What I Did/Am Doing/Will Do During My Summer Vacation: An Ironically Long Title for the Shortest Weekend Warrior Post Ever
By: Sean |
1 Comment
So…summer is here in my neck of the woods. School is out, working folks are due to take their two weeks off, and the time has come for some serious down time. I don’t know about you, but I kind of plan my vacations around my men’s recreational soccer team schedule. This year it meant that going back East waited until three days after my squad Rangers season finale (6-3 win, baby!)
How about you, Weekend Warriors? What footballing-related stuff do you have on your summer vacation schedule? Are there any big friendly matches or exhibitions you have tickets to that you want to brag about? Any summer tournaments or camps you are attending? Last Sunday I participated the Portland Timbers Father’s Day Fantasy Camp, and while I’ll save a full accounting for the next post, let me just say this…it was so awesome, I almost cried. Not a weepy, hysterical, girly cry, but a single manly tear of joy. (How’s that for a teaser? Eh?)
I’d love to hear about your summer footy plans. Cheers!
Category: Orange Slices and Aspirin
Happy Father’s Day
By: Sean | 1 Comment
Tomorrow is Father’s Day. I know this to be true because Hallmark Greetings has inundated my local department store with hundreds thousands of cards saying as much. Sunday will dawn around the neighborhood with many new ties, many fine breakfasts in bed, and sanctioned respite from chores around the house. This being a recreational soccer blog, however, the occasion also merits some reflections on the biggest influence on my non-professional footballing “career” (such as the last thirty-ish years of kicking the ball around could be called)…my dad.
We’ll call him “Jim”. Jim never played the game growing up, never once laced up the footy boots. He was an American rules football player and a damn good collegiate diver–I think at one point in the 1960s he was nationally ranked in the top five for springboard and platform diving. I mention this just to illustrate the simple point that soccer wasn’t a birthright for our family. We didn’t grow up with it. Like so many Americans in the 1970s, he became immersed in the soccer culture when his kid finally stopped watching cartoons and signed up to play. Also like many American moms and dads from that time, it was a quick transition from parent-signing-up-kid to volunteering-to-help-out-with-a-sport-they-knew-very-little-about. But my dad became so very much more than that.
My dad was a coach. Not a Class “C” license holder or a master of the offsides trap, but he stepped up and made sure a bunch of third graders had another adult on the field to help them dribble through cones and remind us not to eat grass. There is an entire generation of citizen-coaches (described in Jim Haner’s book Soccerhead far more eloquently than I can) who answered the call/plea from soccer organizers to make sure that kid’s sports would get played. He left the official head coaching duties to those in charge, but he never said no to filling in when the coach was late or had to work and he made sure all of us kids were safe and doing something soccerish. It takes a lot of courage to work with kids of any age…more so when the kids may know more about the activity than you do. Dad did it with ease and there was never any doubt who was in charge.
My dad was a physio. He could tape bum ankles with the best and understood first hand what shin splints so bad you couldn’t walk up stairs felt like. There were many nights in high school when he helped me dump ice cubes into the bath tub to numb both legs after the aspirin wore off, always reminding me that I needed to stay in the freezing water for at least twenty minutes or it didn’t do any good. He was also with me when I had to buy my first cup, which for guys, is a moderate big deal. I can’t remember if he actually said this or if I’m making it up and just believe it happened, but I distinctly recall the words “buy the one that fits and not just the one that is size large” regarding this all-important right-of-passage purchase.
My dad was a trainer. I came down with mononucleosis, a really bad case, one week after my junior year of high school. It lasted all summer and I didn’t get a doctor’s approval to start doing any exercise until two weeks before daily doubles started, so for about nine weeks I literally laid on the living room couch, spleen engorged, watching “Aliens” on HBO about twenty-six times. [Little aside: To this day, I can't look at Bill Paxton without hearing the words "Hey, maybe you haven't been keeping up on current events, but we just got our asses kicked, pal!" in the back of my head.] I asked my dad if he could get me ready for doubles in two weeks. He nodded and had me walk around our short little cul-de-sac. I came back exhausted. He told me to rest and do it again in a few hours, which I did, still exhausted. Repeat. After two days I moved up to the slowest jog possible that isn’t technically walking. Repeat later in the day. Long story short, I was jogging after a week and doing ball work the next, along with sprints. So many sprints…but come the first practice, it was like I hadn’t missed a beat.
My dad was a cheerleader. You know how when you play, all of the cheers and shouts kind of blur together? You hear it, but you don’t? I could always hear my mom and dad. Clear and distinct, shouting encouragement, telling me to watch out for the incoming tackle, even “motivating” me when I was not playing at the level I should. Dad wasn’t afraid to tell me if I was having an off-game, but he always backed it up with advice and observations to improve. “You’re too tentative, Sean! Get in there and take that ball from the defender when he holds it up, don’t wait for it. You need to eat red meat!” “Red meat” became slang for getting more aggressive and turning up the intensity. It always sounded more urgent when I heard Dad yelling it than from my coach.
My dad was a chauffeur. This may seem like a trivial point, but as a working adult with a child player of my own, I now get how tricky it can be to juggle schedules and get out of work (gracefully) and get kids to practice on time. Between my two parents, I never had to miss a practice or a match from the third grade until after I left for college and what is more, I think one of them was at every game to cheer and pass out orange slices. Oh, and my little brother also played on different teams and my sister did gymnastics, so you’ll appreciate the logistics involved in making all of that happen.
My dad was a volunteer/fundraiser/chairman of the board, etc. No offense to anybody, but I think fundraising sucks. I struggle to get into selling chocolate bars or magazines no matter the cause, but Dad would take on the board positions nobody else wanted, would help us sell pumpkins for the team fundraiser (despite the regular jeers from passing cars that went something like “soccer is for p*****s!”) and do whatever thankless administrative task required to keep the teams fully equipped, loaded with Gatorade, etc. I know there were about a dozen other things he would prefer to do, but his attitude of “if it needs to be done, it might as well be done right, so I should do it” comes back to me with ever-growing frequency.
My dad was the quiet voice of reason whenever I needed it. The hazing ritual at North Salem High School–pretty tame by the YouTube standards of today, mind you–was for the freshmen to be tackled and dragged through the mud of Barrick Field, our home pitch. Come late October, Barrick Field had the smell and drainage properties of a latrine. When I made varsity as a ninth grader, the entire frosh class on my team consisted of…me. Which meant when the upper classmen came to drag me through the cesspool of our goal box, I had no support. Sadly, this occurred at the end of practice when my dad arrived to pick me up. Not wanting to be humiliated in front of my father, I put up a hell of a fight. I swept our keeper’s legs with my shoulders and dumped him on his ass. I kicked another guy in the crotch and may have bit somebody’s hand. When I started to tire, I clenched around somebody’s neck and tried to choke him into submission. It took seven guys, but eventually I got dumped into the slime. That was it. Very tame, but it really upset me. I dragged myself over to my dad’s rig, smelling like a colonoscopy, and tried not to break down. Dad just smirked and looked at his watch. “It took seven guys twelve minutes to get you into the mud. Not bad at all.”
My dad was all of those things and so very much more. To this day he still asks about how my men’s team is doing and reminisces about this match or that. It wasn’t the sport he grew up with, and I’m not sure to this day he knows about the offsides trap, but his support and enthusiasm allowed me to develop my own interests and experiences and now pass them onto my own daughter. My dad is a great man and on a good day, I’m maybe half the man he is, but it is that overwhelming sense of involvement and support that I got from him that carries me forward to try and be the other half. I know not everybody is that fortunate to have a positive father figure in their life. I wish everybody did.
Happy Father’s Day, Pop.
Image courtesy of Corbis.
Category: Orange Slices and AspirinBetween the Sticks
By: Sean | 4 Comments
If you play soccer long enough, it is inevitable. You get to the pitch, you stretch a little, do some juggles–the usual routine. The rest of the team starts to show up, you joke around, you pass the ball a bit. At some point you take note of your teammates and realize that your squad count is low and somebody is missing. With just the slightest hint of dread, you then realize that the player who is missing is the guy with the goalkeeper gloves. As the referee calls for the captains, other teammates notice it, too. My experience is that very few recreational football teams have a goalie corps seven players deep. Kudos to your squad if you do. It is frequently the case that the depth chart consists of the Guy Who is the Goalkeeper and the Guy Who Plays Goalkeeper When He Has To. So what happens when both of those players are unable to play? If you play soccer long enough, it is inevitable. The five most feared words in football:
“Will you play keeper today?”
As a field player since age eight, the sum of my goalkeeping experience consisted of one match during indoor soccer two years ago against some high schoolers–does that really count? I’m not sure–and then never. As a team manager, I have an easy out on this: “Hey, Somebody Who Isn’t Me, you’re playing keeper today.” But a recent combination of work conflicts, administrative issues, and unfortunate circumstances left my team Rangers without the usual three guys who have more experience than one indoor match against high school kids. So I did the only thing I could…I approached one of my guys (we’ll call him Jim for this post) and laid it all out: “Jim, we don’t have a keeper. Would you mind playing between the sticks today?” I should have stopped talking right there, but the words kept coming out. “If you will play the first half, I’ll be keeper for the second half.” Because Jim is awesome, he didn’t even flinch. “Sure, I’ll do it. Do you have gloves?” And so, just like that, I would soon be fulfilling the Second Thing Every Recreational Footballer Should Do. Stupid Weekend Warrior blogger!
Jim played lights out and kept his house clean in the sweltering, 90 degree temperatures. He made two dynamite saves, came off his line to scoop up another half-dozen balls, and he has a decent punt, too. The only time our side was breached was when the opposition caught us on a counter, flooded the box and outnumbered our backs. Nobody in our league could have prevented it and so, as the official blew the half to an end, we were down 0-1. I jogged over to Jim as he made his way to the shade of the sidelines. “Great job, Jim. Thanks for doing that.” I secretly hoped that he had discovered a new love for this position and would offer to stay for another 45 minutes. “So…do you want to play out in the field?” I asked. He indicated he did and frankly, he had earned it. I couldn’t not give him my place on the left wing. It was time for me to man(ager) up and do the right thing. “Fair enough, I’ll tell the ref we have a keeper change.”
At 5′-6 7/8″, I believe I was the shortest person at the field…with the exception of a group of toddlers and perhaps the middle schooler watching his dad. Thus, the irony of Lil’ Seanny pulling on the sexy purple tunic that was two sizes too big and shoving his hands into gloves for the first time since the last snow was not lost on my Rangers. “Uh, new keeper?” someone remarked. I’m not sure if it was a statement or a question. I was just hoping it wasn’t the build-up to an epic joke that would last 45 minutes plus stoppage time.
I left the team and walked alone to my new position. My first order of business was to see if I could even reach the crossbar. With a leap, I could. That was good to know. I remembered seeing keepers on television clang their boots against the posts, so I did that, too. Actually, it is funny how much of a position you can watch over and over again and still realize you don’t have a clue what to do until you are forced to do it. I also knew I had to project some trace iota of confidence or the opposition would smell inexperience like a chum to sharks, so I started doing keeper-like movements to demonstrate my awesome lateral mobility. My central enforcer came out to keep from me overthinking this experience. We’ll call him Bodogchombo (not his real name). Bodog kept the conversation light and cracked a few jokes. Soon the other twenty players filtered onto the field and before I knew it, the ref was asking: “Ready, keeper?” It took a second to realize he was talking to me. I gave my best casual-but-too-casual acknowledgment of his request, leaned forward, and took a deep breath.
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The field looked totally different from how I usually saw it, comfortably ensconced on the left near midfield. Everything was now so symmetrical and oddly, the kickoff seemed really far away. A scrum in the middle of the field made it hard to see who had the ball. I started walking toward the edge of my box, often turning around to see how far away the frame was from my position. The abbreviated stream of consciousness version of my first seven minutes as a keeper goes something like this: “Looks like we have the ball…man, this polyester shirt is warm…uh-oh, is the ball coming this way?…Bodog kicked it away…ouch! Crunching tackle…that’s gonna leave a mark [yes, I quote my own posts to myself--ha!]…is that guy offsides?…what if the ref doesn’t see he is offsides?…does this shirt make my ass look big?…uh-oh, here comes a cross…oh good, Mike kicked it out…should I be standing on the six or on the eighteen?…is the match almost over yet?…OH SHIT HERE COMES THE BALL!” My first touch of the ball, perhaps seven minutes in, involved me sprinting forward to scoop up the striker’s dribble, which was too hard and got away from him. I immediately looked down to make sure I was still within my box, relieved to see I was, and then remembered to do that two-armed keeper wrap I’d seen before.
My first “save” was greeted by widespread relieved/sardonic cheers from Rangers. I soon realized I hadn’t done a keeper punt since, um, 2006. It dawned on me it would really suck if I pulled my hamstring when I booted it out. Jim had dropped back and I opted to one-arm sling it to him, which I did with unusual aplomb. Save Two followed about five minutes later when their other forward got free and I hesitated too long between staying on my line (bad) and rushing forward to cut his angle (good). I ended up doing both and then had to make a right shin reflex save to keep the onion bag empty. More cheers, this time more relieved than sardonic. “You have got to come faster on those,” Bodog urged. I nodded, heart racing, and then got my first corner kick. The middies crashed back, took the ball out of the air, and cleared the field. Such is the life of a keeper, I soon realized. Long, long periods of waiting followed by several seconds of sheer panic and reaction. I think I prefer the lifestyle of a midfielder, which usually involves being constantly exhausted and gasping for air.
Eventually, our side equalized and my elation at not losing anymore was immediately tempered by a new dread: If Seanny flubs it now and lets in a howler with the score 1-1, then he would REALLY suck, like own-goal levels of suckage. Thus did the proverbial elephant in the room grow just a little larger and slap me in the face with his big, flappy ear. I smacked my gloves together and spit into them (because that’s what keepers do) and hoped for the final whistle. Another collection later on and I mustered the courage to try my first goalie punt. It was not impressive. As I dropped the ball, I forgot whether I kicked it on the drop or let it bounce once and strike it on the rebound. That hesitation threw my mechanics off and it went just twenty yards, with the bounce. I apologized to my backs and they just laughed it off.
I got six more touches on the ball, of which five of those could be loosely interpreted as save-like moves. I had to “make myself big” around the sixty minute mark when the wing tried to cut on me and my awesome 6′-0 1/2″ (I measured) wingspan caused him to shank his shot wide right past the post. I ran forward and snared a few crosses, which now seems weird because those freakishly huge field players should have been killing me in the air…but whatever. A last shot on the near post around minute 88 landed comfortably into my gut and for a half-second I thought I felt it try and sneak under my arms and roll toward the net mouth, but I did the clutch again and ran quickly from the woodwork. “Two more minutes. That’s it,” Bodog said. Almost home and dry. My final goalie punt was more organized as I hit it at the edge of my box. I choose to believe it went fifty yards (with bounce), over the head of their back and allowed my striker James to run at them. We didn’t score again, but we didn’t let one in, either. 1-1.
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With that, I was no longer a 38 year old goalie virgin. As the other team came by to shake hands, I heard their “Good game, Keeper,” in a new tone. Eight touches and I was done. Here’s the rub, though: What really made the difference wasn’t me. It was the other ten guys in front of me in the yellow kits, not me in the purple one, who put bone-crunching after bone-crunching tackle on the opposition and kept them from getting off a killer shot. Perhaps motivated by the strategy of Don’t Let the Ball Get Anywhere Near Sean, every one of my players went Old School and turned up the intensity sevenfold in the second half. I saw slide tackles at the edge of my box that could be used in instructional DVDs. I saw tight marking, I heard organized chatter, and I thought I saw or two guys requiring orthopedic work afterwards. We weren’t dirty, just highly motivated. I saw our team from a whole new perspective and I want to believe that perspective will serve as motivation come the next match. It can get awfully lonely between the sticks but it can also remind you that football is still about all eleven players, not just the last one in the sexy purple tunic…
Category: Orange Slices and AspirinPitch Imperfect
By: Sean | 4 Comments
You’ve probably seen this picture of a “unique” soccer pitch before:
I see it pop up in an email once every year or two. It has likely been featured here on the Offside at some point. One blog I found it posted on had it noted as a “Ukrainian Soccer Field”. I haven’t done any research to determine if it is actually in the Ukraine, but it did get me thinking about all of the different soccer fields I’ve kicked around on here in Oregon and you know what? I haven’t played on anything even coming close to the unique field conditions exhibited here in the “Ukrainian Soccer Field.” Every nice, suburban stretch of pitch I have ever known has been flat and notably devoid of trees. Sure, a few of the fields may have had their corners clipped by a softball diamond base line, but that is just not the same as a small copse of trees inside the near touch line.
Somewhat disappointed by this realization, I started thinking about the worst field conditions I have ever played on. A 107 degree day on artificial turf–making the temperature on the pitch somewhere around 115–is debilitating (for Oregonians), but barring heat exhaustion, it doesn’t lend itself to a sexy anecdote. We came, we saw, we cramped. Eh. Playing during a freak summer storm with lightning crackling all around you has the potential to be interesting, but when nobody gets hit with a bolt and the highlight is the referee telling the captains that “we’ll keep playing until the lightning gets within three miles, then I’m calling it”, well, that isn’t really…shocking. (Sorry. My bad.)
I have to really strain my cerebellum to recall the match in the eighth grade when my middle school team played over at Sprague after a truly staggering run of wet, stormy weather. The field was a swamp. Literally, half of it was under water. The water was so deep it stopped the forward momentum of all but the hardest kicks as the ball splashed to a standstill. The other half looked like it was ready for an epic mud wrestling tournament. In the ultimate twist of irony, our team was playing the only all-girls eighth grade team that day and the highlight seemed to be when one of our strikers crashed into their keeper and later told us that he had “touched her booby”. (Eighth grade boys can be so dumb.)
Snow, hail, gully washer downpours…all kind of notable, definitely kind of cool, but not legendary. For us soccer players, it is just part of the game. Unlike other sports, where the game is canceled if there is a cloud somewhere within twenty-five miles of the field. Yeah, I’m callin’ you out, softball!
Certainly, Weekend Warriors, you can do better than this. Somewhere in your collective histories, you must have a match that involved some truly bizarre field condition, be it raging storms of biblical proportions, lightning, killer bees, or shape-shifting androids from the future. I’d love to hear your stories and personal anecdotes.
Category: Orange Slices and AspirinThat’s Gonna Leave A Mark
By: Sean | 8 Comments
“Oh, no! Did you do that playing soccer?”
As we recreational football players get older, I think that we can agree that many most injuries we have the misfortune of suffering are directly the result of the game. That drive we have to win every 50-50 ball never goes away…but the body that goes flying into the challenge keeps getting a little heavier. The hamstrings keep getting a little tighter. The knees and ankles get a little stiffer and take a little longer to recover after our weekend matches. I know that Monday morning when I wake up to go to work, at least a half dozen parts of my body are going to scream in protest. The limp will be gone by Tuesday (Wednesday at the latest) but some weird new bruise will yellow and darken mid-week. I’m fortunate that by the time the next Sunday match arrives, I’m generally ready to do it all over again.
That familiar chorus–”Oh, no! Did you do that playing soccer?”–is in some ways the theme song for my week. I often wonder if my co-workers look at their hobbling, wincing cubicle mate and think, Why the hell doesn’t he stop hurting himself? He could play golf instead! They don’t realize that my scars and bruises are my red and black and blue badges of courage. In some small twisted way, I’m proud of them. They remind me that at 38-1/2 years of age, I still run as fast as I can several times a week. How many other adults can honestly say that? I can still cover 6-7 miles a match and this game keeps me reasonably fit. I have a common interest with about 90% of the rest of the planet and I get to blog about kicking a ball around…and people from all around the world actually read it and feel motivated to add some kick ass comments in the process. That is pretty cool. If that costs an occasional muscle pull and 1000 mg of ibuprofen a week, that’s a fair trade in my book.
We recreational footballers play a contact sport. The slide tackles still come (until I move up to O-40 play, that is) and some of those challenges are kind of sloppy and hurt like a son of a bitch. Frankly, I am thankful that over a playing career of about thirty years, I have only suffered three sprained ankles, three more almost-but-not-quite-sprained ankles, two hamstring pulls, four epic bouts of crippling shin splints, the loss of every one of my toe nails at some point and an eight month long groin pull that only merited a visit to the doctor when I asked my team: “Hey, dudes, should my testicles hurt every time I cough? That’s not good, right?”
Oh, and there was that broken wrist back in high school. How is this for adding insult to injury (literally)? Salem, Oregon circa 1985. My high school derby match. North Salem High School vs. South Salem High School. Vikings v. Saxons. My North had never beaten South in boys soccer–ever–and as a 96 lb. 4′-10 1/2″ midfielder, this was arguably the biggest game I had ever played in. Being a 96 lb. 4-10 1/2″ midfielder with an adolescent physiology, I was playing against 16 - 18 year olds who were bigger, stronger and actually shaved. As I jumped up to win an aerial ball (ha!), I collided with two opposing players and was smashed back onto the ground. Crunch. I could hear the bones in my left wrist crack. The pain was excruciating and, for someone who had never broken anything before, completely unfamiliar. Worse, the referee called me for obstruction and gave the Saxons a free kick. I looked down at my already thin wrist and was horrified to see it…bent…at the slightest of angles. And why the hell wouldn’t it move?! Before I knew it, the other side took their free kick and blasted it into me, which furthered jarred my grotesque limb and sent another wave of pain through my arm. I know it isn’t cool to cry in high school, but I think I started to between hyperventilations. Their center midfielder, the older brother of a kid I used to play with in middle school, looked at my arm. Despite this being the Mother of All Rivalries, the El Clásico of the mid-Willamette Valley, he waved at the official to stop play as I floundered around my position.
Him: “Sean, sit down!”
Me: (Gasping for air and semi-sobbing.)
Him: “I think your arm is broken! Sit down!”
Me: (Making unintelligible sounds akin to Beaker from the Muppets.) “Meep! Meep!”
The referee blew play dead and I staggered off the pitch. My coach ushered me over to my father. “Uh, I think that might be broken.” Dad’s diagnosis took 0.015 seconds. “Yeah, that’s broken. Let’s go to the hospital.” As Seanny got his first cast, the mighty Vikings beat the Saxons 2-0 for the first time ever. I like to think it was because my first half injury motivated the team and rallied NSHS to a “win one for the Gipper” like performance in the second half…but probably it was because I was off the pitch and not giving away free kicks in the midfield.
How about you, Weekend Warriors? Do you have a really good story associated with an ugly injury from the Beautiful Game? Of course you do! Every single one of us has been sprained, concussed, ruptured or otherwise damaged by this sport we love. There’s a reason why the Weekend Warrior crest in the upper left corner includes a bottle of aspirin! I would love to hear your anecdotes and personal recollections. Cheers!
Category: Orange Slices and AspirinThe Shirt Off My Back
By: Sean | 48 Comments
As an American soccer fan, you have a limited number of ways of expressing your love of the Beautiful Game and your allegiance to your favorite club. You can hang one of those little soccer ball-in-a-net-things from the rear view mirror in your car. You can decorate your office cubicle with lots and lots of soccer stuff, like Timber Jim Bobbleheads and “Get Fuzzy” comic strips that reference Hartlepool United FC and an old calendar page of a guy taking a free kick with the slogan “We All Have Dreams. Mine Is To Crush Yours.” (Your coworkers will likely not fully understand most of this stuff, but they’ll smile politely as they walk by nonetheless.) But mostly you will wear the jersey of your favorite club and you will stick out like a sore thumb at the mall…and yet still be invisible at the same time.
Wearing the colors of your club in America is–I would imagine, as my time overseas has been woefully limited–a much different experience than wearing it in other most other countries. Two fans passing each other on the street here in Beaverton, Oregon wearing rival shirts are less apt to break out in taunts or jeers. Come to think of it, I pass another person in a soccer shirt outside of a soccer match about three times a year and the novelty of seeing a familiar club crest on another person tends to outweigh any traditional rivalries. There will be a moment of recognition, a quick double take, and then a nod and a grin as two real football fans pass each other. Big clubs, Premiership clubs and the like, will occasionally merit a look from passersby. On a good day, you might earn a point and a quick “Oh, that’s the team that Ronaldo plays on.” I once wore a Fulham shirt to Fred Meyer and passed a guy in a Celtic shirt in the frozen food aisle. His eyes lit up when he recognized the badge and I got an enthusiastic thumb’s up and a “Hey, the footy!” to boot.
Your shirt is also a good tool to help identify the true football fans from the wannabes. After my daughter’s practice was over, we went to a sandwich shop for dinner and was pleasantly surprised to notice the cashier was also sporting a Red Devils shirt. After giving my order, I asked what he thought of the weekend’s tragic 1-4 loss to Liverpool. “Oh, did they play?” Um, yes. They play a lot of weekends. As we waited for our turkey sandwiches, I changed tact to fill the idle time. “Who is your favorite player right now?” The response: “I like Beckham.” I just didn’t have the heart to tell him he hadn’t been with the club for about five years.
I have also noticed that soccer tends to be one of the few sports where the more obscure or less widely known team is, the more attention the shirt merits from other fans. One of my daughter’s old camp coaches is a midfielder for Scottish Third Division team Stenhousemuir Warriors, so we support him by wearing his club’s shirt. On the street, the strange maroon strip hardly merits a second glance, but occasionally another football fan notices and asks about it. We happily recall the time her coach stayed at the house for a week and get an approving nod in reply. I don’t see people wearing minor league baseball or basketball shirts very often, if ever. Around here, I see the Mariners and the Blazers. That’s it.
Really, the only stick I get for the color of my shirt comes from my teammates and of course, it is all good-natured. Maybe it is something about the novelty of playing and following a sport that 90% of your neighbors don’t care at all about that knits us together, regardless of tribal loyalties. Like meeting another American/someone of your same nationality when you are traveling abroad, the association here seems to be more about the Big Picture positives (football fans) and less about the specifics (United vs. Arsenal). I think that’s kind of cool. I understand that it is not always like that in other places but I lack the experience to really comment on it, save for a few random observations on the ride to Wembley Stadium and the recollection of a twelve year old kid walking around the 17,000 s.f. United Megastore at Old Trafford in a Liverpool kit. Man, talk about your icy stares of death.
How about you, Weekend Warriors? Do you have any stories about getting a reaction–unfavorable or otherwise–based upon the color of your shirt? Get dissed in a foreign locale because you weren’t wearing the correct kit? Or perhaps you found another supporter in the unlikeliest of places. I’d love to hear your stories and anecdotes.
[Lastly, psuedo-apologies for the gimmicky connection between the post headline and the image of a woman wearing a soccer shirt. Work obligations kept me from writing for the last two weeks and I decided to take a cheap shot to recapture people's attention.]
Category: Orange Slices and AspirinThe Weekend Warrior’s Infinite Playlist
By: Sean | 11 Comments
I could use your help with something.
I like to get psyched up before a match with some ass-kicking, motivational songs. I’m sure many of you do, too. Unfortunately, my current pre-match playlist is getting a bit long in the tooth and I’m not getting the requisite level of awesomeness from it. Sure, they are still good songs (for me, as I know music is highly subjective and personal) but I’m just not feeling it right now and I could use some new audible inspiration. Since I grew up in the ’80s and I’m borderline tone deaf, my musical tastes are not too sophisticated, so just about any recommendations you might have would be considered and probably welcomed.
What do I have on the current Weekend Warrior Infinite Playlist right now? Basics, fair readers. Without rehashing the entire track list, I will say that I’ve got your PB&J standard soccer tunes: “Beautiful Goal” by Oakenfold. “World in Motion (Carabinieri Mix)” by New Order. There’s some “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba. One of my buddies turned me on to a tune called “Soccer Rocks” by Soccer Rocks, which is oddly categorized by iTunes as Christian and Gospel…this is a little confusing unless you consider Adie Boothroyd divine. I’ve got the Giraffe’s “Man U” (of course) and I’ve got the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s version of “Carmina Burana: O Fortuna”–the “Excalibur” battle anthem–because every stadium plays it to pump up the crowd. Many of the songs are straight off of the FIFA 05 videogame soundtrack, which apparently left in indelible impression: Manana’s “Miss Evening.” [Note: This is not exactly a pump-you-up type of song, but it was the track that played during the post-match highlights sequence when Virtual Sean scored his first hat trick and, as such, is now eternally associated with Xbox greatness.] Morrissey’s “Irish Blood, English Heart.” (Man, I miss the Smiths.) “Augen Auf!” by Oomph! which then led me to a bunch of other German industrial/alternative groups such as Eisbrecher and Rammstein that sound great but of which I only understand about 10% of the lyrics…so much for two years of high school German language lessons. Scheiße!
Oh, and I have Journey because Journey freakin’ rocks. Deal with it.
So what song would you add to the Ultimate Weekend Warrior Infinite Playlist? I’m open to almost anything that gets me in the Zone, especially any footballing tunes you swear by. Cheers…
Category: Orange Slices and AspirinThe Eureka Moment
By: Sean | Add Comments
A new spring U-9 soccer season is underway and the local park is choked with boys and girls. The air is alive with whistle blasts, with shouts of encouragement, with juggled balls flying in every direction. Cones dot the pitch, Gatorade bottles and discarded warm-ups litter the sidelines, and two dozen or so parents are clustered by the adjacent playground. It had been almost five months since my daughter’s team, the West Coast Wolves, had played together in the fall and of the twelve that joined us for the final pizza party last November, eight returned. With one new addition to the roster, nine girls were energetically going through the start-of-practice warm-up.
“Flamingo stretch!” Nine young ladies balance on their leg and stretch their quads. “Bridge stretch!” The squad forms a circle of bridge/tunnel-like poses and stretch their calves. “Soccer dance!” The group starts to rapidly toe-touch the top of their balls with their cleats, working hard to keep the ball from rolling as they bound from foot to foot. All of these things the ladies do enthusiastically and with little reluctance, barring the discovery of a worm or “dog treasures”, which understandably throws the group into minor disarray…until Coach yells out: “Line up! Suicide sprints!”
You make little girls run suicide sprints? What kind of monster are you?! It really isn’t as menacing as it sounds…but I am sort of surprised that in our modern times we haven’t come up with a new name. Whatever. The entire team–players and coaches, too–all line up on the end line and do a set of wind sprints to the mid-line and back. It is a great conditioning exercise (for nine year olds and their 38 year old coaches!) and since so much of soccer is about sprinting and recovery, we’ve found it really helps get the girls fit and ready for games. However, when it is time to do them the collective reaction is an almost unanimous: “NOOOO!”
After a few runs, as the Wolves are catching their breaths, we ask them if they know why we make them do the sprints. “‘Cause you’re mean?!” someone cracked. We chuckle and then offer a teaching moment: “No, not because we are mean. We make you run these sprints because in a match, there will be a time when the other team gets the ball from you and starts running toward our goal. It is natural to lose the ball sometimes. It’s going to happen. But when you lose the ball, you need to be able to run back as fast as you can and help your goalkeeper stop the ball. Do you think it is fun to be the goalkeeper and have to stop the other team all by yourself?”
“NOOOO!” came the response.
“You’re right. It isn’t fun. So you need to be able to get back on defense just as fast as you run forward to try and score. Even if the game is almost over and you are super tired, everybody should always be ready to get back and help out. Girls, last sprint! Go!” This same teaching moment gets repeated about once a week as we encourage the girls for one last sprint. “I still think you’re mean!” a little voice pants as two dozen footfalls pound away to the center circle.
As a coach, you often repeat the same things over and over again, wondering if it is registering with your players. A lot of coaches spend most of the match yelling for their team to do this or do that…to stay spread out or to pass the ball. I do it, too. Every once in a while, however, when you stop yelling, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to realize the time spent in practice actually did account for something. You get that little Eureka Moment when you see something work just like you said it would. It happens in micro-soccer when a kid actually passes the ball–not just kicks the ball randomly and it hits another teammate, but purposely passes it to little Johnny. It happens in U8s or so when the kid playing goalkeeper for the first time reaches down and picks up the ball instead of kicking it away like a field player. And it can happen on your daughter’s squad when they realize the suicide sprints are more than just a coaching torture technique.
Case in point: The Wolves are comfortably ahead and spend much of the second half laying siege to the opposition goal. Not unlike a real wolfpack, they have gathered around the outside of the goal and pick off weak kicks that do not clear the box. This happens a few times and our defender migrates forward, too, so as not to miss out. Sure enough, the next keeper punt is a solid one and clears the box, bounces over the Wolves, and catches our defender by surprise. Their lone striker is off to the races. Before any of the coaches could yell, however, every single Wolf was racing back toward their goal, running as hard to get back on defense as they did to get forward. Three of the girls caught the striker before she got to our box, stripped her of the ball, and turned it around for another rally. That was only a week and a half ago and the only thing I remember about the match is five little girls chasing the striker down at the end of a match…just like we practiced. It wasn’t a game changing moment, but it was still pretty cool to see.
How about you, Weekend Warriors? When was the last time your team proved they really do get what you’re saying? Any Eureka Moments when your charges pleasantly surprised you? I’d love to hear about them.
Category: Orange Slices and AspirinThe View From the “Cheap” Seats
By: Sean | 8 Comments
Last summer my brother and I were traveling in England and high on the “must see” list was attending some professional football matches. Watching the Beautiful Game on television is one thing, but even the biggest flat screen in high-definition with digital surround sound doesn’t come close to capturing the passion and excitement of a real match. I had been fortunate enough to watch Charlton Athletic play Manchester City to a 2-2 draw in April of 2005 and this middle of the table battle completely blew me away. The singing. The mounted police in riot gear. The happy swearing, at both players red and blue, in accents just different enough to make we wonder if “Chaw’un” was really “Charlton”. I’m sure for any European or South American readers of this blog, this is just a typical part of the match day experience, but for a West Coast Yankee overseas for the first time, this was a revelation. I had seen NBA basketball and NFL football, so I wasn’t completely ignorant to the stadium environment. But this was something else. It was so loud, so raucous, and so alive that I knew if I ever returned to England I would have to go see another match…maybe even one with another team from Manchester of which I’m kind of fond.
So fast forward three and half years. My brother and I are on a mission to see matches, maybe even big matches, at least by pre-season standards. Scheduled to be in London in mid-August, we notice that the Community Shield is being played that weekend and, irony of ironies, United is playing Portsmouth at Wembley Stadium. This seemed like a good idea, so for weeks I found myself online trying to find seats, not sure if trying to find tickets to the Community Shield is like trying to get Super Bowl tickets. With time running short before our departure, I reluctantly found myself browsing an authorized online ticket reseller. Sure, they had tickets. Sure, they were in the nose-bleed section. Sure, they were more expensive than my wife’s first car and I would likely need to sell a non-vital organ to finance this…so how badly did I want to go?
Apparently, bad enough. Click. Who needs two kidneys anyway?
Suffice to say, we had a memorable time and this Oregonian learned some good lessons from the experience. Among the highlights:
1. If you are wearing red, never, EVER get on to a Tube car that is populated with eighty people wearing blue and singing “Up Pompey! Up Pompey!” We figured that out about 0.81 seconds before getting on at Victoria Station. Three of our fellow supporters did not learn this lesson at Baker Street Station and were viciously harangued for the rest of the trip…a trip which pride prevented them from leaving that car and getting into the safe haven of our car.
2. It is OK to swear in front of your children in the stadium, but you probably knew this already.
3. Seven years of mountaineering did appropriately acclimatize me for our seats, which were literally two rows shy of being the very freakin’ back of Wembley Stadium.
4. There was an episode of “The Simpsons” where Homer and Barney went to the Super Bowl or something and got beers. Upon being charged an outrageous sum for the drinks, Barney exclaims something like, “$20 for beer? This better be the best beer in the world!” He takes a sip and then proclaims, “Ah, you got lucky!” I can honestly say that I have now had that exact same experience.
5. I know a penalty shoot-out is kind of a crappy way to end a match, but in all honesty, it is pretty exciting to watch…even when the players are kind of tiny and you have to watch the huge video screens to discern who they are.
6. As we left the stadium, we joined the crush of other United fans moving toward Wembley Park Station. Beside us were two huge, pug-faced giants in red jerseys. Ahead of us, maybe twenty feet away, was another United fan in a jersey number 58 with the words “Munich” on the back. The two large gentlemen beside us noticed this and swore, “That [bleep] is glorifying the Munich tragedy. Let’s [bleep] him up.” As they struggled to get closer, bottles in hand, they noticed a friend and said, “Hey, there’s Mick!” Distracted from their impending assault, they moved away and to this day, “Munich 58″ probably has no idea how close he was to getting his [bleep] [bleeped] up.
7. Having lived 38 years in the vast frontier that is the Pacific Northwest, I’m not very good or very comfortable at queuing.
How about you, Weekend Warriors? What was the biggest match you have ever been lucky enough to watch in person? I’d love to hear your anecdotes and personal stories.
Category: Orange Slices and AspirinTurf War! (Kind of!)
By: Sean | Add Comments
As the weather improves, more and more people in the Pacific Northwest start to migrate out of doors and try to shake off the winter doldrums. You see more bicycles on the roads, more hikers on the trail in the Columbia Gorge, and more joggers braving the early morning darkness for a run. However, you know once and for all that spring has arrived when you show up at your local park soccer pitch and find it overrun with…softball players.
Let me first state that I have nothing against softball or baseball in principle…except that it is kind of boring and it isn’t soccer. I saw my first major league baseball game last summer and had a pretty good time. I saw a lot of standing around, a couple of hits and learned that Safeco Field makes these tasty yogurt covered strawberry kebobs. I even got to cheer once when the ball got hit in the air…until it got caught. It was a fine evening and I’ll do it again this summer, especially if I can see a game the day before or after an MLS match in the same city. So I have nothing against sports that involve a diamond and standing and occasional hitting.
Until they start taking up my pitch.
Yes, I know good weather is right around the corner when I go to my local pick-up scrimmage and find the far touch line occupied by outfielders and shortstops. The familiar sound of pre-scrimmage juggling–that comforting smack of ball on boot that precedes every footy match I have ever played–is replaced by the metal clink! of ball on aluminum bat, followed by some yell to “cover second!” or something like that. Like the swallows at San Juan Capistrano, there comes a Sunday in late March or April when the softballers come back to my park and roost in the infield for the next several months. Boys, girls, older men, younger women…it doesn’t matter what shape these new interlopers take. The result is the pitch we play on gets a little narrower, the cone goals get shifted closer to the tree line, and occasionally a good counter attack is thwarted as we duck to avoid a stitched projectile flying at our heads. Usually, our new neighbors will extend us the courtesy of yelling “watch out!” (and we appreciate it, don’t get me wrong) when a home run blast lands in the midfield, but inevitably we get this look of annoyance/agitation/disdain because the left fielder has to navigate our 4-4-2. Ironically, we footballers should be the ones who are annoyed/agitated/disdainful…because the weekend before, we were here playing when it was too rainy for them to practice. And the weekend before that when it was hailing? 8 v. 8, baby. Back in January when there was two inches of snow we were here, too, just not running quite as fast. Barring locust plagues or league matches someplace else, we’ll always be here playing the game we love. Boys, girls, older men, younger women, Mexicans, Serbians, Scots, professionals, blue collar workers…our scrimmage is a multi-generational, multi-cultural, multi-everything for anybody and everybody. (Regardless of the weather!) That’s soccer.
Thinking back, the closest incident I can recall to there being a turf war at the Sunday scrimmage was really a non-incident that probably nobody noticed but me. It didn’t even involve softball. Maybe two years ago we showed up at our pitch and a group of young twenty-something guys were tossing the old pigskin around, American rules flag football style. They numbered ten, maybe twelve. As our soccer group started showing up–mostly older gentlemen at first–you could see the unspoken cocky social dynamic start: They were not going to give us soccer guys space to play. We would have been happy to share the field, but we got the impression the feeling wasn’t mutual. The flag footballers continued to run their pass plays over to where we kicked around, occasionally going through our area. There were no real apologies when their ball bounced into our guys. Still, the soccer players continued to kick around on our end, slowly growing in number. Six became eight, then twelve, then sixteen. As our group swelled, there was a moment when the critical mass shifted and suddenly, the Hail Mary pattern quietly became an out play and stopped shy of us. There were no words, no remonstrations, no conflict. The flag footballers began to shift their runs to the side and the occasional errant ball into our turf got a “sorry, dude.” Soon we had about forty guys and with a 3:1 advantage we assimilated the rest of the pitch, even plunking down a portable goal beside their quarterback. The flag footballers huddled up, briefly considered calling it quits, then moved quietly away for another ten minutes of play before going home. There was no cursing, no hooliganism, not even an Eric Cantona karate kick. We are all adults and this is real life. Just a lot of guys wanting to play footy and a dozen guys walking off, flags fluttering behind them like tails between their legs…
Category: Orange Slices and Aspirin
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