Well, the tournament is over. Team USA played their best. We lost horribly to all who challenged us. We are broken and beaten but it was sure fun!
We had been practicing all week, not so much so that so that we could win any games, more so we didn't look like complete fools out there on the beach. We knew that we would probably not be winning any games, but we wanted to be able to say we tried our best. I think we accomplished that goal.
Our team was made up of four Mexican guys, three Americans, and a German(who is a partner in coffee café). We showed up at Coffee Café for the pre-team meeting at 8am Saturday morning and I handed out jerseys and got all the liability-waver paperwork filled out. We read through the rules that La Quinta had given me and we signed them, then we walked down to the beach to get things started.
We showed up at 9am, right on time for our first game. We were kind of hoping for a dramatic entrance, you know, showing up at the last minute and looking tough. It was a great plan except that the tournament was a little late in getting started, so when we got there the first game was just getting underway. We wandered around and schmoozed with the Playa color for a while, talked about team strategy, and casually observed the wildlife at Mamitas beach.
At 10:30 we played our first game against Israel, it went really well and we thought we were getting on a roll. Israel was made up of mostly Israelis, possibly all special forces. They were all about my size(6 footish) and very sturdily built. We got scored on a couple of times in the first period, but we were pretty sure that 2-0 wasn't such a bad way to start the second period. We rotated out and played good defense, but in the end we just couldn't stand up to the force of the Israelis. Somebody at some point made a comment about "they beat most of the middle east in seven days, how could we expect them not to beat us in a soccer game?" We almost scored a point in the second period, which was a big moral booster for the guys, but for some reason it was called no good.
Our next game was rescheduled because the Dutch team wanted to play in our time slot so that they could watch their match against Russia in the Eurocup, so we finally played again at around 3pm.
The second game was against Argentina, last years champion. They had a cheering section of probably fifty people, some of their cheerleaders were VERY distracting. They had drums and half naked women, people painted in light-blue and white, the Latin Americans take this thing very seriously. We had one of the player's wife and and a friend of ours. One of our other player's wives seemed to be sitting with the Argentinians, maybe for sabotage purposes?
The Argentinian team was very physical, most of them somewhat large, they started pushing the guys around the field. They got really rough with us during the first half and were able to score a few points on us. The guys weren't used to that kind of abuse, some even said it was getting dirty out there, so they were a little shaken up. We decided to change our strategy a little for the second half. We were going to play less carefully, hopefully it would even up the odds a little bit.
We put in all of the Americans to start the second half, with orders to make room for the one Mexican to make some points. After just a few minutes of this the opposing team asked us if we could possibly all calm down a little bit on the fouling, and apologized for getting the game started off with that tone. We agreed and pulled most of the Americans out, but the game started getting a little physical again toward the end.
One of the Argentinian cheer squad at one point in the game tried to jump on the field after one of the American players and then team USA ended the last 2 minutes of the period with only 3 players because one of the Mexican guys got thrown out for illegal use of hands(mostly on somebody else's body). It was a little out of control, all of the foul shots in the end of the game ended up giving Argentina 6 points. This game really brought our team closer, we felt like we had gone through something together.
Team US after Argentina
This game ended at 3:30pm, two hours after we were supposed to play our last game. One of the Americans had an business meeting at 4pm and one of our Mexican players had to meet his mother-in-law for the first time, so our team we down to just six players. We were a little worried about not having enough players for the next game, but we decided to get some lunch and regroup for the next game anyway.
At 4:15 we were informed that we were late for our next match, against Britain. We rushed over to the second field to find nobody but a couple of referees sitting in the shade of one of the tents that was set up for the game. I guess Britain didn't know they had to play either. The ref's wanted to call the game, which was OK with us, because that would have been a win! At the last minute 4 of the British team showed up and convinced us to play anyway, they told us that if they beat us that they would advance against to the finals and Argentina would not. We were exhausted and short a couple of guys, but we figured we wouldn't rob the Brits of the chance to go on just to be spiteful.
Three minutes into the first half the refs called time, I guess they were taking time off of the clock for time we kept them waiting. At the beginning of the second half a couple more British players showed up, so we were now playing against a full team. They started playing really well, but it seemed that some of their players were not as tired as the rest of us.
Five minutes before the end of the game some Argentinians and some of the tournament organizers showed up for a little high-spirited discussion on the sidelines. There seemed to be some question as to whether or not we were letting them win! Team USA was flattered by this sentiment, and I can assure you we were playing to the best of our abilities. Then the Argentinian faction pointed out that some of the British players were not the players who originally signed up to play, which started even more controversy. The game ended, Britain beat us fair and square. Unfortunately, I seems that they were disqualified due to the new players. So we may or may not have technically won that third game. We didn't really feel like sticking around for all the arguing to find out.
As we were leaving, we heard that Team Israel was disqualified as well, because they were switching jerseys between other people. I guess when they were asked about it they claimed they had "Eight players plus a goaly", which wasn't quite what was in the rules. This game really controversial, I had no idea.
Well, Team USA had a great time. I was glad to get the opportunity to play and hope that I can do it again next year. Maybe we will train more so we can legitimately win one game.
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