The Gypsy of the Coverall

I asked Derek about who I've been reminding him of lately, after taking his advice on using my speed. In all honesty, I've been making a lot of Messi-esque runs lately. That being said, I'm nowhere near equal to him, but there is no shadow of a doubt in my mind that I've improved recently.

Messi.

Derek's answer was probably the best compliment anybody's given me in months. He thought I was comparable to Cesc Fabregas, "Cause theres a lot of raw talent there with the potential to improve. Good vision with the ball, but doesn't score as often as u/he could". Wow. Just, wow. That text message will forever bring a smile to my face. What makes it all the nicer is, if you're easily provoked to remember nuances (and have read the particular post) when Michele mentioned he thought the best player in the world was Cesc Fabregas. There's a strange coincidence between this entry and that one, other than the whole Fabregas deal - see if you can figure it out. As always, the answer is at the end of this post.

Before we get too far into that, I'd like to recap a game from last Wednesday, with the Chilly Willies.

First, there's a gulf in talent the size of my town between the leagues, so I used it as good opportunity to pass the ball around to my new teammates and get a feel for how they play. I ended up getting one or two assists and a couple nice goals in our game to seed us in a higher league - we won 10-5. There's a huge issue about fitness though, you know it's bad when teammates have to go throw up. Fortunately, I wasn't one.

The first of my goals was a long curling shot headed for the bottom corner. I had the time to do so, so I fired a speculative shot from about fifteen yards out. It was quite nice, indeed. The second goal was a classic turn & shoot from the top right corner of the box, that went across the keeper, bounced off the far post and went in. A huge thank you to the EPL commentators for telling me a couple days previous that those sort of shots were hard to save. 'Bout time I learned from TV.

Now, today, with Team Gigantic, I started on a shift with a few of our more inexperienced players. The opposition, who were aptly named the Smurfs (They were blue and troublemakers) began hammering us, shot after shot. They eventually got a free kick and scored off the rebound due to a lack of marking, then turned up the heat again when they (quickly) regained possession. The first time the ball hit my feet, I literally thought "Fuck this" to myself, and began sprinting to their goal from 4/5ths of the field away. It was almost as though I saw red for a short while, literally - I wanted that goal. I darted and dashed through many a player, and when I had made it past enough of them, which was many three or four defenders, and let it rip, and nailed the crossbar with quite a bit more force than Newton's laws could calculate. I think, in that short second, my heart broke then quickly fixed itself.

My lack of touch/luck for goals in that game really didn't subside until the dying few minutes, where I hit a normally pretty easy shot pretty badly. It was headed well wide, easily by 5 meters, when a poor girl happened to cower in its way. The second the ball hit my foot, I knew it was terrible, and I was about to turn and throw my palm into my face, or vice-versa. It just so happened that the fearful member of their team deflected it with a surprising amount of force into their net, and thus, I had my goal. I'm sitting on four goals in two games, which isn't all that bad. I'm proud to be leading the team, but ashamed to not be leading the league, which is the ultimate goal for the quenching of my ego. Unfortunately for me, some guy managed two hat tricks in two games.

Maybe I should aim for second best. That, or I can see if I've got any more five-goal games in me.

I suppose the 5-2 victory was bittersweet, as I absolutely had the shit kicked out of me. I distinctly remember flying a couple times due to challenges from various men built like bags of bricks. I should maybe ask Fabio to protect me a little more.

Answer to quiz: In both posts, Team Gigantic had played the Smurfs.