An interesting week for me...

It started last Wednesday, with my first double-header match i've participated in since I was in college (no need to discuss time frame, but it was a while ago). As the season ended in the league i'm currently in, we had to win to go on to the finals. Sadly, we did not do this, we actually played a pretty bad match and the opponents played an excellent match (no need to discuss the score, but there was a pretty big goal difference). The "consolation" match was between us and the last place team in the 5 team league. This match was played directly after our horrible loss...and was the last place team's ONLY match of the night. Though we were obviously a bit worn out from putting in the extra effort during the first match, ending proudly without getting shut-out, it seemed to be the warm up we needed...well, I needed. I thought I played pretty piss-poor in the first match but was not unhappy about my play in the second. Unfortunately, in the end, our second match was a draw though I think we had both control of the ball most of the match and several more shots on goal than our opponent. Here's to hoping we are able to find a keeper for the coming season...which starts in September.

Next we head to La Liga, another new season and another death to a prominent Spanish team's player. The captain for Espanyol, Daniel Jarque, died of a heart-attack this weekend. Yet another, high-end player in La Liga goes down to a heart problem. With little in the way of details about this, I'll just say it's sad to see such a thing happen to such a promising talent so early in life. And, like Sevilla's Antonio Puerta, from almost exactly two years ago, who suffered a heart attack during the first match of the season, Jarque had a child on the way. Just too hard to truly comprehend, but I do wish his family and his team well.

Also, in La Liga news, there were a few matches of an international friendly nature on US soil. The first I saw was the DC United vs Real Madrid match. I am NOT a fan of either team, but for some reason I still enjoyed DC getting their butts kicked by the La Liga giants. I'm not sure what outcome would have given me a more satisfying feeling but after watching Sevilla get knocked out of the Peace Cup rather early I've not really found any pre-season La Liga matches to be truly entertaining. Even was a little disappointed in Barcelona with their draw against Chivas de Guadalajara. Disappointing in that Barca held the ball most of the match and even had nine shots on goal to Chivas' two shots, but they were never able to get it in the net. Again, it's all pre-season friendlies i'll take with a grain of salt.

From here we head towards some good news in my book... St. Pauli wins the opening match of their Second Bundesliga 2009-2010 campaign, 2-1 versus Rot Weiss Ahlen. With two of their main attackers out with injuries this is a good start. Here's to a great season for St. Pauli!! To add to this, I just read an interesting article in which the author gives the MLS some advice about how they could learn a thing or two from St. Pauli and the way the team management/owners treat their "ultra" fans.

Independientes F.C.

So, not the best time for me lately. Blogging is not high on my list of "things to do." But with the first season with Independientes F.C. coming to an end, I thought I should mention a couple things about that.

Although it's basically the remainders from C.T.C.F.C. (this is all over 30s, the Open CTC
team is still around), we do have a handful of new players making this
a relatively new team. Things started to click with our new "two team"
plan of attack, but we still weren't getting the wins we had hoped for.
Goals were being scored, but we were still getting scored on quite a
bit. Sadly, in a game when we didn't have enough players for the two
team attack, we finally got a win. It was still a close match and we
only won by a goal, but we won.

In the week prior to our first
win, I actually got my first goal in a couple seasons. Don't normally
brag about this but it was a goal that had several folks from the
sidelines, my teammates and even the keeper for the other team
complimenting the goal. Danny O. lobbed a ball into the box from the
left side. I came running in from the "18" (it's super six, so probably
closer to the 10 or so), and crossed in front of both the defender and
the keeper to nail a header into the bottom corner. Definitely in my
list of my favorite goals, which up to this point pretty much included
every goal I've scored...all dozen or so of them. After that one, I
decided to narrow it down to my top four or five. (Side note: a week
later, Celtic F.C. played for theSPL championship and won the match with a very similar goal. Made me proud on two levels.)

Yesterday
we won our second match in a row...and this one was another close one,
had to take it into an extra period. As time in the second half wound
down, and we were losing by a goal, I fed KG a ball up the right hand
side. I was immediately upset as I fed it a little further up than I
had wanted to. But KG was able to get control, bring it inside avoiding
the defender and take a pretty hard shot. I still thought the angle was
too much, but rushed the goal hoping for a rebound. We got lucky and
the keeper bobbled the ball against the post and it bounced in off his
shoulder. As the ball was being picked up the ref blew the whistle, we
tied it up! In the extra period (not a golden goal situation) we were
able to put another one in and held on, just barely, to win the match.
Next week will be our final match of the season.

We are probably
going to skip the summer season, with many of our players coaching h.s.
teams and summer is prep time, plus if the heat last night was any
indication of what this summer is going to be like, our old bones might
NEED to sit out this summer.