The Num83rs Game

By: Sean | February 7th, 2009

It is interesting to try and distill the essence of a football match or season down to a collection of statistics. We look at a match report and see a bunch a numbers. We see a final score. We see a scorer’s name and the minute when they scored. If the summary is more detailed, we see when a substitution was made or a caution was given. Important matches are further broken down into categories for us to review and analyze: Total number of shots, shots on goal, corner kicks, percentage of passes completed, etc. For every new number made available to us, we think we get a slightly clearer picture of the match or season that was, but who are we kidding? We all know numbers don’t tell the whole story. Even in recreational soccer, where only the most rudimentary of stats are recorded, we footballers are still drawn in by the numbers game and influenced by their power over us.

Don’t think so? How many times have you looked at the table for your club team and tried to forecast who needed to win and who needed to lose in order to make sure your squad got enough points to play for a championship? Do you show up to a match early to make sure you get your favorite number jersey? (”I wear number 11 because I’m so awesome I need two number 1s!”) I only played 55 minutes last Saturday! Our squad is unbeaten in 15 matches! For all of these numbers that describe our game, very few will have special significance…but there is usually one.

Mine is 79:52.

In 1987 I was a senior at North Salem High School (”Salem’s only inner city high school”). If you know Salem, Oregon, you’ll appreciate the irony in that comment. It was my fourth year with the school team and I got to be captain, which meant that I got to take all of the penalty kicks. Only I didn’t seem to realize that until we were playing a jamboree early in the season and our opposition was flagged for handling the ball in their box. The referee pointed to the spot and my coach motioned for me to take it. Much to my own happy surprise, I grabbed the ball, set it on the charity dot and took a few steps back prior to the shot. The goal mouth seemed huge, I remember thinking. It was going to be cool to score for the first time this season. I launched forward and drove my foot through the ball.

I blasted the shot so high and so far over the frame that it very well would have been a fifty yard field goal in American rules football. The keeper didn’t move except to crane his neck back…back…and back. Seriously, it took like a minute to retrieve the ball. Enraged, I started swearing like a sailor–this may have been the first time my parents heard me use the f-word–and we lost the match by a lot. My coach gave me a special drill every practice for the rest of the season: Twenty penalty shots after everybody was done. Always to the same part of the goal. So I did. When everybody’s parents were driving away from Barrick Field around five, I was firing my twenty shots in the lower right corner of the frame.

Fast forward maybe three weeks. We were playing a non-league match at home in October against a team we should have been beating easily, but we weren’t. It was getting really late and we were still tied 0-0. The referee was probably getting ready to blow the final whistle when our cross smacked their defender squarely in the hand. The referee blew his whistle and, despite the other squad’s protests, pointed to the spot. “Penalty!” Our bench roared in approval. Our fans cheered in approval.

I suddenly became sick. My coach yelled for me to take it. I yelled back that our Kuwaiti player should take it. Or our Spanish foreign exchange student should take it. Coach was unmoved. The opposition started the chatter: “He’s got nothin’! He’s gonna miss it!” I picked up the ball and set it down. The goal mouth seemed surprisingly small. “He’s gonna shank it!” I turned around and walked to the top of the box, cursing to myself. I couldn’t even remember which corner I was supposed to shoot at. “He’s gonna miss it!” Our central defender looked me straight in the eye and very quietly said, “Just make the shot. No big deal.”

I turned around and the response from about 180 practiced penalties was automatic. Lower right corner. Nuthin’ but net. I started to scream but got gang-tackled before any sound came out. I can still remember the crush of cheering teammates and victory yells in my ears like it was yesterday. Eight seconds after the restart, the referee blew the match to an end. Since high school matches were only eighty minutes long, the match report in the local Statesman Journal newspaper read: “North Salem 1, Willamette 0.” Underneath the score was the number “79:52″ followed by my last name. Who says numbers tell the whole story?

How about you, Weekend Warriors? What footballing number holds special meaning for you? Is it a kit number or a goal tally? Is it an unbeaten streak, the date of a special match, or perhaps a record win you will never forget? I’d love to hear about it, unless the number is 69, in which case, TMI…