You and Me Against the World

By: Sean | March 17th, 2009

“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do
Two can be as bad as one
It’s the loneliest number since the number one…”

So sang Three Dog Night (and later, Filter and Aimee Mann and…) but I would argue that in the recreational men’s football league I play in, seven can also be a pretty lonely number. See, seven is the mandated number of players a squad must have in order to play a match. Any less and you forfeit, which sucks on a totally different but still totally sucky level. Any more than eleven and generally, the squad is good to go. However, players seven through ten are kind of problematic as the league–and your pride–demands the match be played despite the fact that you know how it is going to end. For ninety minutes, it is likely going to feel something akin to the Battle of Thermopylae as depicted in “300″…minus about 292, Scandinavian thrash metal music, and sweaty erotic undertones.

Generally speaking, you can tell early on when your club is going to be playing short. You are warming up, casually juggling the ball around, and the collection of players on the other half of the pitch continues to grow more numerous. The referee comes by to collect the roster or player cards and the half-dozen or so of your teammates start making nervous jokes about your numbers. Maybe the manager starts blasting through the speed dials on his cell, knowing damn well that any call he makes at this point is going to involve some derivative of “oh, dude, I totally forgot that my [family event/work conflict/medical procedure] is right now” or something about being stuck in traffic. The manager knows the act of calling players will do nothing for the current predicament, but managers like to be doing something in moments of crisis, so we make the calls. Nothing will make your stomach knot faster than to look over and find the opposition running full-on passing and shooting drills while you try to decide if you’ll be playing a 3-4-1 or, more likely, a 6-2.

And really, what can you do? As a manager of a recreational team, I totally understand that none of us are getting paid for this and that we have lives outside the touch line. I would never, ever begrudge one of my players missing a match to go see their kid’s soccer game, recital, or “Book Battle.” I’m pretty flexible about a guy missing a match because of an anniversary, too, because I won’t deny a buddy his hot nookie. However, you must extend me the courtesy of telling me that you won’t be playing. That is all I ask. Our soccer communities are pretty tight and if I know we are playing short, I can generally recruit some scabs–er, “on loan players”–to fill in for the afternoon. But nothing ticks off a manager more than two minutes to kick off and only nine players because nobody sent an email saying his colonoscopy was scheduled for the same time.

Once you get past being ticked off, you must take stock of the realities of the situation. Are you going to “Alamo up” in front of your goal and try to hold them off for an hour and a half? Will you play your regular game, only without the second striker, the additional central midfielder, and maybe the sweeper? Is there any way you can redirect the referee to the wrong field and thus have the match be postponed? (Don’t laugh. My squad once replayed the same team three times before we got a ref to show up.) While your situation may appear dire, an under-manned squad does have one advantage: Everybody expects you to lose. Everybody. The team with superior numbers is fully expected to crush you and your best strategy is to hold them off for as long as possible, because the longer they go without scoring, the more frustrated they will get. This might afford you one chance to draw all of them in to your half of the pitch and then send your fastest, least exhausted player with a long Route One hero ball through to their net. Good luck with that. P.S. Don’t good-naturedly joke with the other team that you are going to still beat them, even with fewer players. It will just piss them off.

What good comes out of playing short? Umm, building character? Never complaining about not getting enough playing time ever again? Sure. If it does nothing else, I think playing short reveals the team’s true mettle. Like an own-goal, it shows you who your friends are–not because they could make a match when somebody else was watching their daughter’s ballet recital, but because they could make a match and willingly decided to stick around when they knew they were likely to get their asses handed to them. There’s something to be said for that. I recall a match three years ago, on a turf pitch in the low 100s, when our numbers were dropped to nine or ten because of cramps and heat exhaustion. We were losing 0-8 and the referee asked if we wanted to quit, i.e. “the mercy rule.” I distinctly remember one of our depleted backs grabbing the ball and snarling, “hell NO we won’t quit! We’re playing!” The opposition then stole the kick off, made three passes, and made it 9-0 but beyond the score line, I distinctly remember thinking that I wanted to stay with a team made up of guys like my fullback. I’d rather line up with him than ten fair-weather prima donnas. So when I line up with my six or so comrades and watch the opposition do the smug snicker that translates to “I’m totally gonna score a hat trick on these losers,” the little refrain running through my head isn’t from Three Dog Night (or Filter or Aimee Mann…). It is from Helen Reddy…

Actually, it totally isn’t. But what an awesome way to end the post!

How about you, Weekend Warriors? Any wisdom gleaned from a short-handed drubbing? Or perhaps a glorious upset with a totally improbable ending? I’d love to hear about it if you’ve got one…