"I Probably Play Like A Cow"

I’ve been over here for a month and haven’t written a considerable amount about soccer. Let’s try to fix that.

Soccer is very big over here just not at all with the white or even Indian population. 90% of the time I bring up that I’m looking for a soccer team I’m told that I should take up rugby, cricket, squash, or hockey. To be honest there is a part of me that wants to experience something totally different (even though ucsc does have a rugby team) but that’ll have to come later.

Virgilio (from Mozambique) told me that he has some friends playing in the Sunday league at the university and we might be able to jump on the field with them. He says it’s not very serious (it’s referred to as the ‘hangover league’ in zulu). So on Sunday we went to check it out, boots in hand. I was expecting something small but found an 11v11 match going on a FULL-SIZED field. We’re talking professional sized. When virgilio’s friend, taylor, showed up with his team they all had matching jerseys, shorts, socks etc. and when they started warming up, they used rehearsed warm-ups like the team did when I was on the wrestling team. All synchronized and disciplined. Both teams did this. Soccer is taken very seriously over here… by the players. The spectators (virgilio and I were among them) spent the 90 minutes yelling at taylor’s team (they called the tall skinny goalie “sticks”) and complained about every missed shot and missed call. I was laughing my ass off until I realized that virgilio said we might be playing for this team in several weeks. Just imagine how bad the taunting would be if there was a white guy on the field.

If you don’t think it would be that bad, let me take you back to the previous day when virg and I went to a bar with a projection tv showing the premier league matches. One of the commercials is a bunch of black kids in south Africa picking teams to play some soccer. They’re going back and forth until every kid is picked. But then… a white kid shows up on the pitch and everyone falls silent (even the kids in the stands just there to watch). Nobody knows what to say until one kid pipes up, “don’t pick him he probably plays like a cow”. It ends with them asking his name and him being invited to play. They have a commercial encouraging blacks to let whites play soccer with them. I’m not sure if that’s good for me or bad. Wait, I do know. It’s bad.

So I’m not sure how the hell I’m supposed to get on this Sunday hangover team so I’ll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, Richard from the Durban office has invited me to play for his outdoor team that is playing this Thursday. I’m going to borrow the company vehicle and drive to Durban on Thursday (I’ll be taking one of the secretaries, Ramona, with me to navigate). The next soccer opportunity is a different league also in durban that bcp is sponsoring. That one should be more laid back seeing as it has a bunch of engineers on the team.