We entered the final “regular season” match with Team Monday with identical 1-4-1 records, hand-in-hand holders of last place. In the last it was Team Monday who broke their record symmetry by besting your ¡FUTURSIMOS! in the Basement Battle. Thus at the conclusion of the “regular season” we stand alone in 10th (last) place. I hope it surprises no one to hear this isn’t even a fraction of the Planck length of the story.
A NOTE ABOUT TEAM MONDAY
I wish we could play teams with Team Monday’s spirit every week. I’ll belabor a couple of their players later but here’s a snapshot of their team spirit. They had a guy who bore more than a passing resemblance to the Point Break version of Patrick Swayze.
One of the exchanges I had with The Swayze as I was marking him was about how critical floppy hair is in proper futbol. Later on he was near Li’l Pete when she beckoned for I, Madnle to unleash one of his patented “¡Yeah,yeah,yeah,yeah,yeah!” screeches. The Swayze turned to Li’l Pete and implored her to ask I, Madnle not to screech again, “Oh, please, it scares me to death when he does that.”
They weren’t a perfectly spirited club, they had one guy in particular I’ll talk about later, but all and all as good an opponent as one can hope for.
THE MATCH GETS UNDER WAY
It had rained the better part of the day so the pitch was wet. Complimenting the wet was the cold, upper 50-degrees and dropping with a brisk wind. Most everyone got ready in pants, sweatshirts, and even stocking caps. It seemed like it was going to be a rough go but the combination of running around and a dying wind made for rather pleasant conditions. No one walked out of the stadium in a stocking cap.
GOAL (12th Min) ELLIOT: ¡F! 1 — TM 0
The game’s first goal was what is now Elliot’s patented strike: a diving long distance bomb.
I might be mistaken but I think I actually set this goal up. I was defending, hovering around midfield when the ball deflected from deep on Team Monday’s end. I was the first to it a little over midfield and quickly passed to Elliot who was to my left and 20 or so feet ahead.
Elliot received the ball 15 yards from Team Monday’s goal and calmly took a speculative boot. It caught the Team Monday keeper out of position, dropping over his outstretched arms. Yet another curling long-distance effort from Elliot.
GOAL (16th Min) BLONDE CAPTAIN LADY: ¡F! 1 — TM 1
I was involved in this one too, but not in a good way.
Again, I was near midfield defending while the ball was deep in Team Monday’s end. The ball was cleared by a Team Monday person and sailed thigh high to my right. I tried to deflect it but it glanced off my shin guard and continued on toward our end line at a considerable pace.
I turned to chase it down but one look told me there was no way I was going to get to it before it went out of bounds. Internally kicking myself because I was sure I had just given up a corner kick, I ran after it but with little hope.
This was my first experience of the magic of Li’l Diego.
There was a guy on Team Monday who maybe came up to my chin. He was the kind of ambiguously ethnic looking person that could have passed for a broad array of peoples from Mexican to Mediterranean but he may have been Middle Eastern (I think his name was Hassan). Whatever his name or ethnicity he will always be Li’l Diego to me because I imagine seeing him was something like seeing THE Diego Maradona play. Both were considerably smaller than everyone else and played with the combined powers of a jackrabbit and a bull.
So I was running after the ball. Not sprinting as though my life depended on it, but still running. Li’l Diego blew by me like I was walking. I then ran as hard as I could but he still easily pulled away from me. I didn’t think there was any way he could save that ball from going out of bounds.
He did.
I didn’t think there was any way he could do anything constructive with it because of his momentum, the end line, and me bearing down on him.
He did that too.
Li’l Diego calmly collected the ball at the end line. Turned in, spotted a teammate, and delivered a spot on pass to Team Monday’s Blonde Lady Captain. She had a wide-open look 20-feet in front of our goal. She scored but Li’l Diego did all the work.
Li’l Diego was just getting started.
HALF TIME: ¡F! 1 — TM 1
I don’t remember anything of note from halftime.
GOAL (30th min) LI’L DIEGO: ¡F! 1 — TM 2
Like I said, Li’l Diego was half jackrabbit, half bull. When he got the ball his neck disappeared because his shoulders hunched up and his hands balled up into fists. He was short and his stride was even shorter making his dribbling look like a CGI special effect from Kung-Fu Hustle.
I don’t remember this goal very well even though I was on the pitch. Li’l Diego took the ball up the left side. He breezed past the left back. Before help could arrive he calmly placed the ball in the opposite corner of the goal… and I do mean corner. From the left side he slipped that ball just inside the right post.
Li’l Diego was not done.
GOAL (35th min) LI’L DIEGO: ¡F! 1 — TM 3
This was the highlight play of the game. Seriously, it was YouTube worthy. I was on the sideline after his first goal through this one and it was honestly electric whenever he got the ball. Even when he got near the ball all of your ¡FUTURISMOS! on the sideline would gasp and giggle in anticipation of the next crazy display of jackrabbit speed with bullish determination. During dead ball situations we would yell stuff like “untie his shoes.”
Alas, I must point out there was a chink in Li’l Diego’s tiny armor. He was at a minimum arrogant. I have no doubt a few ¡FUTURISMOS! would say he crossed the line into outright dick. It’s hard for me to say because I have to admit that what holds me back from worsening my assessment of his attitude is his stature. He was just this little fella.
This is strictly a matter of physics. Yes, while jostling on a couple of occasions he may have been a touch overly active with his arm in fending me off, but it didn’t effect my ability to play him in, say, the way an elbow from Big Pete would. In any event, whether he was just arrogant or a dick, good lord was he fun to watch.
Li’l Diego was 20-yards in front of our goal and the ball was deep on the Team Monday side of the field. By this point your ¡FUTURISMOS! were chastened, so despite the fact the ball was nowhere near him, there were three ¡FUTURISMO! defenders within arm’s reach of Li’l Diego. A defender immediately behind him and defenders to his left and right.
The ball came sailing to Li’l Diego and he chested it to the ground. His neck disappeared, his hands balled into fists, and the CGI began. This happened so fast I couldn’t see it very well despite the fact I was looking right at it.
Li’l Diego wheeled around, dribbled to the right and past the defender who was right behind him. The defender who was to his right then collapsed on him and he juked to the right, outside the collapsing defender, and rocketed a shot chest high into the right corner of the goal. He beat three defenders and scored. It wasn’t that we were out of position or played him poorly, he simply put on a several second display worthy of El Diego.
A NOTE ABOUT HOW THE CURRENT ¡FUTURISMOS! ARE DIFFERENT THAN THE PAST ¡FUTURISMOS!
The mood on the sideline when we went down 3-1 wasn’t deflated. We knew the odds weren’t great, but c’est la vie. Last year we would have been defeated at that point. We wouldn’t have quit or played less hard, but there would have been the sense that this one was out of reach. Not this year.
Rather than get down we actually ratcheted up the attack knowing we had to make up two goals in just over ten minutes. Our second goal was a fine example of both how our spirit and ability to play the game have changed this season from last.
GOAL (40th min) TB: ¡F! 2 — TM 3
Our second goal was set up because the right defensive back chose an opportune moment to make a run that was equal parts enthusiasm and game recognition.
The right back in question was I, Madnle. He got possession of the ball on our side of midfield with wide-open space in front of him. Rather than pass or stop to take the time to think about what to do he stormed the right flank.
TB ran up the middle with him to compliment his attack. I’m fuzzy on the details but I believe I, Madnle passed to TB in the middle but instead of stopping or retreating he continued his run. TB must have passed back to I, Madnle who took a shot. Either the ball was deflected or the keeper couldn’t control it, but either way the ball ended up bouncing around and found itself at the feet of TB with an open left side of the net.
TB scored, I, Madnle created the opportunity, and with under 10-minutes the play the game was afoot.
THE FINAL 8 MINUTES
We, your ¡FUTURISMOS! poured forward over the last eight minutes and ¡OH! we had our chances. The best of which was an Elliot header off a corner that he angled from the left side of the net to the lower right. The Team Monday keeper had to make a diving, one-handed save to poke it away.
Stilts had a chance served to her on a silver platter. She was filling in on the weak side of an attack and was essentially standing alone 3-feet in front the left post. The ball was passed her way and she opted not to stick her foot out and redirect it into the goal thereby allowing the ball roll out of bounds and letting the opportunity pass. When asked why she declined to take the goal she retorted, “that chance was delivered on a silver platter, I only dine off platinum.” Despite what you may be thinking, I commend Stilts: she has her standards and shan’t stoop. “¡Hear, hear!, Young Lady. Your convictions will warm you when your comrades leave you cold.”
¿How determined where we to get that leveling goal? Even I, as a defender, had pushed up far enough to take a crack on goal from 15-yards out. [It didn’t go in.]
Alas, The Fates have their designs and we weren’t meant to balance the affaire. Our furious efforts in the last moments yielded only a bushel of could-have-beens. Team Monday ended the night by dumping us to move out of the basement. There we find ourselves with but one consolation: our love of the game.
LI’L PETE AWARD
The Li’l Pete Award goes to Li’l Pete herself. Not for any one moment, but for being her usual defensive-bulwark-and-on-pitch-captain self. The only things one is guaranteed to hear at a ¡FUTURISMOS! match are I, Madnle’s bellowing and the sound of Li’l Pete’s voice instructing her comrades. I am Captain in name. Li’l Pete is Captain in deed.
FAUSTIAN MOMENT
There were actually several candidates for the Faustian Moment this week (thank Lucifer). I wanted to give it to Team Monday’s number 16. She’s the first player on from another team I’ve actually coveted.
In the opening moments of the game TB had the ball on the right sideline. She came over to defend him and he simply flicked the ball by her and blew past. Nothing fancy, just a quick move she couldn’t keep up with. 16’s reaction, without missing a beat, was to shriek as though something scary had jumped out of a closet in a horror movie that turned out to be harmless cat. She would end up shrieking like this on many occasions.
16’s defining moment game when Team Monday’s keeper was throwing a ball back into play. She was standing roughly 10-feet in front of him and I don’t if he didn’t see her or the ball slipped out of his hand but he through the ball has hard has he could right into her butt. Her reaction was the only appropriate one: she broke down laughing. The ball was there 10-feet in front of her, live, for anyone to get to but she couldn’t move due to laughter.
I want that lady on our squad this summer.
Amazing as it sounds that moment was trumped.
One of the Team Monday guys brought his 10-ish year old daughter to the game. At some point pretty early on he had the ball, screwed up, and turned it over. From the sideline came a little girl’s voice exhorting, “Good try, Dad.” As if that moment weren’t enough to cinch the deal, she also participated in the post-game “good game” handshake line.
I don’t believe in people having children. In my opinion it’s painfully clear at this point we’re making Earth a less interesting place. ¿The existence of one Stephen Jay Gould or Jana Levin is worth how many blown up people or species going extinct because of our collective human actions? I don’t know but I’d wager we crossed that threshold a while back. So if it were up to me the human race would (voluntarily) stop reproducing so Earth can try again at this “intelligence” thing without us mucking up the works. But the sound of that child’s voice reaching out to her dad; it was a reminder that there’s some weird magic in the bond between parents and their children that is to be appreciated in its own right.
Yes, yes, I know human beings are programmed to respond to child-like voices and faces because our babies are so underdeveloped at birth. Hence they take extraordinarily long to mature so we need to have this hyper-responsiveness to be compelled to protect and provide for them until they can for themselves. I know all that and at the same time hearing that kid cheering her dad on, it was transcendent. I have no doubt had Dr. Faust been there to hear that child’s voice ring out he would have followed suit with his own, yelling “¡STOP!” to Lucifer to exchange his soul on the spot. [He also would have recognized this scene was a perfect inversion of his own where he, an adult, witnessed a field full of children at play.]
That’s the Faustian-est of Faustian Moments. To understand all the elements involved in an event and still be stunned by their totality. That’s the point of not only all of this but everything. To borrow again from Eduardo Galeano—Uruguayan journalist, historian, social critic, futbol fan, & my spiritual comrade:
“… Health is when the body is as free as it can be. The controlled effectiveness of mechanical repetitions, enemy of health, is making soccer sick.”
Now substitute “life” for “soccer.”
What Faust bargained for was wiping his adult perception clean. In his case he was over-educated. I know of no human being, living or dead, who can make that claim. If neither Plato nor William James could then nobody can.
For the vast majority of we not-Fausts the challenge of modern life is staving off the numbing effects of repetitions for the sake of efficacy (read: “life in the modern, cost-benefit addled world”). How quickly we fall prey to its blurring effects (possessions, pecuniary standing, chemical aids) and loose sight of the fact that our vision is impaired. And so we simply forget to remember to cleanse our own perceptions so we can once again see the world for the shocking, phantasmagorical phenomenon it is.
The truly twisted part is it can be so easy to correct. It can be a simple as kicking a ball.
¿WHAT IS “POSTSEASON”?—SEMIOTIC CRISIS
A note about “regular” and “post” season in the CSC league.
Technically CSC draws a distinction between a “regular” and “post” season. There are 7 “regular” season games and 2 “post” season games. Typically what comes to mind when one hears “postseason” is some sort of playoff tournament with the crowning a champion upon its conclusion.
That happens in CSC, but quick in-head arithmetic reveals how many teams can play in such a tournament if there are only two games: 4. So of the 10 teams (or 20, as there were last session) exactly 4 teams play in a tournament framework the likes of which we’re all accustomed (of those four I will be rooting for Dynamo, as always). All the other teams simply play two additional games.
The designation of these non-tournament games as “postseason” creates a semiotic crises in many. The concepts of “postseason” and “playoffs” are so entwined that they have become synonymous in the collective USAmerican conscious but they ought not be.
The definition of “postseason” is “taking place after the end of the regular season.” The definition of “playoffs” is “a series of contests played to determine the winner of a championship.”
You may be thinking, “¡A-HA! See, they are related. The playoffs follow the postseason. Since the season must end for the playoffs to begin they are ipso facto related.” Some of you then go on to think, “Stop trying to get me to face the fact I have been culturally indoctrinated to see the world in zero-sum terms. Everything will be fine once we ‘defeat’ the terrorists and China ‘frees’ more of its people and sectors to ‘compete’ with the USA on equal footing.”
The overwhelming, crushing, invincibly vast majority of the rest of sporting world knows something you don’t:
The playoffs and regular season aren’t mutually exclusive.
In the futboling world—known to me, which is Europe and the Americas south of the Rio Grande—the playoffs and regular season take place concurrently. Even better than that several playoff competitions take place concurrently with the regular season and each other.
Earlier this year the English Premiership clubs Chelsea and Manchester United were playing in their regular season and at least three playoff series at the same time (Carling Cup, FA Cup, and the UEFA Champion’s League Cup). Even now I can scarcely follow it all. There was literally a point at which both teams had been eliminated from the equivalent of their Super Bowl tournament but were still in a thrilling race to win their League “regular season” Cup. Imagine the Twins being eliminated from the World Series but battling the Sox for the American League Central title… and it meant the world to Twins fans.
I’m the first to admit all of this feels weird. I still struggle to grasp the significance of any particular game my favorite club is playing. ¿Which tournament/season is it? ¿Do they need to win? ¿If so how many goals do they need to score compared to how many they allow (depending on the circumstances the correlation gets wonky: a 2-0 win would do it but 3-1 win wouldn’t)?
The upshot of all of this is the definition of a successful season is far more flexible in the futboling world than it is in the USAmerica. The ¡FUTURISMOS! second “regular season" has been an unqualified success. We are a vastly improved club. Everyone is at a minimum competent and that was not the case last time around. Li’l Pete doesn’t have to play a whole game lest our defense disappear. Elliot is beyond a doubt our best scorer but our offense continues to produce attempts and goals when he’s on the sideline.
So rather than see our two forthcoming “postseason” games as meaningless or, worse, demeaning—something along the lines of a parent “racing” his/her 3-year-old—cleanse your mind of it’s warped semiotics and see these games for what they are:
Two more chances to watch your comrades playing a game they find joy in.
No comments:
Post a Comment