I just joined a co-ed league and I have yet to meet my teammates. It’s apparently a series of six on six games (four guys, two girls) spread over two months, a battle of the ages for a morale-boosting trophy. Sounds exactly like the kind of challenge an Eastern European man is suited for.

As I look at my gym bag, stuffed with indoor shoes, socks and shin guards, I smile (and tremble) in anticipation.

This morning at work somebody said soccer was boring. This argument doesn’t rile me anymore because soccer in America IS boring, and I believe it’s because parents waste tons of hours watching their kids play. And their kids, well, they suck (most of the time).

Soccer is an equal opportunity sport in America. The kids that play are most likely the ones that didn’t seem destined for quarterbacking their high school team or pitching deep into the summer in little league play. They play soccer because everybody can. It’s less a game than an exercise. As long as you don’t trip while chasing the ball–and like a swarm of bees they all chase the ball–you’re a soccer player.

Growing up in Romania soccer was a dictatorship of the able. Fat? Stay inside. Scared? Play and we’ll slide tackle you into manhood. A girl? Please, don’t waste our time–go prepare for motherhood.

I wouldn’t go as far as saying soccer was survival, but it was integration. If out of the 20 boys in your class you could make the team of seven playing against the other classes, you had some sort of life. If you weren’t good enough, simply being there wouldn’t help you. Not even your gym teacher would plead your case. After all, he doesn’t want the other gym teacher (who is taller and beefier anyway) to find more reasons to mock him.

Soccer is boring in America because it’s safe. Not only physically, but socially. And I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I will admit the cynic in me says nothing is worse than making soccer boring.

I am not much of a player. I barely made the first seven through grade school and probably reached the status of being fourth or fifth in rank on our high school team, but we only had 10 boys in our class. Still, if I am to rank my best and worst soccer moments on the field, safety–of any kind–wasn’t part of either. And yes, of course we were playing on cement. I almost never played on something other than cement until I came to grad school in the US.

Here’s the worst:

Sixth grade. Our team, the class of 6A were in the school final facing our arch enemies, 6D. We played 6D often in gym class and it was always war. We had two kids in our class who had been playing professionally (whatever that means in sixth grade) and the rest of us were not too bad either. We even had a great goalie, Vali. The game went to over-time and it seemed to be headed to penalties to break the tie. That’s when a long ball was lobbed towards our box. I was playing defense at the time and ran to head it out but caught it to late. What I did was give the ball a bounce further back rather than push it forward. What I didn’t know was that Vali had ran out of the goal himself. As we both turned to follow the arc of the ball, I knew I’d never forget this. I was watching the downfall of a potentially good memory. The ball landed in our open goal, and one minute later, our dream crumbled when the whistle blew. I had scored a memorable own goal and my classmates were not very happy. A couple wanted to beat me up, other cursed my mother. I thought it safe to stay home for a day.

And here’s one of the good ones (none of them can claim to be the best):

Senior year of high school. At the end of high school, each class gets to play a friendly game against a team of teachers. Since there are often not enough teachers to field a competitive team, former and current students join them. For their game against 12 F (my class) they had the best goalie in our high school, a slim and aggressive fellow that loved to come out and rough the strikers (I was now a striker after my defensive exploits years back). It wasn’t the hardest game we’d ever played and the stakes weren’t too high either. But we had a crowd and it’s always harder to play when people cheer for your team. But on that night, it all worked great. We thrashed them 8-3 and I scored five of those (or was it 5-2 and I scored three? Pffff, memory). Of those five or three, there’s one I’ll never forget. I got a pass in empty space and I was running at the goal, when all of a sudden the goalie charged like a bull. I couldn’t avoid him, but he was slick enough to slide into me, literally swiping my feet and tossing me in the air like a rag doll. I landed pretty bad and I could tell there’d be blood. I got up slowly, bones intact, and there was indeed blood from a cut on my knee and a bad bruise on the elbow. But the ball was in the net and the crowd loved it.

Update (a day later): Our indoor team won last night, resoundingly so. Final score: 13-5.

The saying doesn’t only apply to the Romanian national team trying to make the World Cup or our pathetic club teams struggling to save face on the European scene–this also applies to 6-on-6 backyard games where there is nothing at stake but the manly pride of players. A young Romanian male playing with his friends is not just kicking it around for exercise; he plays for a moment of glory and heroism, hoping his lousy job and fashion-unconscious haircut will be forgotten by the rest of the team. He plays to show he has balls–enough of them to pleasure a whole squadron of drooling 16-year-old girls, whom society has told that there is nothing weirdly creepy about being the love interest of men 25 and over.

Last night, my brother and I stood next to 10 men who felt more or less like the above. Battle runs thick through the Romanian veins and last night it pumped at full speed as rain was pouring and making every touch a struggle. For those who don’t understand–there is something very Herculean about braving the elements for the love of the game.

One summer night when I was a kid I stayed out late because the team from our block was playing some boys from a couple blocks away in a particularly charged encounter. It was raining, it was dark and the fight was won. My dad finally found me and hauled me home grabbing me by the ear. He administered me some slaps as we headed inside and left me in the hallway as he fumingly went to prepare a hot bath for his illness-defying-god-of-soccer son. I stood in front of the mirror, drenched and imagining I was Rocky being pounded by Apollo Creed (or Ivan Drago if you wish). There was no blood or bruises, but the wet hair sticking to my skull, the exhaustion and the eventual glory were close enough. “Adriaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnn,” I probably screamed at the mirror.

Last night was the first time in four (or is it five?) years that I found myself playing soccer on home soil. I was like a Major League Soccer transfer, an East Coast white guy from the suburbs who had spend his past couple of years playing with Americans of various skills and even worse, women! What kind of pussy was I? There I was on astroturf (which was locked inside a cage so the ball doesn’t fly to far), thinking of our Missouri based Church of Soccer, a Sunday morning endeavor that never got as intense as the hour spent with these local dudes. Back in the US, they thought I was spoiling the game because I kept score–they never understood how much I had lost as a player and a red-blooded Eastern European male the day I first passed upfield to a woman. On the field last night, I was apparently too relaxed for my team-mates, as if being five or six goals up was not enough. Players were screaming, yelling, shoving, shooting the damn ball from all angles probably imagining cameras flashing from all around the cage and scouts going “hell yeah!”

I felt as if I was wearing a T-shirt saying “This guy played in the US” and I didn’t know whether they would tackle me for that heresy or tackle me because, as someone who left to find the light, I wouldn’t understand know how hard it was to find a field to play on (yes, they pay a monthly fee to play in the cage on Sunday and Wednesday nights at 10 PM–about $300 for eight games).

But that was all in my head because I don’t think any of them knew who I was or how I ended up there. I was just the brother of a guy they knew, someone they wouldn’t pass to often enough because they didn’t know what he’d end up doing with the ball, someone who seemed to be taking it a bit to lightly in victory and they didn’t want to imagine that I could be smiling if we were 6 goals down.

The truth is I probably couldn’t have smiled if we were losing. I’m not that American.

You can download my predictions in an Excel format here.

You can also use this blank nifty Excel sheet made by these guys to produce your own predictions.

If you are so inclined to look at my version of the World Cup, you will notice much personal bias directed towards England and the Netherlands. In my world they both reach the semi-finals and England ends up winning the thing. I’m betting on Australia and Sweden to be the nice surprises. I also believe Germany and Argentina will disappoint, and no African team will be able to hold it together enough to make the second round. South Korea makes the second round but loses in a penalty shoot-out (about time). USA to the second round? Not this time–Nedved’s knees will last just long enough.

Run your World Cup and tell us about the winners in the comments section. A couple of my friends have already went through the process and so far we have as winners: England (2 votes), Czech Republic (2 votes) and Brazil (2 votes).

Here are some more links in case you are lusting for World Cup information:
- Fifa World Cup Germany 2006 (official site)
- BBC Sport World Cup
- ESPN SoccerNet
- New York Times World Cup blog
- World Cup Kickoff (calendar for your Outlook)

So, how do you define an idiot? An idiot is part of a team that allows three goals in one half. This idiot can often be found playing for a Romanian soccer team if not the national squad itself.

I know — I’m angry and I’m using hyperbole. But I earned my right to do both by having to watch this game.

It’s been three years since I’ve seen Steaua play a game from start to finish. When I left Romania in 2003 they’ve had a consistent record of blowing games at the European cup level. This season was different — something came over Romanian soccer and we had two teams in the final eight. Steaua itself came 45 minutes away from the final and then… as on command, they remembered their past 10 years of sucking.

They rushed back to their own half, waited there like sheep on crack and allowed the English to pummel them.

I guess I wanted to post something because apart from my anger at the way Steaua played, I’m trying to anticipate the anger that overwhelms me after soccer apologists in my country take the mic. These people usually say the grass was wet, the referee was against us, key players were injured or the beds in Steaua’s hotel were too soft. There is no one else to blame but the 11 terrified sheep that were on the field that second half and the coaches who thought that was a smart strategy. You can’t blame anyone when you lose a semifinal after being 3-0 up.

I knew there was a reason I switched to watching American football. No matter how many games the Redskins lost in the final minutes (and they lost a bunch last season) I was never as emotionally invested as to yell my heart out in anger.

Below is the Reuters item in its entirety. I really have no comment.

BUCHAREST (Reuters) – Romanian second division soccer club UT Arad sold a player in exchange for 15 kilograms of meat, local sport daily Pro Sport reported on Monday.

However, fourth division Regal Horia made a bad deal because defender Marius Cioara decided to end his footballing career and take off to Spain to find a job in agriculture or construction.

“We are upset because we lost twice – firstly because we lost a good player and secondly because we lost our team’s food for a whole week,” a Regal Horia official was quoted as saying by the daily in its electronic edition.