A FRACTURED OVERALL RECOLLECTION
I don’t have a clear overarching recollection from this game for a couple of reasons.
First, I hadn’t expected to play. I had slated myself as the 7th man for the game and we only need 6. In effect I had relegated myself to the bench both because I thought I deserved it for abysmal play the first two games and because I wanted a chance to really encode a whole game again for a proper write-up. Alas, due to a shortage of players (more on this in a second) I was pressed into service and played only a little less than normal thereby ensuring I wouldn’t have a clear recollection of the game.
Second, in a stunning turn around from the last game in which ALL 13 (or 9 or however many there are) of our ladies showed up, we started this game with 2: Messi and Hassle. As Captain, the person ultimately responsible for making sure we show up to games with a proper side, this threw me into a nervous fit. We scrounged up a few ladies from another team and I coerced a bed ridden Li’l Pete to rise from illness and race to the game.
To a make things worse one of the ladies who wasn’t there was Kahn. That meant Elliot had to keep. That meant we had only 6 guys for the field and that meant I was one of them. In the sole moment of pre-game levity I told Elliot I would keep. He looked at me. Turned pale(r) and said, “¿You? ¿Keep? No.”
[In the second half Elliot to agree to turn keeping duties over to Ferris (aka Davis Jones) a person he had never met prior to that evening nor ever seen play futbol. Either Elliot really doesn’t trust me or has impeccable instincts because it turned out to be a good choice even though WRBE scored twice in the second half, Ferris held his own and displayed true keeper instincts. Instincts I most certainly do not have.]
The flow of the game held the form of the last couple. We were ragged in the first half and greatly improved in the second. WRBE scored in the first couple of minutes. We equalized less than a minute later. They took a lead they would not relinquish a minute after that.
Your ¡FUTURISMOS! had a bushel of platinum plated, point blank chances to score in the first half that the WRBE keeper snuffed out with saves that alternated between spectacular and life threatening.
[That keeper was our own personal albatross, the Mercenary Super Keeper Extraordinaire that we’ve faced in 3 consecutive games. He must have a hatred for someone on our team stemming from a grade school incident that the object of his ire doesn’t remember because s/he doesn’t recognize him because it’s been so long. My Hera… ¿what if it’s me? I’ll ask him next week when we surely face him again.]
We switched things up in the second half and moved Elliot out of the goal. The results were encouraging as we dominated play in the opening minutes of the second half. The ball rarely crossed midfield into our territory. But as for the outcome it was all too little too late.
A NOTE ABOUT THE LEVEL OF PLAY IN THE SUMMER LEAGUE
I don’t know why, but the average skill level in the summer league has increased many fold from our previous two seasons. Whereas in season’s past there were only a handful of teams I definitely didn’t want to play now there’s no end to them. WRBE was really good. Not NÜRD good, but really good. By my reckoning they only had one lesser skilled player and I wanted to recruit her to our side because she was a patently fun loving person.
The plethora is partially explained but the number of teams competing. Last season there were 10. This season there are 20. ¿Where did they come from? So far none of them have looked like university students home for the summer. Perhaps other leagues shut down in the summer and get funneled into ours. I don’t know.
The Summer Season has thus far been a nice little relativistic slap in the face. We have improved. Yes. We are holding our own against superior teams. So while it feels like we’re working twice as hard to keep our heads above water… wait, we are working twice as hard to keep our heads above water because the waters are more treacherous than ever. The important thing is your ¡FUTURISMOS! have not drowned.
PLAYER OF THE GAME: MESSI
Messi (aka Lia Middlebrook) had a bona fide breakout performance. Messi joined the ¡FUTURISMOS! riding a tidal wave of high expectations. We were told many things about her futbol skills by her department comrades.
“She led her high school team to consecutive state titles,” we were told.
“She was the Captain, all-time leading scorer, and spiritual guru of her college team,” they continued.
“Mia Hamm is her aunt and futbol tutor,” they poured it on.
“It was her idea for Brandi Chastain to tear off her jersey in celebration of the goal that won the 1999 Women’s World Cup,” they went over the top.
After your ¡FUTURISMOS! were overwhelmed by NÜRD—the second best team we’d ever faced—in the season opener, Messi added to her own promising mystique by declaring, “if that’s the best this league has to offer we’re in good shape. They weren’t that good.”
Alas the conditions surrounding the first two games were a mess (the NÜRD thwacking followed by the burdensome surplus of ladies in the second game) and Messi’s promise remained that and nothing more.
Then her jersey arrived.
The jersey that graces your ¡FUTURISMOS! is essentially the Argentine national team’s minus a couple of minor details. [When I wore mine in Argentina no one noticed.] But Messi knows where the devil resides and declared nothing but the real deal would do for someone of her skill level and bravado. So she chose to wear the jersey of the 20-year-old heir apparent to the greatest attacking futboler in the history of the game: Barcelona’s Lionel Messi. Luckily for your ¡FUTURISMOS! Messi just so happens to be an Argentine (as was the greatest attacking futboler in history—Maradona) so his national team jersey matches our own.
Clad in her Messi jersey I called our aspirant star out, “Messi, I expect either a goal or a direct assist tonight… or else.”
True to her spiritual futbol roots Messi replied with Argentina’s national exclamation for everything ranging from potholes in city sidewalks to police corruption to disastrous federal fiscal policies sure to doom their economy to a crippling near future bust. Messi shrugged her shoulders and said, “eh.”
Much like Mr. Messi answered his critics by not only recreating Maradona’s Goal of the Century but ALSO scoring an infamous goal with his hand (thereby repeating the totality of Maradona’s ’86 World Cup feat), Ms. Messi not only scored a goal AND assisted on the second in our game BUT she played in a game after ours and scored again (in what proved the winner in a 1-0 game).
This is young Messi’s standing ovation. “Bravo, young lady... Now do it again next week.”
PLAY OF THE GAME: SOHEI TO MESSI TO TB—GOAL
The play of the game is the play of the game whether I clearly remember it or not. This one I only remember in the sense that I know it happened because I watched it. But I don’t remember it in the sense that I can’t really describe it.
What I do know is Sohei brought the ball up the right side, laser guided a pass to Messi in the middle who was flanked by two defenders. Messi cleanly handled the pass and in one motion took a step to clear a defender and laid the ball off to a streaking TB on the weak side. TB one touched an all-out unleashed boot that the Mercenary Super Keeper Extraordinaire had no chance to save.
Sohei, Messi and TB we’re all working under duress in spaces pressed by WRBE players and each handled the ball cleanly, made precise moves, and left the hesitation of thought far behind as all proper futbolers do.
It was graceful, precise, and effective. It was futbol Kaká would approved.
LI’L PETE AWARD: LI’L PETE (HONORARY MENTION: HASSLE)
Hassle nearly stole the Li’l Pete Award from its namesake this week with a single play in which she saved a sure WRBE goal by, essentially, throwing herself into the fully swinging leg of a WRBE guy who ended up sort of both kicking Hassle and the ball into her right in front of our goal.
Hassle crumbled to the ground and needed a moment to recover. It was Li’l Pete through and through.
But to wrestle Li’l Pete’s own award from her on a day when she arose from an illness induced bout of bed rest, effectively rolling out of bed and on to the pitch, seems wrong. The coup de grâce in Li’l Pete winning her own award occurred after the game.
As we all sat around taking off our boots and shin guards to leave. Li’l Pete looked down at her leg and screamed “¡I’VE GOT A BALL MARK!” [Meaning the ball hit her so hard she has a bruise in the shape of futbol.] Then she looked at her other leg and screamed “¡I’VE GOT ANOTHER ONE! ¡I’VE GOT TWO BALL MARKS!” The joy on her face. Eyes and mouth wide open. You would have thought she had just won the lottery (of course not the Minnesota state lottery).
FUASTIAN MOMENT: BOBBY’S TORNADO HUMMINGBIRD FEET SHIELD
For the second straight game we played with a special guest futboler: Bobby (a perfect sporting nickname that requires no embellishment). Bobby is a Swedish friend of the Mayor’s in town for the summer filling in for your ¡FUTURISMOS! when we’re short a guy. While Robert doesn’t look a thing like our dearly departed Little Johnny England they are twins when it comes to their footwork. That is to say both have the ability to dance with the ball. And that dancing tends to be more aesthetically pleasing than effective.
Before you scoff, I will remind you this is an important element of futbol. Relative to the number minutes in a game, goals are few and far between. So the game’s beauty is more often than not found in nooks and crannies much smaller than goals.
A perfect step over (which White Shorts from WRBE executed time and again, once to split defenders and score even). A clean tackle (which here means dispossessing a person of the ball, not necessarily taking them to the ground, someing I.Madnle is close to making his patented move). Foot faking to get a defender to lean one way only to flick the ball back the other way leaving the defender hopelessly off balance and unable to follow the ball handler (Hassle’s specialty).
So purely aesthetic moments are a critical element of the game and are not to be overlooked or derided just because they don’t produce an elusive goal.
Back to Bobby’s Faustian Moment.
He had the ball on the right side of the pitch with two WRBE defenders in front of him. He literally twirled between them to get through and by them.
To get a sense of what that’s like head over to Contactinople and try walking with the ball and then pirouetting controlling the ball all the while. Once you’re comfortable with that—give yourself a few months—try it between two people standing still. Once you’re comfortable with that—give yourself a few more months—try it between two people trying to take the ball away from you. Give yourself the rest of your life.
With his defenders behind him, Bobby streaked toward the goal where a third defender was waiting for him. This person slowed Bobby down just a few feet from the goal allowing his beaten defenders to catch up to him. Bobby was then surrounded by three defenders just feet from the goal. Obeying some aesthetical law of futboling physics known only to Bobby at that moment he did the only thing he could.
Spin.
Surrounded by three WRBE defenders desperately trying to poke the ball away, Bobby spun with the ball magically dancing in unison with his feet and somehow away from those of the frantic feet of the WRBE defenders.
Viewers of martial arts films will have a sense of what this looked like. Someone, usually the hero, is surrounded by enemy combatants. He (or she, but we’re talking about Bobby at the moment) picks them off one by one until the circle of enemies has constricted to the point where he can no longer fight them one at a time. At that point the hero unleashes some ridiculous whirling dervish attack in which he simply spins and in so doing the enemies go flying.
I always hate that moment in martial arts movie fights because I know it’s coming and strikes me as a fake cop out. I will now view it differently.
Surrounded by enemy warriors with nowhere to go Bobby did what Jet Li, Stephen Chow, and Chow Yun-Fat have done countless times on film. He unleashed a move honed in some secret futboling Buddhist monastery in the mountains of Sweden:
Tornado Hummingbird Feet Shield.
¿What happened after those seconds in which Bobby danced betwixt half the WRBE team? I don’t know. He lost the ball or took a feeble shot because there was too much traffic. I don’t remember and it doesn’t matter because the important part was had Dr. Faust seen Bobby spin between those two WRBE guys and then fend off a small army of them with Tornado Hummingbird Feet Shield (and heard the ¡FUTURISMOS! on the sideline hooting and laughing at the sight) he would have yelled ¡STOP! to the nearby Lucifer and traded his soul right then and there.
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