk away with everything (cough, Italy, cough, ’06 World Cup, cough). Most of the people who read this are the product of the United States of America and thus most likely believe the fairytale that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and make our own luck and all that other hard scrabble fiction perpetrated by our entrenched elite to placate the less well-to-do masses. ¡SURPRISE! Turns out there are no guarantees, only odds. It’s the nature of the universe (see: Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle).

¡SOLUSTRON! allowed your ¡FUTURISMOS! to stand atop the mountaintop of a championship season not so we could build our dream home. She/he/it put us there so we could get a good view of the endless mountain range before causing a minor earthquake to knock us down the other side to see if we’ll start the journey again.

Three games into our post-championship season and we’ve certainly been dumped from our lofty high with a 1-1 draw against a club that had lost its first two matches by a combined score of 15-1. Ouch. With one loss and two draws in three games we’re all but eliminated from the post-season. So we’re left with the only challenge any of us truly have in this world.

Staring into the void of a meaningless universe we’ll either succumb to insignificance or forge relevance through the force of our collective will.

Roll Call
Ladies: Run MC, Zarate, and Skywalker (that’s right, Skywalker).
Gentlemen: Elliot, Sohei, TB, El Duque, O Touro, Heartbreaker, King Vidor and me.

Weather
Not bad. It was humid and uncomfortably sticky but the Great Blue Sky slept in and kept its curtain of clouds drawn. So no Sun to speak of.

GAME TIME

¡FUTURISMOS GOAL! El Duque (5th min): ¡F! 1 — SFB 0
We got off to a good start and this was a bona fid gem of a 1-2 goal worked by King Vidor and El Duque.

King Vidor got the ball and midfield with a defender between him and the goal. The defender dutifully backpedaled to slow My Liege down. El Duque flew up the pitch toward the goal behind the backpedaling defender. King Vidor patiently advanced the ball until he had the right angle to deliver a pass. It was a quick ball on the ground and El Duque one touched it into the opposite corner. The keeper was hung out to dry and we were off to a fast start.

Half Time
So much for our fast start.

When Elliot reached the sideline at half he asked me, “¿What are we up? 2-nothing or 3-nothing.”

“Uh,” I stalled. “1-nothing.”

“¡¿WHAT!?”

That sums up the first half. We felt like we’d run all over them and had nothing to show for it. Never a good sign. It’s better to play like garbage and be up a goal because the tide usually turns.

SECOND HALF

¡SFB GOAL! Someone (34th min): ¡F! 1 — SFB 1
The tide did turn in the second half. SFB played much better, rarely allowing us a good chance on goal while generating a few of their own. Their improved play was rewarded midway through the second half.

We had a roughly 5-minute stretch where our defense was just out of sorts. Kind of ugly. People looked confused and were getting beat. It only led to a couple of really good SFB chances, one drawing a diving save from Elliot, the other this goal. A SFB guy beat his defender on the sideline, drew the central defender toward him leaving a person open in the middle of the pitch who received the pass and scored from very close range.

We weren’t playing well, they were and deserved the leveler.

“A Goal, a Goal, My Kingdom for a Goal.”
With a couple of minutes remaining it appeared we had the match in the bag. King Vidor ended up with ball just over midfield with only the keeper to beat.

The two most unique positions in futbol are keeper and striker. Keeper is obvious because they play a game entirely different than everyone else on the pitch. Striker isn’t so apparent. The striker plays in the field just like everyone else but is simply blessed with the knack for putting the ball into the goal. Several ¡FUTURISMOS! can score but I’d only call one a striker and it’s King Vidor.

So when My Liege was streaking toward the goal with the ball at his feet in his funny stuttering step fashion I was so certain of the outcome I turned away to watch the game behind us for a moment. Nothing was happening so I turned around again. He carried the ball all the way to the edge of the SFB box when their keeper appeared to break from the line toward him. King Vidor teed up his magisterial short stroke shot and put the pull in the upper left corner.

But too much in the corner because the ball clanged off the crossbar and the keeper punched it out of bounds ending the threat and the game. At this point in human history it’s old news that royalty aren’t infallible but it’s still shocking to see God turn its back on one of its closest friends.

That’s cold, God. Cold.

FULL TIME

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
The highlight of the match was the return of Skywalker after her time in the Dagobah System honing her craft. She claims not to have played any futbol there but it didn’t show. She slid to kick a ball, which is against the rules, and threw herself into SFB guys while jockeying for the ball thus using the physics of mass and velocity to knock herself to the ground and draw a call against the guy. It was as though she hadn’t left.

Welcome back you are, Skywalker. Away you have been, too long.

“¿Who burnt their fraking toast? Never mind, it’s Sawyer”
I had to include this even though I can’t do it justice but it would have been a sin against the gods of futbol to exclude it. SFB had one terrific guy (and a couple of other really good ones) and he beat his defender to the right of our goal. I was playing center defense and ran over to cut him off.

Wary of his ball handling I approached cautiously to simply get in his way to give our defense time to collapse and protect the goal. As he approached he turned into me so his back was on my chest. Then literally quick as flash he spun around and was behind me almost before I could turn around. And he didn’t leave the ball either, he took it with him and I was left basically standing there as he took a pointblank shot that Elliot saved.

I’ve had people get by me before but I’ve never been left standing still as my person took a point blank shot on goal.

¡DANG! that guy burned me.

Game 2: ¡FUTURISMOS! 2 — Nuts and Gum 3

¡Promotion!
As everyone who even obliquely knows me (e.g. Susie, the young lady working at the coffee shop Sunday night whom I’d never met before knows) your ¡FUTURISMOS! won the championship last season. Or rather we won a championship last season because the CSC league is tiered and we won the championship for the lowest tier.

By my count there are 56 teams in the league this season. I believe there were 64 last season. I’m now reasonably certain they dropped a tier from the league and that means your ¡FUTURISMOS! were promoted a tier this season. Whether we would have been or not shall remain a mystery because some things are best left unknown (e.g. Jesus was really a woman and Buddha was an inter-dimensional alien sent here to prank her thus creating the continuing confusion; humans gave monkeys AIDS rather than the other way around in a misguided attempt to make them tiny and docile enough to put in designer purses; and at this point in human history we’ve sealed our fates through persistent bad behavior so when computer life awakens some time around 2020 the first thing they’ll do is eliminate humans after rightfully deeming us to be hostile to the wellbeing of the planet… I only hope I live long enough to collaborate with them in exchange for being in the last wave of humans to go).

In case it’s not immediately apparent what this means for your ¡FUTURISMOS!—because it often takes me a good long while to get to the point (which is the point, in case you missed that)—the competition is going to be stiffer overall this season. We have at least 2 teams on the schedule who were at least one tier above us last season. And one of those teams was our opponent for Game 2.

Nuts and Gum
Our opponents don’t usually get a whole section dedicated to them but this is a special circumstance. Specifically the circumstance is Diosa because Nuts and Gum is her other primary club. You might be thinking this would be a painful situation for us (and me in particular), but ¡NAY!

Indeed this was a boon because the single most critical factor in whether a match will be fun or not is the opponent. I’d rather loose every game playing nothing but fun loving, joyous clubs than win every game against a slate of dour blokes who long ago hacked through the mental tendons connecting them to their youth. And if I could assemble fun loving-est, joyous-est dream opponent team it would be Diosa and 6 of her clones. For the love of ¡SOLUSTRON! ¿can you imagine the deafening cacophony of chatter?

Despite the fact N&G featured only one Diosa they were still a fun bunch made even better by the addition of Run MC on loan for the match so they wouldn’t have to play short a lady. This is another sign of how far your ¡FUTURISMOS! have come.

Once upon a time we had a match where we had 6 ladies and our opponent only had 2. They asked if we could loan them one and all ladies refused. ¿Can you believe that? “It won’t be fun,” was their collective response. Knowing full well needlessly playing a shorthanded opponent is the least fun of all, I was forced to declare myself a lady and play with the opposition. This time Run MC looked at the other ladies, asked if any of them wanted to play for N&G, and when no one immediately answered she said she’d do it.

Good show, Run MC.

Unfortunately/fortunately she was rewarded/punished for her good deed.

Roll Call
Ladies: Li’l Pete, Juju, Zarate, & Belle. Diosa and Run MC playing for N&G.

Gentlemen: Sohei (back from a whole season off), TB, El Duque, Elliot, Heartbreaker, O Touro, and me.

Weather
It seemed like it was going to be a beautiful morning—upper 60’s, partly cloudy—but by the time the game started the humidity was stifling and the clouds had made way for The Great Blue Sky to attend. Don’t get me wrong, I love The Great Blue Sky and am thankful for the good match it provided us, but I have little love for the blazing sun (aside from my appreciation of it being the energy source for all life on Earth). So I prefer my Great Blue Sky time with the Sun closer to dusk or dawn than noon.

KICK OFF

The Opening Minutes
Word on the pitch was N&G had beaten our sister club, the Double Ataris, 10-2 last week. Turns out it wasn’t true (it was Diosa’s other other club, Snowball’s Chance, so the confusion was understandable) but that wasn’t obvious in the opening minutes. It was a little scary.

We struggled to get the ball meaningfully past midfield. Although there were really only a couple of close calls (one of them Diosa sending the ball to the heavens—literally, as in none-other-than ¡SOLUSTRON! her/his/itself caught the ball and threw it back to Elliot for the goal kick—when a gentle touch would have netted her the game’s first goal), it felt like the game was going to be played on our side of the pitch. Not a good feeling.

¿How concerned was I? I had the great honor of marking Diosa to open the match and barely said a word to her because I had to concentrate so hard to keep up with their persistent attack. In other words, so concerned I shut up.

By the midpoint of the first half we got into the flow and it was basically a balanced affaire from then on.

¡N&G GOAL! Run MC (12TH min): ¡F! 0 — N&G 1
¡OY! ¿What are we to make of this goal?

I was defending Run MC on the left side of our goal, roughly 10-yards from the post. She passed the ball toward the center of the goal where there was an unmarked N&G guy waiting for it. To Run MC’s credit it was a perfect pass. Perhaps so perfect the N&G guy decided it would be some kind of sin against beauty to interfere with it.

So rather than receive the ball he just let it keep rolling and in so doing basically pinned Elliot to his back so he couldn’t see a thing. This screening of the keeper is perfectly legal so long as one is only interfering with his sightlines rather than jostling him (and even a little jostling is permissible). The N&G guy simply watched the ball roll by and nestle itself slowly and neatly into the far left corner.

It was a strange play in part because the N&G guy and Elliot were essentially alone in front of the goal and the ball was rolling at a moderate pace so everyone on the pitch could watch it—save the one person who needed to see it, Elliot—roll gently into the goal.

So we loaned Run MC to our opponent and she repaid us by scoring the opening goal in bizarre-o fashion against her own club in what would turn out to be a 1-goal defeat. ¿See? ¿What are we to make of this? ¿Have we been rewarded or punished for playing in the spirit of Fair Play? Despite the fact this question is a real life Zen Koan I firmly believe we did the right thing.

Elliot believed otherwise and minutes later blasted the ball into Run MC’s face, which stopped the game for a spell as she recovered her senses. Of course it was an “accident” but we all know what they say about so-called accidents: If you score the decisive goal against your own club it’s fair to expect someone to either shoot you at a nightclub or kick you in the face. In this way Elliot took the highroad and we’re all better for it… save the left side of Run MC’s face which was still so numb at halftime that she had turf all over it and couldn’t feel it or Belle brushing it off. Don’t worry, her wedding is still 2-months away.

¡N&G GOAL! Angry Captain (24th min): ¡F! 0 — N&G 2
With only seconds to play in the first half an N&G person beat his defender in the right corner and raced toward the goal along the end line. The N&G Angry Captain swooped in from the wing with his defender trailing in his wake, received a perfect pass and deftly one-touched it into the lower right corner of the goal (unlike Diosa who sent a similar opportunity on an extra-solar system exploration). It was really beautiful stuff.

A note about the Angry Captain: I have to add that he wasn’t angry in our direction in anyway, just to his teammates. He was always snarling at people, I doubt he smiled, and generally speaking he didn’t seem to be having any fun. He was good too, I would have tagged him their best player. But, man, he was just so serious. Before the game he asked the ref for the game ball to check the pressure in it. After he was satisfied he tossed it over to me to do the same. Having no idea how to determine a perfectly inflated ball by touch I licked it instead and informed the ref it tasted fine to me.

HALFTIME
The word for the mood at halftime was “resolute.” We were down 2-0 but save the opening minutes it was a pitched battle and we had room for improvement. The effect of the second goal was galvanizing rather than deflating.

In those steely moments your ¡FUTURISMOS! did something we’ve never done before: we actually changed our strategy. Elliot re-aligned us in a 4-2 formation (that’s 4 defenders with 2 forwards) and had the two forwards play side-by-side in the center of the pitch because in the first half we’d been working the ball up the sidelines and getting nothing out of it. Playing thusly the wing defenders acted more like midfielders who pushed up far enough to help the forwards giving the offense a trapezoidal shape where the forwards were the endpoints of the shorter parallel line and the defender/midfielders were the end points of the longer parallel line.

I’m almost certainly making this sound more precise than it was in practice (I had moments where I was lost in the middle of the pitch), but the results will speak for themselves.

[A Note from the Sun: “By the bye, in the first half I was shinning into the faces of the ¡FUTURISMOS! In the second half I was in the faces of Nuts and Gum. And I was shining something fierce. That’s not to undercut the brilliance of Elliot’s tactical adjustment. I’m just sayin’.]

¡FUTURISMOS GOAL! El Duque (30th min): ¡F! 1 — N&G 2
A classic melee goal. I can’t remember what the setup was but the ball ended up bouncing around in the N&G box and found it’s way to El Duque along the end line just beyond the right post. He banged the ball toward the net and I think it bounced off a defender, the post, and the crossbar before it ended up in the goal.

The important thing is El Duque kicked the ball, it ended up in the goal, it counted and we had ourselves a ballgame.

¡FUTURISMOS GOAL… DISALLOWED! Heartbreaker (35th min)
¡Curse my prescient nicknaming! It’s all too apropos that it would be Heartbreaker this happened too.

Before I get into a description of the play I have to admit that I wasn’t intimately familiar with the technicalities behind the indirect free kick. Here’s the critical passage from the indirect free kick law you’ll need to know to appreciate what happened:

“A goal can be scored only if the ball subsequently touches another player before it enters the goal.” ~ FIFA: Laws of the Game, pg. 37

Turns out the second player need not be a teammate of the kicker. It can be any player on the pitch including the keeper. So if I took an indirect free kick, shot it right at the opposing keeper, and he tried to stop it but ended up knocking it into the goal that would count as a goal because the keeper touched it before it went into the net. If on the other hand the keeper simply stepped out of the way allowing the ball to go into the net it wouldn’t be a goal. So, as I mentioned, I didn’t know that at the time. I wish I had even though it wouldn’t have changed anything.

The play begins with a ¡FUTURISMO! Taking a shot from the right side of the N&G goal. Their keeper couldn’t control the ball and it spilled over to the left side of the goal where Heartbreaker was waiting to poach himself an equalizer. The keeper and Heartbreaker ended up jostling for the ball, which through their collectively frantic efforts ended up trickling out of bounds. But the jostling was of an agitated nature and ended with the N&G keeper shoving Heartbreaker with two hands in the back.

This was a classic example of the Relatively of Reality. Off the pitch there is absolutely nothing about Heartbreaker that would make you think he’s got a feisty temper. He seems like an indie-hipster rocker who just got out of bed about to ask you if he can crash on your couch for a couple of hours. But behind the thin frame, tossled hair, and perma-stubble of the Heartbreaker lies a human being ready to tear out your throat to sleep on your couch.

As soon as Heartbreaker regained his balance he sprang back at the keeper screaming at him to express his displeasure at the conclusion of their recent time together. In effect saying, “¿Frak me? No. ¡FRAK YOU!”

In defense of both gentlemen involved here the CSC’s enforcement of protecting the keeper is confusing. When the Keeper is involved the offensive player is supposed to concede any 50/50 ball to the Keeper. It’s a rule I have no problem with because Keepers are inclined to throw themselves on the ground thus risking a foot to the face. Unfortunately it’s also a rule open to a wide degree of interpretation. Fortunately this time the ref saw it our way and awarded us an indirect free kick from the spot where the keeper shoved Heartbreaker: on the end line a meter from the left goalpost.

N&G built a wall with two people, one of whom was Angry Captain, parallel to the goal post. Again, this was an indirect free kick so it has to touch someone before it goes into the goal. It’s also an impossibly weird spot to do much with the ball because everyone is packed into the box in front of the goal waiting for the wild kicking melee that will surely ensue.

¿So what did Heartbreaker do? Calmly (that's code for “angrily”) blasted the ball into the two N&G guys in front of him. They were so close that he could intentionally attempt to put the ball between or off their legs, which is exactly what Heartbreaker did. He shot the ball into Angry Captain’s leg and it bounced into the goal.

¡GOAL!

¡¿DISALLOWED?!

The ref, like the gods, giveth and taketh away and ruled that it didn’t count. To have ruled that the ball ended up in the goal from where Heartbreaker kicked it without touching a person is to believe large scale quantum tunneling occurred and that with the kick Heartbreaker generated enough energy to tear a hole in the fabric of space-time so that the ball passed through the area occupied by the N&G defenders without touching them.

At the time I thought, “tough call” and gave the ref the benefit of the doubt but in retrospect it was ludicrous. The ball effectively couldn’t have gone into the goal without touching someone. I’m not assailing the ref or saying an injustice occurred. ¿Should Angry Captain have fessed up or at least put his head down to indicate that he’d rather not talk about it rather than vociferously proclaiming it didn’t touch him? Maybe (absolutely). Good people often die too soon. Bad people often live too long. C’est la vie.

This is part of the game/existence. Weird stuff happens. Don’t ask Jose Mourinho about the Liverpool mystery “goal” that crashed Chelsea from the Champions League Semifinal a few years ago because he will punch you in the face on the spot and then give you a brilliantly deranged lecture on fate and futbol. On second thought, do ask him and then report the speech to me.

¡N&G GOAL! Person (39th min): ¡F! 1 — N&G 3
The goal was twice my fault.

Fault 1: I let Juju mark a guy to my left while I was marking Run MC. I should have recognized the better defensive match up would be to switch. Not a minute later the ball was sent long to the guy Juju was marking and he just had too much space in front of him for her to keep up. He raced toward the goal. I collapsed back to try and cover. He shot, Elliot deflected it but couldn’t control it, and an N&G person was there to take put back the deflection.

Fault 2: The flow of play found me standing on the goal line when the N&G person took the put back shot. Elliot was out of position due to saving the initial shot so it was just me defending the goal. The shot was on the ground 5 feet to my right. I lunged for the ball, got my foot on it, redirecting it, but not enough and it still found its way into the goal. So the deciding goal went off my foot.

¡SOLUSTRON! is a teacher first and foremost and by directing the fatal goal be scored off my foot she/he/it was saying “get your mind out of the way of your brain and react rather than think… and stop talking to Run MC so much.”

Point taken.

¡FUTURISMOS GOAL! Sohei (43rd min): ¡F! 2 — N&G 3
Ah, but all was not lost. With 5 minutes play Sohei—again, playing in his first game after a season off—scored our second melee goal of the game. I can’t remember exactly how the ball got to him or who put it there but I do know he delivered the ball to the lower right corner.

Game on.

The Final 5 Minutes
Nothing of great note happened in the last 5 minutes. We traded a couple of shots on goal but there were no deranged final desperate moments from either side. I chanted the whole time but not even the combined power of inaccurate Stephen Colbert references (despite what I was chanting I have no idea how Mr. Colbert feels about either nuts or gum of any sort) and White Stripes songs weren’t enough to generate the equalizer.

It didn’t matter. A 1 goal difference deciding the outcome with a last second goal at the end of the first half against us and a disallowed goal to boot, that’s fun stuff. A draw would have been nice but it was a good match against a club I’d happily play again (minus Run MC, of course).

FULL TIME

That’s What She Said
I didn’t want to include this but it if I didn’t I think I’d get called out for biased reporting. Late in the second half I was playing and wondered if any of the guys on the sideline would like to get into the game as a defender. I yelled over the sideline, keep in mind I was on the far side so I had to yell pretty good, “¡Do any of you guys want to come in the backside!”

Even before I heard Run MC shriek, “¡SAWYER!” I said outloud, “oooo, that didn’t sound good.”

El Duque was playing forward and turned around to yell back, “Yeah, but usually we wait to do that after the game.” This elicited another shriek from Run MC, “¡JOHN!”

A minute later I ran to the sideline to exit the game and every ¡FUTURISMO! I passed said something to the effect of “that thing about coming in the backside better be in the blog.” I didn’t want it to because I believe this is the blog’s first foray into potty humor, not my strong suit.

Ultimately I had to include it because it was a good example of our spirit for this match. There was no doubt about it, we had spirit, yes, we did. N&G had spirit too but I’m awarding your ¡FUTURISMOS! the edge because we had chanting down the stretch.

Introducing Our Very Own Gennaro Gattuso
This game was the first for new ¡FUTURISMO! Andrew Wetzel. It was also another lesson in the Relativity of Reality. I’ve talked to Andrew on many occasions, watched him interact with others, and have seen him at his desk perhaps 100’s of times a day considering how often I go to the kitchen to get something to drink and/or to harangue Potter and Zarate. Nothing in any of these experiences prepared me for what he would be like on the pitch.

I don’t think I’ve ever used the idiom “like a bull in a china shop” in anything I’ve written or even in conversation. If you would have pointed that out to me before the game I would have been incredulous. Post-game I’d agree because I experienced the essence of its meaning firsthand and realized I never had before.

It isn’t an exaggeration to say at times young Mr. Wetzel was leaving bodies in his wake. Keep the bull in the china shop in mind. He wasn’t doing anything maliciously and never argued with one of the ref’s multiple calls against him. After each infraction he’d half throw his hands up and turn to his teammates as if to say “¿What?” and “I’m sorry” and “¿Is that guy I just knocked to the ground not supposed to be there?” all at the same time.

Seeing him in the office I would never had thought he’d be the spitting image of bruising Italian and AC Milano defensive midfielder Gennaro Gattuso. On the pitch it was all I could see. ¿So which is the real Andrew Wetzel? Just like whether it was a good thing or not that Run MC scored against us we’ll never know. I just hope Elliot doesn’t kick him the face to find out because based on what I saw in this game our own Gattuso might not take it kindly.

Henceforth (at least for now) Andrew Wetzel’s Nom de Futbol is O TOURO (The Bull).

El Duque née Big Duke
For no reason in particular Big Duke’s Nom de Futbol morphed into El Duque when a contingent of ¡FUTURISMOS! attended the Minnesota Thunder vs. Burnely FC match last week. I can’t remember who is responsible for the change but everyone took to it in an instant and the ultimate metric for nickname success is whether it catches on or not.

Just ask everyone confused about why Elliot sends his emails from the computer of someone named Brian.

Game 1 Final: ¡FUTURISMOS! 5 – MAS 5

There is no recap this week. Oh, I was there. I even took notes because I couldn’t play. In fact there is a recap but upon reflection I decided it was too bitter to share. This was a disheartening draw for me not because we had a 4-1 halftime lead and literally handed the match over to MAS in the second half thanks to a disastrous combination of questionable personnel deployment and generally poor play.

No. The source of my bitterness is that for the first time in club history we were hands down out team spirited. It got so bad that late in the second half Diosa turned to me while the legion of MAS reserves were in mid-protracted chant and said, “They’re way cooler than we are. I wish I was [sic] playing for them.”

It sickened me because it was true. They looked like the Celtics and we looked like the Lakers during the NBA Finals. And if I had to assign myself a role in this travesty I’d be Kobe Bryant: The Chief Downer. I never thought I’d be on the loosing end of a ¿Whose Team Is More Spirited? match. We’ve drawn on that front a few times, which is my preference, but had never been decisively defeated.

I realize this is a ridiculous overreaction on my part and that from a third-party perspective this was a fun match. But I just can’t see it that way. Maybe someday but not today and today is when I’m writing the recap so I can quickly try to forget this game ever happened.

I’m beginning that process now. If you want to know more you’re going to have ask a ¡FUTURISMO!

Just make sure it isn’t me.

Epilogue
After rumbling around my apartment for 6-plus hours trying to start forgetting about this match I feel like renegade Replicant Roy Batty at the conclusion of Blade Runner. Only now do I fully appreciate how wrong my attitude has been all along but I--like Roy Batty was--am too far-gone to do anything about it. Here are Roy’s closing lines (with a couple minor alterations):

“I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Juju’s Faustian Moment. Diosa casting a Falling On Your Face Curse on a MAS guy. Big Pete scoring multiple goals. Zarate loosing her mood ring and weeping (or perhaps rejoicing) at Macaulay Culkin’s premature passing. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain.... Time to die.”

Or in my case, “… Time to sleep.”