Tuesday 18th December 2007, Cerreti. Scorer: Mark (pen)Now, I suspect many of us, round about the age of 8 or 9 years old, flirted with the idea of being a goalkeeper. Maybe some of us even bought a pair of gloves, or even a goalie shirt. Maybe we insisted our hero was the goalkeeper of our favourite team. THERE comes a time though when ordinary people have to let go of this dream, when they discover the the better things in life and abandon the solitary solace of the muddy goalmouth, and start to look for more excitement. Cars, women, playing on the pitch. Some people, the proverbial 'last pick' in the playground, remain goalkeepers though, never graduating from that number one spot, either through being kept in there by their peers or because they have found their niche as see no reason to come out from under the crossbar. In the past two and a half years we have had a few people who have entirely voluntarily gone in goal for this side: Barnaby, that French kid with the long hair and, of course, the founding father of the internet, apparently, Tom Gilmour. In that period we have also had a fair few other fill-in keepers: Fabian, Andrew (who got knocked out doing it), Igor, Nate, Charles, to name a few, and now me.
It is often true of keepers that they are so unpopular that even the grass doesn't bother to grow where they stand. Well, we don't play on grass so I felt pretty popular as I let in a goal in the first minute without having touched the ball. Brilliant. Bad defensive error, and not a good thing to do given our potentially fragile mentality what with a relatively makeshift line-up, with Dom and Mate starting togther in the middle of the park, Tijl on the right, and Leo on the left, and Jonny and David up front. Simon came in at centre back for his first start of the season and Andrew moved back to his beloved rightback spot. Here we go, I thought. To our great credit though, I acted as nothing more than a glorified sweeper for the next 78 minutes, as we put on our best team performance of the season, with great variation form Dom and Mate, great selfless running from David and Jonny and an outstanding performance from the entire defence, in particular Simon who played better than than I have ever seen him play before, and who was probably man of the match. In the 80th minute I finally had something to do again, after Mark had leveled with a penalty, as Jason Lee (google it if you don't know) closed in on me after the ball skipped off Si's head. It honestly didn't seem a weird thing to do at the time, but the comments, bemusement and laughs from almost everyone at the end of the game made me think that maybe it wasn't the done keeper thing to do to take it off the striker's toe, shimmy past him and dribble forward out of the box. I was honestly going to carry on going until I remembered what position I was playing.
After the game we were told by Tijl of women's sexuality in bar fiasco, the manifestation of which is somehow summed up in the Vanneste classic of 'come into my lovenest'. Ask Mark. Would it be mean at this point to say that Tijl missed the biggest open goal I have seen in years in the last minute of this game? Slightly. We all know that it could have happened to any of us. We also hit the post and had three cleared off the line in the first half as we showed great discipline to keep our shape and keep the ball moving, with people constantly giving options to the man on the ball. We looked confident in possession, and, after our first minute lapse, secure at the back. Simon summed it up when he broke down the play, dribbled out of defence, pushed Mate out of the way, continued forward and pinged it out to Leo who was storming down the left.
This game was also of note because of the fact that it was the first one I have played for the EUI where the wind has been a factor, with it being so hard in the first half that I had tears in my eyes. It also made life as a goalkeeping a goalkeeping sweeper easy, as everything came through to me. In the second half, with the wind at our back we perhaps didn't tr your luck enough with shots from around the box, even though I was screaming to do it after their keeper got injured (twice). Our great play finally got the goal it deserved when Jonny won us a penalty (although the bizarre decision to punch it also had something to do with it). Mark did a little dance with the keeper on the penalty spot and then fell out with him after he'd slotted it home. For once, we all enjoyed Mark's display of aggression! Leo did a Mario Mendez after he disgracefully fouled their full back who was ushering the ball out over the goal line and then picked up the ball and twatted at the guy. Hmmm. Fair enough. It turned out that Leo had influenced some of our impressionable young players as David followed suit and got booked for a similar thing. All very amusing, until you all get suspended, like bad boy Irial for this game. I spent most of the second half absolutely freezing to death, with the equally cold, but slightly better wrapped up fans kept amused by my attempts to keep warm. Markie Jones did a great job of making sure everyone heard all my instructions at least twice as he bellowed my calls verbatim up the pitch.
Andrew also got booked when he crocked their player, Fabian style in their box, when he simply failed to realise that you can't score a trademark cross when the ball is simply not there. Eek. Last few seconds, Dom does brilliantly in the box, skips past a couple hits it at goal, deflected, runs across the face, miss. Oh well. Two points dropped, but a good performance, another comeback, great character and discipline ans selflessness, and now five unbeaten. We played very well, made easily enough chances to win it comfortably, gave them only a chance and a half and stopped them from playing and had them on the back foot for the whole game. A great performance from a lot of players who have all done easily enough to keep their place for the next game, which after the Christmas break at Sales vs Sporting Club Firenze. Bagsy not in goal.
We also (maybe) saw Arnout play his last (and outstanding) game for the EUI. Good luck Arnout! We will all miss you, especially Mark.
Another thing of note: of the twelve in the squad for this game there were only four PhD researchers. Me, Mark, Tijl and David. Where are the other 300 or so? Fourth place at Christmas. A few wins and we're right up there.
Team: Luke - Andrew, Arnout, Simon, Mark - Tijl, Mate, Dom, Leo - Jonny, David.
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