Lessons from the Living Room Pitch

By: Sean | January 19th, 2009

All of us who play or coach the Beautiful Game have a special association with at least one pitch from our “careers”. Maybe it is the primary school pitch where you scored your first goal as a U8 player. Perhaps it is a little chunk of a much larger field where your child played their first jamboree, or maybe you played college or semi-pro football and you can point to the scoreboard where your strike was proudly recorded to the screams (or groans) of the crowd. I have a really fond connection with a pitch nearby that never gets closed for turf maintenance, never gets flooded even during the worst Northwest downpours, and certainly never gets allocated for softball. It also happens to double as my living room.

It is a good size space, maybe seventeen feet by twenty feet. Part of the main stairway cuts off the corner and although my wife and I never got around to officially decorating the room, there is a couch against the far wall and a matching chair in the near corner. That’s it, really, and the blessed lack of coffee tables, sectionals, book shelves and anything from Ikea provides a fair amount of space for my eight year old daughter and I to juggle, pass and scrimmage a few times a week. That works out pretty good after a few hours of “Hannah Montana”, especially when the weather is nasty outside. Over the last few years we’ve determined that Daddy always shoots on the Dining Room End and that my goal is the dining room table’s legs. My daughter–we’ll call her Kiki–always shoots on the opposite goal, which happens to be the living room window. Yes, the living room window. With the drapes pulled, it is roughly the same width as the dining room table and that has evolved over time to be a fair goal for her to hit.

I can imagine what you’re thinking: You let an eight year old shoot a soccer ball at a window?! In all fairness, the goal is technically the 12″ of wall below the window, not the glass itself, and we do have a house rule about no volley shots. Plus, I am a pretty fair defender. I don’t know how long our one v. one matches will continue, but I can guarantee when they will end. Someday, one of Kiki’s shots is going to get a little chip or have a bit of zing to it and “beat the keeper to the upper right corner.” I’m pretty sure the resulting impact won’t be as dramatic as say, an explosion from a Bruce Willis action flick, but there will undoubtedly be a sickening crunch of glass and a telltale spider web fracture pattern in the frame. It will get quiet for a moment. We’ll stare at each other in shock. Kiki will mutter, “Sorry, Daddy,” and since I am just as guilty for allowing it to happen, I won’t be in any position to get angry. I know it will happen eventually. This past Christmas season we got the slightest glimpse of this result when, during a close match, I took a free kick that deflected off the dining room leg post and crashed into the adjacent defensive three man wall comprised of…the Three Wise Men in our Nativity creche display. I think it was the magi with the frankincense who took the brunt of the shot and his little ceramic head popped off and flew straight up into the air.

In all fairness, he didn’t give me ten yards.

It got quiet for a moment. We stared at each other in shock. I muttered, “Oops, my bad,” and then play was suspended until a successful Crazy Glue cranial reattachment was completed…four days later. So I know it will happen again, but until that day, we have this perfect little section of carpeted pitch all to ourselves. A few days ago after I showed her a pullback, Kiki wanted to show me a trick of her own. Fair enough, I agreed. She then proceeded to explain to me the most complicated, Byzantine, involved soccer maneuver I have ever seen. (Parents of eight year olds may recognize this behavior.) It seemed to involve dribbling the ball to the implied touchline formed by the carpet and the hardwood entrance, doing a “Matrix”-like contortion to get the outside of the foot to scoop it away, then doing a pirouette while simultaneously running around/over the ball to take it another direction. “Uh, I’ll need to see that again,” I said. So she did, mostly. Although the second time she headed off in the opposite direction. When I mentioned that, she calmly replied it was to trick the defenders.

“Just try it, Daddy.” So I thought I did a pretty good approximation of some variation of what she had shown me. “No, Daddy. That’s not it. You’ll lose the ball.” I could sense my coach was growing agitated at my inability to grasp this move. I think Messi would have had similar difficulties. Kiki was so focused as she demonstrated it again–explaining every little move as she did it–that I had to stifle a smile lest I gave the impression I was laughing at her. Listening to her comments as I retried the trick (”Still not good enough, Daddy,” became “Better, Daddy, good job” even as I still had no idea exactly what I was doing) reminded me that our living room pitch can still teach us some wonderful lessons. Control your shots; power is not everything. When you make a bad play, like beheading a defender, admit it and move on. Take instruction as well as you give it. But I think the most important thing I realized was that these father-daughter moments won’t last forever. Somebody can start playing Harry Chapin’s “Cats in the Cradle” but I know there will come a day, probably a lot sooner than I want to admit, where Kiki will have better things to do than kick the football around with her old man. When that day comes, I’m willing to bet that a broken front window would be a cheap price to pay for just a little more time together…