BEHIND THE PLAY #71

There’s been a spate of games recently that reminded me that I still have an irrational, immature love of this sport and it’s been refreshing. Even if I still don’t understand how and why we form connections like this.

Why?

This is me and two of my kids at the Canada vs Mexico World Cup qualifier in November 2021. The two games played there (the other was against Costa Rica) are better known as Iceteca for the snow. The video features me in a very un-me like state of mind screaming at players and the ref as we got closer to finally beating Mexico in a World Cup qualifying game.

I watch a lot of games. Live and on TV. I generally approach them the same way. Like a player and coach of which I am now both in the ‘former’ category. But it’s a habit that won’t go away. I am often not following the ball when I watch a game live. I’m looking to see what the defensive shape looks like for the team without the ball or for patterns of attack.

Yep, one of those. A ‘student’ of the game. Erudite. Refined. Generally pretty quiet and maybe making occasional comments about how the game is going if I’m with someone of a similar bent. Definitely not a “You suck, ref!” type or a singer of songs. To boil it down to its essence: I’m generally not the most fun guy to watch a game with .

But sometimes…

This is from the first leg of Champions League semi-final between Liverpool and Barcelona in 2019. I pulled my youngest out of his Grade 11 schooling for ten days to shoot over to Europe to see what ended up being four games in Spain and one game, the return fixture of this semi-final, in Liverpool.

Like the first clip at Iceteca it features us laughing and screaming in awe at seeing the goal that would be declared best goal of that year’s Champions League by UEFA.

I have a couple of other clips of games I’ve been at where the phenomenal happened. Where a moment of un-reproduce-able genius or tension on a field took place and my body disconnected from any and all cerebral analysis and I instantly transformed into a screaming, laughing, swearing man-child that had once again allowed a game to overwhelm him emotionally to the point where I was swearing loudly at a ref that, even then, I must have known did not hear me. But these two make the point sufficiently and I’m cringing at the thought of adding anymore.

The Scotland vs Denmark World Cup qualifier earlier in the week was just another example of what I’m talking about. I watched it alone and if anyone had seem me pacing around in front of the TV, occasionally screaming at, absent of context, it would likely have prompted some mental health concerns. That alone could be a 1000 word BTP but when the final whistle went seconds after Scotland sealed it with a goal from the halfway line, I immediately thought of my Uncle Bill who, along with his friend, travelled from Scotland to meet me and my buddy Alex at the 1990 World Cup in Italy with tickets for us to see Scotland’s first two games. He passed away a year ago and I wrote about him in BTP #14. Scotland will now play in their first World Cup since 1998 next year.

Why do we allow a game to do these things to us?

The Whitecaps game on Saturday night though was the latest example of this persona emerging. If I’m honest, MLS does very little for me. I’ve enjoyed going to see games for years but it’s never really struck any sort of emotional chord with me. This season, and especially this game, was a turning point. This team is different. In ability, in resolve and in results. The game was the Western Conference Semi-Final. A knockout game that took over 53,000 people in BC Place on an odyssey that closed in on the 2022 World Cup Final in terms of a compelling narrative.

This was the final penalty that won it for the Caps.

And it was, once again, that occasional reaction that strips away the artifice of being a responsible, occasionally high-functioning adult and makes it clear I’m still capable of jabbering unintelligibly at volume in front of many strangers in public.

Again why?

Connection. Respect. Community. Effort. Determination. Resolve. Tension. Wonder. Joy. That’s a good start.

We get to watch life play out in front of us via 22 proxies surrounded by tens of thousands cheering, jeering, venting in support or derision. And no one knows how it will end. Books can take you on a journey but its last page was written long before you read the first. Same with music and film. You have an experience with the artists but you are not there while they are creating. You are not a bystander to the process. Football takes you along on the creation. You feel the emotions as the players create the narrative in real time. And because of the flow of the game, rather than the stop and start of many others, you do not get much respite. You are engaged for ninety plus minutes with a break halfway through.

You enter the process as a spectator, with the creators, and ride every emotion, whether it’s frustration or elation, with them as they co-operate with their side and oppose the other. It’s a performance writ in real time in the presence of thousands in the stadium and often millions more watching on screens. There’s simply nothing else like it.

Sure, a lot of games are dull and elicit frustration or resentment; particularly if your team hasn’t won. But the occasionally spectacle, like this game, shared with thousands of others who are given the rare privilege, seldom afforded in polite company, of standing and yelling support and abuse leaves you feeling more human even if it’s not the version of yourself you’d want to be 24-7.

Most of us are restrained, refined, restricted and responsible in seeming perpetuity. The game releases us from that for 90 minutes. Most of the time not much but sometimes dizzyingly.

The Whitecaps rewarded our presence and belief last Saturday. We saluted their ability and effort. We’ve now both been given the chance to do it again next week. Hopefully it will be here in Vancouver where I can once again be loud and immature.

Rise FC are the first NSL champions.

Congratulations to Rise FC for winning the inaugural Diana Matheson Cup as winners of the NSL. Re-visiting my predictions for the playoffs in BTP #69…

My picks:

Toronto over Montreal and Vancouver over Ottawa.

Toronto over Vancouver in the final owing mainly to home city advantage (game being played in Toronto but at BMO Field, not Toronto’s regular home field of York Lions Stadium) and the fact that Toronto psychologically spanked them 7-0 the last time they met.

So I got both semi-finals right.

It did actually look like AFC Toronto was going to win the final comfortably after scoring early and missing several other chances but a 30 minute storm delay allowed Rise to re-group and end up with the 2-1 win and the championship.

My brief take on the league’s first season is that it exceeded the expectations of almost everyone in terms of attendance, organization, broadcasts and fan engagement.

As for the on-field play, it struck me halfway through the season that the play got stronger the further you moved up the field. In other words, the goalkeeping overall was poor. The defending (individually and in the case of some teams who insisted on playing out from the back even when it was clearly not on and/or not something they were doing well) was erratic with many individual decisions being hard to understand.

Midfielders were technically good for the most part with intelligent attacking play but as I’ve mentioned in a previous BTP the difference in quality between the top players and the bottom players on some teams proved to be a season long issue. As that relates to midfielders, build up play was only as good as the weakest link but overall was impressive.

The most pleasant surprise though was the very strong play of so many forwards. DB Pridham, Kaylee Hunter, Latifah Abdu, Ester Okoronkwo and Holly Ward were the top five goal scorers in the league and each were devastating in their own way. Great to see.

The league’s biggest issue may be hanging on to it’s first round of name-brand players who have emerged as its stars. Despite league statements that this was going to be a top five league in the world for women’s football, current Opta ranking statistics place it 15th. The top players in this league will be taken seriously though and I’ll be surprised if all five of those top goal scorers are back next season. I’m aware of at least one attacking player who has apparently been offered twice as much to move to a different NSL club (for clarity, this is not one of the top five scorers).