October 10, 2011, 00:44
Music: We are the champions, Queen, and Chak de, India
Mood: Optimistic
Weather: Somewhat Warm @ 4°C?
Just think its Mexico; just imagine its Mexico. We are in Mexico, Mexico…yeah, we are in Mexico!
My Mexican friend kept shouting these words of encouragement even as we shuddered and shivered and the wind whistled gleefully through our collapsing bodies rustling it like paper; we were ready to play our third half-hour football match in two hours and desperately trying to warm up. For, what had started as a reasonably warm day (relatively) was now a cold and blustery one and this foreboded no good for man, beast, or unprepared football players. Or aching muscles. But this was our final league game of the Annual International Invitation Football event, and we had to win it to reach the final. We were the Kaktus InterContinental Team and we fully intended to live up to our motto: Cactus TEAM will make your ass prickled!
We took the field with a final clarion call, the war-cry “Go Kaktus go!”, and prepared ourselves for a final battle, a decisive march, a superb assault, to the finish. So this was it. Our chance for glory, for fighting, for triumphing, for winning, for destroying, for conquering!!
We’re gonna win,
Forget about a draw, we’re gonna score.
And then we’re gonna get a few more.
Maybe another one just to be sure.
We’re gonna win, Bryan Adams
Of course, we lost.
Actually, we didnt have a snowball’s chance in hell. We had just played for an hour with a mere few minutes rest, and we were already very tired; I was probably the most tired of them all, having last played football 15 years ago in school and having the fitness of a pampered Pomeranian, good for yelping and making noise but not for lasting much distance. And our biggest problem was that we did not have any replacements or substitutes, which made our task that much more difficult.
Warming up before match
But the loss did nothing to dampen our enthusiasm; we were still a tiredly happy bunch. We had played so much with so much fun, joy, and spirit, and competed with so much heart…A team that had never played before bonded through sheer joi de vivre. Win or lose, this is the essence of sports. Joy.
The seeds were sown when a week ago, I had wondered why I had not seen any football matches or football teams or anyone interested in football in Finland. Football, after all, is the world’s most popular game, but I was soon to learn that ice hockey is far more popular here. Whats more, Finland is the reigning ice hockey champion, whereas it has never even qualified for the Football World Cup. Like, Never Ever. Luckily, Lappeenranta is a mere 200 km from Russia, the Russians play a lot of football, and I had wondered aloud to a bunch of Russians (and a Spaniard and a Mexican who needed even less encouragement; football to them is like red blood corpuscle). In a jiffy, eager voices started planning a game, forming a team, finding a suitable time,…, that is, until the eagerness died down when we realized that neither did we have a ball nor a ground!
But, just when our footballing dreams had neatly slivered itself into myriad pieces and slowly vanished came the announcement of an invitation tournament for all students! A football tournament for students? This was such a marvelous coincidence! With a dribble and a flanking run, we signed on the dotted line. But what about thename…the name…hmmm…the name…Suddenly, one teammate looked up at my shirt and grinned Cactus! As it happened, I was wearing the shirt that was given to me as my team shirt while playing cricket for my former company, Cactus Communications! In such serendipities are cosmic connections woven, for I had never won in the cricket contests at Cactus either but had always had a lot of (consolatory) fun! It was a bit like the fox and the sour grapes, except that here, the fox says, “What the heck! I had fun jumping for the grapes!”
Of course, this was Finland and so the name had to be pronounced Kaktoos (with stress on first syllable in Finnish style)! Every continent, except Australia, was represented, and so it had to be Kaktoos Intercontinental Team. And whats a game without bluster? So our motto had to be Cactus TEAM will make your ass prickled! Tee hee.
Unlike India, Western countries afaik give tremendous importance to sports and sporting activities. Almost every person I have met here play some game or the other, and often, all games. Of course, not necessarily extremely well, but playing sports is as much a part of the psyche as, say, beer. In contrast, I remember that many people in my engineering college barely played any game, and even later, I would find it difficult to find people willing to play some game or the other. Parental pressure, lack of facilities, hardly any grounds, no incentivizing, too much homework…? On the other hand, here, everyone played often: table tennis, some badminton, basketball, or volleyball. Or something else. Hell, I even played cricket with a bunch of Pakistanis. And sometimes even the somewhat outlandish hitherto unheard of games. One of my Russian friends is a wrestler and not an ordinary one at that; he practices the sambo. With unbridled enthusiasm and a distinct gleam, he introduced me to Alexander Karelin, probably the greatest Greco-Roman wrestler ever (he used to perform the famous Karelin lift) and a monster fighter called Fedor Emelianenko, a heavyweight mixed martial artist whose performances have to be seen to be believed; in fact, he was undefeated for more than a decade. And the games and sports were not always the competitive kind: one of the favorite activities of our group was to meet up for a cup of tea and some cake/refreshments and play Uno or poker or dominoes, which was also the kind of partying I enjoyed thoroughly!
Happy, playing table tennis!
I had been playing quite a bit of table tennis till one, just one, of our bats inexplicably vanished into thin air, and plans to buy badminton bats were in their nascent stages; for the time being at least, it was football time. Time to play for ten minutes, put in a decent performance, and head back home, happy at having played. After all, how well can a ragtag bunch of semi-fit amateurs without even a regular goal-keeper play merely on the currents of unbounded enthusiasm?
And so, as we took our positions, chosen more or less randomly, on D-Day, I was already looking forward to reaching home. But I had not reckoned with one important factor: all teams were more or less ragtag makeshift ones with two or three very good individual players. I had chosen the position of defender for myself for several reasons: I was the most unfit of them all and defenders had to run the least; it was a difficult, crucial, and totally thankless job; and if we could not score, at least I could ensure that they did not score! Unfortunately, I had never ever played as a defender before and had absolutely no technique or skill to deal with rampant forwards. Nevertheless, despite my ineptness, we won the first match 3-1 on the back of our Russian forward who played wonderfully, weaving and twisting past defenders and scoring all three goals. Thats when I began believing. And despite a non-existent defense and a first-time part-time goalie, we had made a fist of it!
But the next match was immediately after, and tired and battered, we lost it 1-4 due to some poor defending and sheer inertia. In my opinion, my poor show was responsible for at least two goals, but it did not matter: we were too pooped to do too much good. And then was our third and final match in which we gave everything, ultimately losing 0-1; I redeemed myself by making an important save in the dying minutes and suffered a blow to the ankle in the process, but sadly, could not prevent that single solitary goal that dashed our hopes like a bullet into a crow’s brain.
Battered and bruised, tired and deflated, we finally made our way home immersed in the mellow hues of a gently setting day. Ultimately, despite our non-expectations, it was a morale-sapping, emotion-draining, sweat-drenching, physically demanding loss. Every part of my body was now aching and it was to continue to ache for 4-5 days. Our bodies had taken a beating and bruising, our muscles were groaning, and we were physically and mentally hurt. Still, our spirits with abandon soared, our voices with gaiety diffused, and our throats with eagerness wondered. Hey, so when shall we play again? This Friday?
A man can be destroyed but not defeated.
Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Lappeenranta Sojourn 