Yes, it’s that time of every 4 years. World Cup Soccer (or as they call it in the rest of the civilized and uncivilized world outside the US, FOOTBALL). In my travels, I tend to get a lot of flak because of USA’s inability to hang with the rest of the world when it comes to soccer. I remind them that we are in the World Cup this time, as we have been the past few times. So we must be doing better than other countries who didn’t even qualify. Of course, they snicker at that.
Even though Guatemala has never been in the World Cup, like ever, Chapins tend to go nuts with it anyway. Things tend to stop in their tracks. People scam out of work to watch the games. Stores close. I’m not kidding. In my general opinion, it will be just a bit more difficult to get anything done for the next month and a half or so when a game is scheduled.
In the spirit of international competition, some of the local gringos here decided that it would be appropriate to put together a “team” for lack of a better term, to play against some of the local squads. I was asked to join in the action, and of course I said yes. These days on the quiet Rio, any worthwhile diversion is welcome.
So last Sunday, we had our first match. In a sand field close to one of the local marinas. It was only a half-field, so we played with a team of 5 against a local team that had uniform shirts and everything (we’re not quite there). Our team consisted of Jurien, a dutch guy who’s like 6’5″, Alejandro, from “Skye” who’s from Barcelona, Ron from “Xanadu”, who’s also from LA, Marcus, from “Archaeopterix” who’s German, Henry, from “Antares” also from Germany, another dutch guy, Andre, and of course, myself.
The first thing I did during our little practice scrimmage was do a slide tackle against Jurien, and skin my knee open. So I was off to a roaring start. Anyway, we played a local team of 6 guys, with 5 on the field. The game turned out to be pretty competitive, they beat us 9-8.
This slight loss gave us encouragement for our next match, which was yesterday. It was dubbed the “The Gringos Cup”. Our team, which were given the dubious title, the “Rio Dulce Hurricanes” by Henry, vs. the “Gringos’ Nightmare”, also probably dubbed by Henry. It was held at Casa Guatemala, a local orphanage that allegedly engages in exploitative and questionable practices. But hey, none of that mattered now. Football is what mattered.
At least they had kind of a grass field (with various mud slicks distributed liberally on our 1st half side of the field). There was a healthy crowd of spectators. The kids of course, most of their visiting volunteers, and a smattering of boater gringos. They were apparently there to see firsthand how badly we’d all get beaten. They were not to be disappointed.
Most of the team from last week was there, except for Alejandro and a couple of our backup players. But we had some other players to fill in for them, including a Belizean rasta guy named Tony, and a kid from California, Nicholas, who was about the only one who was going to be able to keep up with these nimble guatemalan kids who play every minute of daylight. Also along for the assault were Andrew and David, two German guys who had just gotten to the Rio not too long ago.
To make a long story short, we played a pretty solid and aggressive game. Especially when you consider our utter lack of practice, average age, and somewhat dismal physical condition. None of us had cleats on so we were sliding everywhere. I slid on one of the mudslicks, and did an incredible split ala Jean-Claude Van Damme. I also felt my groin muscle practically snap, sending a jolt of pain through my whole body that made my eyeballs rattle. After “walking it off” if that was humanly possible. I re-engaged.
These 15-17 year old punks, I mean “orphans”, were running circles around us. They were fast, nimble and good at handling the ball. Ron, our faithful goalie, who was a bit out of his element, didn’t stand a chance against these monsters of football. But I give him credit because he took a lot of abuse and punishment, played with alot of heart. They got 7 goals past him, not counting the two that were disqualified because of outrageous offsides. But it could have easily been 12 or more.
Henry, our German de-facto coach, took the game amazingly seriously, and at some point, it became quite amusing to the rest of us. He was barking orders at everybody on the field. He was pointing here and there, telling people who to cover, and everytime a goal was scored, he’d huff and puff. It was hysterical. We all knew that we were going to take a pounding from these guys, yet Henry didn’t want it to be so.
We had to sub out players every 5 or 10 minutes due to utter exhaustion. These kids ran us ragged. Luckily, we only played with 8 men on each team, that gave us a good couple of players to swap. They subbed maybe twice the WHOLE GAME! Unbelievable.
We thanked our lucky stars for Tony, the Belizean guy. He was able to pull off two goals from them to keep us from getting totally shut out. I had two very worthy goal attempts, one by head! But, they weren’t meant to be. I still don’t think that our goal was properly centered.
The game ended, and off we went back to town to celebrate our survival at Jurien’s cafe, the Sundog. It turned out to be a good-natured game, and in the end, we were all pretty proud of ourselves for what we considered to be a pretty valiant showing, despite the horrific final score. I did manage to get a couple of good fouls, which the ref, who was OBVIOUSLY skewed to the orphans, didn’t catch. So I’m pretty proud of that. Nobody got hurt, so that was good too.
So, that sets the tone for the next few weeks I’m sure. I suspect that there will be a few more matches to be had. Unfortunately, I’ll be gone for the next few weeks, but I’m sure I’ll be able to jump on a game or two when I get back.
So I have a couple of days left to get Andiamo and the cats ready for my departure later this week. I’ll be doing some stateside traveling for the next few weeks. I’ll be spending a day or so in Guatemala City taking care of some stuff there before I fly out.
In the meantime, let’s see if the US beats Czech Republic tomorrow. That would be really interesting. Then, they have to go up against the almighty Italia next. Shudder…