Back on the Pitch, Part Deux!

I love soccer. Back on the pitch tonight after 7 weeks rehabbing from the latest misfortune of age (a slightly twisted lower lumbar, combined with a weakenend muscle on the left side of the vertebrae that sent everything crashing out of sync and sending me into physical therapy. Oh yes, and there was the three or four weeks I spent in a Vicodin-induced cloud, shuffling around like George Burns, only not as straight...but I digress) and it felt great. No, great is too mild a word. Exhilarating! Elating! Electrifying!

Hey, and we played well. We utilized short passes, and the long ball when it suited us. We maintained posession and distributed smartly to the wings. We pressured the other team. In short, we did everything we usually don't do. We even took the lead 2-1 for a time in the 2nd half, but unused to being ahead, we lost our focus and surrendered the equalizer shortly after. That's the way the game ended. But the last time we played this team they beat us something like 4-0, and they were playing a man down all game long. So, chalk it up as a tie that feels like a win.

The odd thing is how good it felt to me to touch the ball, to run with it at my feet, to feint a move one way, then pull the ball back inside and hit the pass I intended to hit all along. To run like it was the night my legs would ever work again. Seven weeks away. I really missed it. And to think I only picked up the game two years ago. If I'd been playing from my youth, there'd really be no hope for me at all.

I keep saying 'last word on Zidane' and I keep breaking my promise. This time I'm not even going to promise anything. Bill Saporito writes in Time Magazine that FIFA should punish the real villian and dedicate itself to ending the type of ugly, foul-plagued, foul-mouthed football represented by Marco Materazzi. Here! here!