As the ball floated over my head for the eighth time in the game I remembered why I hate playing left-back. I turned, off-balance, and gave chase to the Mexican winger ten years younger than me. Half falling, I followed him into the penalty area, and as he reached the six-yard box I decided enough was enough. With a desperate lunge the younger man hit the floor – but somehow I got a toe on it and corner was given. Our American goalkeeper applauded what looked like a skilful tackle but what was actually just me giving up. I voluntarily substituted myself and lay down on the sidelines.
This game was supposed to be a gentle reintroduction to football after four months out with an ankle injury. I hadn’t counted on ‘Mexicanitos vs Internationalitos’ being so competitive. In England I’ve definitely felt that football has got more serious over the years, as younger men spend more time at the gym, take fitness more seriously, and feel compelled to win at everything. It feels similar here. While just a friendly, each game I’ve played has referees and linesmen, and there’s a lot of demonstrative shouting and backslapping. The German team captain’s reaction to me turning up wearing New Balance trainers, a blue polo t-shirt and brown canvas shorts was of polite bemusement (this conformed to that rule of society that whenever you do worry about what you’re wearing no-one would have cared anyway, but as soon as you slum it a bit you’re an outcast).
Playing with other nationalities reminded me of my irrational tendency to assume that if a country isn’t good at football at national level then nobody from that country can be any good. So it was a bit of a shock to play in a team of very competent Americans and Australians. I found it difficult to accept tactical instructions from an American so what I did was shout back my own instructions. Our Aussie striker was very good but it did amuse me after the game to hear him claim that he could have taken it past three players and scored at any point, and only didn’t because he could see everyone was enjoying playing in a close game.
In midweek 7-a-side games I’ve encountered my two pet peeves of football, the petulant Latino frontman and the English tryhard. The former I played up front with in a sort of mobile attacking trio, which started well but got tense as our fragile lead was overturned. After scoring the opening goal and playing him and others in with some nice touches I got tired and then fell into that trap of trying to please/ self-justify to the perenially disgruntled. It made me think it must be awful to be a professional striker when you’re not performing, like Fernando Torres at Chelsea. As I missed a few chances and some touches went astray I could feel his dissatisfaction eat into my enjoyment. I got a good goal at the end to remedy things a bit.
The second type, the tryhard, you’ll find everywhere in the English five-a-side world. Usually not terribly talented, these lads make up for this by harrying and pressing as if their lives depended on it. I’m not sure why but I find them so stupendously irritating, maybe I just can’t understand them. Bizarrely, many of them are ginger, as is this one (he’s also English and he’s doing zip all to soften our international reputation as untechnical cloggers who run around a lot). Biding my time, I gave him a cheeky kick during the second half, immediately holding my hands up to apologise. Towards the end I glid past him on a mazy run which is probably a better way of handling things.
Prickly Pears 