Fin de semana de futbol

Something I've found very interesting in the past couple years playing in the Mexican and Ecuadorian futbol leagues around here is the overlap between leagues, and how playing in one league often leads to playing in another, and then another, and then another, and if you play in more than one league, you tend to run in to the same players time and time again.

Up until last weekend, I was playing for two teams--Club America in the Mexican league, and Virgen de la Nube in the Ecuadorian league. This weekend, one of my America teammates asked me to play with a third team in another Ecuadorian league, Santa Picosas. I agreed, one, because I love playing futbol in these leagues, even if it isn't of the highest quality or skill, and two, because she was desperate for players, and I know how hard it can be to be in charge of a team and not have players show up consistently.

So this weekend, I played one game on Saturday, and two games today (Sunday). We won the first two games, but lost the third, and the really amusing thing was, in the two games today, I ended up playing the same team. For whatever reason, it just worked out that, with Virgen de la Nube we played Gualacero, and with Santa Picosas we played Gualacero. The fact that my team won the first but lost the second simply has to do with skill level. The girls on Picosas are beginners, most haven't been playing for very long, have had no coaching beyond very basic stuff, and considering that, they have a great attitude toward it all. To be honest, I enjoyed the game we lost as much as the game we won.

I read an interview awhile ago, maybe by Fernando Torres, but I'm not sure, where the player was saying that, no matter where you score a goal, the feeling, the joy and euphoria is the same, whether it's on a tiny patch of grass in a backyard, or on the biggest stage under the brightest lights. And truly, I think he was right. All of the girls on these three teams, we're just women with jobs and families and many, many more things to attend to than futbol. But for us, just playing the game is in itself a joy, a kind of escape from the daily grind and a chance to do something out of pure love of and dedication to the game itself. We'll never be great, we'll probably never even be very good, but sometimes I think we get even more joy out of playing than the pros.