"Barbara Loth is a powerful girl, don't underestimate her"

There was some good old double-header action last night after a long day.

The first game was with Team Gigantic, and we played at 6. The opposition was a team of long-standing friendly rivals, Sabres. Normally we win in these competitions. If you couldn't have guessed, we lost, 8-5. The rivalry began when I met one of my high school footie pals (also named Greg) in the Coverall league. Usually we end up beating them, however, tonight was an exception. They've put a good team forward this season, and they're atop the league, while we've scraped to 5th (of eight). At least we're in the playoff spots?

I opened our scoring with two goals, and at half, we were tied at three. My first goal involved a pass reception at the top of the box, beating one man with a fake shot and then burying it in the far post bottom-corner. I recieved plaudits from my team for that one. It very, very vaguely resembled this:




My second goal was also nice, it was a Gerrard-esque shot from a relatively longer range than most goals come from (12 yards in indoor is a lot), that was the finishing touch on a long run from our half. I placed the ball into close to the same spot on far post. It was somewhat akin to this:




I assisted Dan as well, and had a few good defensive plays (except for when I let the guy head in from a corner unmarked - I've really got to stop ballwatching and standing still when the ball comes at me).

At the end of the game, Greg (of Sabres, mind you) had said that I have improved since high school. Funny, I think he's said this a few times to me. In response, I mentioned that I would have hoped so. I like these comments. I also like when they warn you in game that you need to cover my right foot - I can shoot with my left, but not well. It's too bad that when I heard somebody say that about me, I was in the process of passing it - I'd have like to have shot with my left. I also schooled him at one point with what could only be called a backwards elastico (I faced right, dragged the ball back a little, then shot by him in his right with it), and gave him some good old burnings with my speed at a couple points.

In the second game, with AFC Soccer, I arrived slightly late to a near-empty dressing room. We had 8 men for that game, against a team of at least 18. Needless to say, we got exhausted and lost 5-1. In spite of the scoreline and my fatigue, I really stepped up a level from the last time I played with AFC Soccer. I felt more liberated this game, making less back passes and running with the ball more. At one point I ran by a couple people, then having the ball taken from me at top speed. During with transaction, it felt as though my fibula literally bent. It took me a couple minutes to get over it, and neither of the guys on the bench wanted to sub. I toughed it out for a few minutes, and it got better. However, it is sore today, so I put some heat on it.

I had an interesting discussion last week with one of the people I referee in dodgeball who often comes to the futsal games beforehand. He mentioned that Europeans often play for the call, while Africans play until the call. This was just a small curio that got me ruminating about the whole issue of playing styles.

Personally, I've noticed I'm just not on the same page as the AFC Soccer players (who, if you'll recall, are Arabic and Persian) - they play a game focused on counterattacking, just like my favored style of play is, but it's different. Their idea of strategy involves beating a man by yourself and then shooting, while mine usually involves generating space and then passing or crossing the ball in. Also, most of their attacking passes involve the receiver having to make a great first and second touches, which I have not yet grown accustomed to. One of the most interesting things about soccer, in my opinion, is how different groups approach the game, and how each soccer player is fundamentally different.

Now off to a Fury game. I had to draft a couple players, but could only find one. I hope my team's not angry...

But who am I trying to kid.

I gave him the Walker Special - I backpedaled while punching him in the skull

If there was such a thing to an antecedent to a bad game, a likely scenario would be forgetting your boots and shin pads, and being required to use a teammates' spare pair of shoes and knee pads as shin guards. This was last night for me. The Wheagles (White Eagles) and I had three on the bench too, so we didn't fare to well - everybody got tired, aside from myself.

We were against a team two spots ahead of us, so this one was within our grasp likely to be closer than usual.

Writing about this game now, I'm re-rationalizing my frustrations that I had last night. We played terribly, myself included (but I'd say to a lesser extent), and there were no fingers to point - it was more of an arm to wave around the dressing room.

I played lone striker in our horrible 3-2-0 formation (yes, I know there's no strikers on that, but our lack of goals had to come from somewhere), and still ended up sprinting back to save us from 3-on-1s and the like. Every other ball to me would be terrible, and the remainder were either simple passes that still managed to be placed badly, or long balls that were playing tag with the roof of the complex.

I had four decent chances: the first, I passed it, but it was a bad pass, I will admit - and I got accused of hogging by one of my team mates. The second and third, I touched it around the goalie, but got fouled badly both times. It was only to be met with the good old Winnipeg referee tradition of putting the whistling to your mouth and then failing to exhale.

The fourth involved me drawing everybody away from the same man who accused me of hogging, and squaring him a pass while he was wide open in front of the net.

He did the 4-year old ball-circling shuffle, and finally shot on a still wide open net. He then got saved, because he took way too long, and the goalie showed more heart than my teammate ever could.

To top his performance off, the asshole who had a go at me decided to have the worst clearance ever. I can't even find a clip of somebody just completely missing a ball that's in the air ripe for kicking, but that's essentially what he did. If you've seen how they do it on the FIFA games, this was exactly that - he swung, missed, hobbled around trying to regain his balance, and by then you're already swearing at your player for giving the opposition a breakaway.

All of this begs the question;

Why do I even bother?

Well, there are a few decent guys on that team, and I do like most of them. I do get a decent workout, and I have paid for it already.

Oh yeah, we lost 7-0, and I was visibly frustrated with my own team for the first time ever.

"I used to hate eight of my kids, now I hate three."

I'll make this snappy, because my life just seems to be in constant overdrive lately. The latest thing requiring overdrive is a Social Psychology test on Thursday for which I haven't even looked at the required material. I can't believe I'm getting into midterms already. Things are getting busier and busier, don't be surprised if you hear in the papers of me pulling my own head off with my bare hands.

The latest issue of getting paid to play involved two games, both losses. 2-1 with the Yellow Dogs (The team of political staff that I used to work with, formerly known as My Left Foot) and 6-3 with the Wife Beaters. The liberal views of the political staff have asked the league for my other team to change their name. Oddly enough, we don't have wives, and it was a girl who made/pushed the name.

Same old as far as the games go, regardless - I assisted a bunch, cleared one off the goal line, but not much else. I ran at people a lot more today, and had some skillful moves - I'm really working on getting my confidence up for the Futsal league. I also ended up getting hacked in the leg by one girl who I really think has got it in for me, and then I got a really bad one-timed ball to the face from a short distance off.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to do one of three things: Sleep, ponder my choice in career path, or study. Cheerio.

"Gabby was waving his arms around like a dutch windmill"

I discovered something very important last night.

In competitive games, I have no methods of getting around people other than my speed. My problem is that when tricks come, they're spontaneous and only occur in strange situations, such as the one time that I roulette'd out of being double teamed along the boards.

Jahan pointed this out to me. He likes my team play, but he wants me to "go for it" more. The exercise he gave me was to pretend there's a guy in front of me whenever I'm practicing dribbling - and to do it fast. It ought to help, but I find that the problem lies in the fact that I just don't have the confidence to do moves and other stuff when I'm face to face with somebody else.

We won the game we played 6-4, I scored and assisted one. The assist was nice, a little pass between some guy's legs to another guy who slotted in. My goal was a give & go that ended in my passing the ball to the very bottom corner of the net. When I received the pass, it felt weird on my foot - like it had molded to the told of it. Weird stuff.

And then I ended up getting stuck with managing the team, because Jahan is too busy. I weighed out the pros and cons, and decided that this was the way to go - Jahan in particular can teach me a lot of aspects that I will have a hard time learning anywhere else.

Greg's Cryotherapy Experiment

Alright, so I just gave something new a shot. It's called cryotherapy, and it supposedly increases healing speed.

The way it does this is by cooling the body to a point at which blood is focused in on the vital organs. The body does this by taking blood from the limbs. The blood, when not required in the central area in the body (when you warm up) will then flow back to the limbs, invigorating them with freshly oxygenated blood, which aids the healing process.

In short, it takes the somewhat stagnant blood and oxygenates it through technology.

Normally, cryotherapy occurs in a chamber at -120 degrees Celsius, but I figure a Winnipeg winter day also gets the same point across (-35 degree Celsius wind chill).

So I gave it a shot. I wore a toque, scarf, gloves, socks, shoes, and shorts to prevent frostbite on all the most easily afflicted parts, then went in my house's breezeway. The windchill had no effect here, so I called it quits after about five minutes of being only uncomfortably cold. More recently, I went outside into the wind, and stayed there for three minutes (the length of time for a normal session). Needless to say, I got really cold.

I'll let you know if it works, and maybe I'll post a picture of my goofy getup, too. I'm sure I look pretty funny.

Although I am a little disappointed, the more I read about it, the more it sounds like a sham. We'll see.

I have to go warm up now. I'm going to see if waffles will do the job.

"I don't have time to bear an olympic torch."

I know, I've neglected posting. Everything has been incredibly busy. I have a car once more, neat little Cavalier that feels more like a car years older than it is when you get into the driver's seat. Though I shouldn't complain - it is a convenience and pleasure to have, say the least. Also, my broke self managed to throw six dollars into the tank and make it through the city then back home with no worries, in spite of the light being on before. I'm excited to save money on gas. Perhaps I'll take a dividend of it and put that away somewhere?

Perhaps buying a laptop is the first order. I've wanted one for a while, and with my mobile existence, it would be quite a huge luxury.

In soccer news, if there were ever a week to mention that I'm more of an assisting player than a goalscorer, it would be this week.

There are a few games to mention. Tuesday, I played with two WRL teams, one named the Wife Beaters (The old Flood Minotaurs) and the ever-famous Wannabees. The Wife Beaters won 8-0, I scored once fairly easily, by just pulling a zico right near the opponent's net. It seemed to fool everybody, and I just poked it in. I assisted three more times.

For the Wannabees, we lost 6-3, but that is not the talking point of that match. A former player on other teams in WRL, Michele (A French fellow), and I had spoke, and it turns out he was on the youth team for Paris Saint-Germain. That's something else. I asked him what his biggest piece of advice was, and he cited "Monsieur Platini":

"First touch is the most important thing. If you have a good first touch, then you can do whatever you want with the ball."

He also said that Fabregas was in his mind the best player around, because of the fact that he looks and knows where he will pass before he even receives the ball.

Michele's idea of the best player.

Well, those are two things I should work on.

On Wednesday, Team Gigantic played a somewhat bad team called the Smurfs. In spite of them being a substandard team, we found ourselves down by one twice. Derek scored by (I'll generously call it) skillfully stomaching a ball into the net from a laser-fast shot. He almost also managed to walk a ball into the opponent's net using his height. Both events were pretty funny.

Also funny was when we were defending a lead in the last couple minutes, they pulled their goalie. I tried to take a free kick fast, but ended up slipping. The weird thing was is that it was their free kick after their goalie barreled over Jay. Also, I tried to take advantage of their goalie's reckless abandon by chasing down a long ball with my only opposition to an easy goal being a larger fellow. I ended up careening right into the boards, given me a bruise, which is surprising, because generally speaking, I rarely bruise. Of course, the bruise is now gone, but it was surprising none-the-less.

We ended up winning, in spite of some good play that almost set up a few goals.

Yesterday, I played Squash, Dodgeball, and Soccer, so needless to say, I'm sore in many parts today. I arrived at the AFC Soccer game late, and only got one shift, unfortunately. I played pretty horribly for that shift, and part of it involved me getting elbowed in the face. Such is life, I guess.

"Okay, so we have a Turk, a Persian, an Arab... And hey! One Canadian!"

Tonight's tryout with the aptly named AFC Soccer was a success.

I started the game and was a little shaky, due to nervousness. After I played a little, things started to look better. By the half, we were up 4-3, but I had only played one shift. Substitutions work a little differently, I've found. I played 5 minutes the first half.

At half time, Jahan came to me and asked if "someone could get on there and score a goal". I put my head down a little because I was still nervous, but he sent me out anyway. I think he was just trying to rile me up. I'm really not sure why I was nervous after that, because I had already played and was playing alright until then - maybe because I was only alright.

I got out and begun playing, and made a spectacular assist by threading a pass through a tight defense, resulting in a goal. Jahan called from the sidelines and said "that counted as the goal". I ended up playing 20 of 25 minutes of that half, first as an attacker, then as a defender.

After this, I started feeling really good about it all - I ended up scoring one of my favourites to date by hitting a corner kick with a one-timed volley. Now that was one I was happy for my dad to see. I headed a couple on target and had a few other good passes, but aside from that, it was a slightly above-average game for me, seeing as I lost possession a couple times when I could've scored.

When I was moved back into defense, it was fairly routine - but I did end up thwarting a 2-on-1 with little effort. I say this because I had lost concentration while marking down the channel, but still managed to kick away a ball that had been touched slightly too hard by one of their forwards. I have to watch for that, I was quite out of position and very well should have been burned.

I would say a scoreline of 14-4 was a good way to win, though.

Well I was hopin' that big old fuck would go in the corner...

It has been a somber day in my existence. Earlier, I had gone to my first car to clean all of my things out, as he was written off. Rest in peace my steel stallion.

Last night's game was one of the old Winnipeg co-ed derbies between us and Academy. The atmosphere is always tense, because they're a team full of assholes, one of which frequently bursts into extreme bouts of rage - I've mentioned him before. For the sake of this blog, we shall call him "Big old fuck" I still have yet to find and edit the video of him beating the shit out of the boards at halftime, when we stomped them in last year's cup final.

This time was no exception. I was playing Midfield, and was normally on a line with Jay. Big old fuck decided to trip Jay and then start yelling at him, with various swears and saying it's "not premier soccer anymore". I don't know what he was getting at there, seeing as he was the one flipping out in a co-ed game. But Jay and I got our revenge.

Jay was running up with the ball, me ahead of him. As usual, a flock of people dispossessed him near their box, and one passed it back to (who they thought) was a player of theirs behind them. This player was actually me, so I took a touch, and then rifled a shot top shelf-style past an onrushing goalie.

For the remainder of the first half, the score remained 1-0. When the second half begun, their best player scored (I had been marking him, but I was on the bench at the time thanks to equal opportunity). I marked him quite well, he only shot once around me the entire game, and the shot was well off target. I also hustled back and forth quite a bit, and had a few good runs.

I had a couple of headers, one on target, from accurate-enough-but-behind-me free kicks, and then a volley which went just over the net in the 40th minute, that I really should've took care to make go in.

In the last five minutes, I dispossessed somebody and ran up to face Big old fuck on a one on one. I shot, but it deflected oddly off both of us, falling for Adrian. Adrian took it, and shot it, bouncing it down off the crossbar for a goal to make it 2-1. I ran to him, screamed, and hugged him. We ended up winning the game, in spite of having to watch a nervy last 5 minutes.

After the game, which my dad watched and said was really exciting, we spoke on it for a while. He mentioned that Matt had played well, so I texted him:

"Hey man, my dad said you played well, and that you're fun to watch because you're physical."
"Nice thanx"
"No problem."
"Well I was hopin' that big old fuck would go in the corner so I could put him in the hospital"

So now, to me, he has a new name.

Big game tonight, it's a semi-tryout for a decent men's team that plays in the top division of a complex close to my area. The team I'm speaking of is AFC Soccer, and I imagine I'll do well, because the field is decently large. I'm feeling good about it, but we'll see.

Also worth noting is the White Eagles recent obsession with Red Dawn and Dirty Dancing. I think they've officially lost it - one teammate wants to "play 5 defenders only so we can clog up the back like a block of cheese". Another is sending video clips over E-mail.

My hair sounds like a dinosaur

I am sore for the first time in a long time. It was, in my mind, the snowboarding excursion I took yesterday, which was incredible. I ditched my fear of high speed travel on a board, which was kinda nice - flying down a mountain is quite liberating. I am unfortunately sore in various non-soccer parts, though, because I spent quite a lot of time in the half-pipe. Points of interest include getting clipped by my own lift chair, and getting smacked in the back of the head by a rogue chair.

Though when I say it like that, it doesn't make much sense. I was just walking, and then one clipped me. Thankfully, not too hard. It didn't hurt.

The White Eagles also had a game yesterday, against the (then) worst team in the league. If you wouldn't have been able to guess the result then, you probably can now. I ended up scoring one, assisting another, and then my team converted a spot kick, putting our score at 3 to their 7. I felt I had a good game. I had a lot of good through balls (two from insane distances that would've hit a faster striker), and a couple good breakaways, but I was unfortunate to be up against a good goalie. On the second, I had an absolutely amazing touch to put a ball behind and to the right of me ahead of me, but then quicker got stomped on by the goalie, literally and figuratively. It felt like I broke my toe. I went down, and the other team was nice enough to order themselves to kick the ball out. Thankfully, it was a mild sprain and what I think was a pinched nerve, and I ended up limping off with the help of one of the opposition's nice players.

My goal was your typical one-timer from the top of the box through a few people. I enjoyed it.

Today's White Eagles' practice was probably telling of our record. 4 others were there, and I arrived late. We passed a lot, played a bit of two-on-two, then I set up a one-timer/give and go drill after one of the guys left out of boredom. I'm not sure if that's funny or pathetic, or a bit from each column.

Oh, and here's a picture.

"It's a zombie banana." "Oh come on."

This is coming rather late, but school and (still) being without a car has hit my free time pretty hard.

Monday's game was a mess. Team Gigantic played a team by the name of Superfriends, who romped us 6-2. Rachel, a good friend of ours (who is normally on our team) was playing against us, and she's good. Unfortunately, our team was (jokingly) giving her a rough time before the game, so afterwards she reciprocated.

I had quite the game. This was after over an hour of squash with Brenden, earlier in the day, too, so I felt somewhat in shape compared to the rest of my team, who really did not seem to be hustling.

I was closing space well, making many steals, and I held up the ball and passed smartly in our attacking third. How it didn't amount to something, I don't know. I also just about beat two of their best players using my patented back heel wall pass and then just pure speed, but then I got fouled. It looked good, though.

Both of our goals were Jay's usually cross court magic, the second coming before the end of the game, when it was all but won for us. I heard two lonely claps, coming from my dad, who stopped once he realized nobody else in the entire complex was clapping.

As nice as Jay's goals are, he needs to pass the ball more. Much more. As in... I'm open, in front of their net with an easy and open pass route, and he has three people right on him kind-of pass the ball more.

They probably thought you were awesome

After a nice short break that allowed me to heal injuries, I was thrown back into the veritable meat grinder that is playing with the White Eagles Christmas tournament team.

I really don't know what happens to my teammates when we play. If I get the ball on the attack, they're behind me. If I'm defending, it's usually a 3-on-1. That being said, I've improved my shot blocking and defending a lot in the recent games. We got blown out on both Friday and Saturday, so much that the score was not being counted on the scoreboard anymore. I did score another goal on Saturday though. It was a header (on the ground after I stole it from the goalie and he took his time getting back). Normally this would be a slap in the face, but we were down by approximately 15 goals.

We should all have a sense of humor (Kinda like my Friday night).

Speaking of, all three goals my team scored in the Christmas tournament were scored by me.

For my first post of the new year, it should be fitting that I decide on some resolutions.

Any ideas? I mean, sure, attending my university classes is a good one...