Real Life in Paradise

So, a couple of weeks ago(could be a month even) somebody came to me and asked me to be part of Team USA in the annual Mundialito soccer tournament that is held here in Playa.  At first I said absolutely no, because I don’t know how to play soccer.  I played in a league when I was about 6 but I remember lots of grass stains and that is about it. 

I became convinced to play, a friend of mine is sponsoring the team and he can’t play and it sounded like a good chance to get together some other young people and have a little fun.  Then I became informed that I was the team captain because nobody else was on the team, it was my responsibility to get a team together.

I called some friends and got a lot of no’s but eventually my friend Hans got together some people he knows and we got a team together.  I still seem to be the captain.  There is almost no soccer skill between all of the Americans I got to play on the team, I was a little worried.  Luckily, we were informed that we could have four non-Americans on the team to even it out a little bit.  Good thing, because we were having a hard time finding Americans anyway.

Now, since I am not good enough friends with anyone from the Mexican National team, I figured I would have to look for talent elsewhere.  We got the next best thing, some guys from Coffee Cafe volunteered to play as our ringers.  They play all the time and I hear they are pretty good.  Since Coffee Cafe is our team sponsor, they were easily convinced to play, though I think they are a little amused by our lack of skill.

We had a team meeting on Thursday, which went well.  We got together, had a coffee, bs’d a little bit and got the details down.  It will be a fun experiment because all of us are sort of “managers” in our daily life and the team organization seemed to wreak of too many bosses.  It will all work out.

I went to La Quinta today to register the team, they showed me the jersey design, very cool.  They also informed me that there is a little pre-party tonight at Santanera and asked that I get all of the team members there.  We shall see, it will be our grand unveiling to the world I guess.  I am on my way there now, so I better cut this short.  I will try to take pictures and I blog about what happens next.

Stay tuned, Monday morning is our first “formal” practice.  This should be interesting.

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