Almost Home

As As we chased down our way to victory of the premier cup, little did we know that we are not going to make it to the finals. We knew that we were a good team and capable of winning but guess we were missing that wining edge. But our road to semifinals was the most challenging and memorable. My team has one of the best players; these men have kept the flag flying high amid stiff winds and rough whether. To their credit they ve man of the match awards and many goals. That is not to say that it has been an outstanding year for our soccer team on the corporate level. It has been a mixed of some great results and serious disappointment. By the standards set in 2006, we have struggled a bit this year having failed to win a title so far. However we ve been fighting with some of the best team in the corporate world. Sports can be cruel, and soccer is one of the most unpredictable games in the world. You can’t predict the results till the game is over.

The first two league games were the best of all in the league. That day we played only with five players and played the best and enjoyed the most, Debu being the star performer. One cannot ignore the efforts he made to save those goals was outstanding especially when he is not trained to do that to which he has a credit of Man of the Match award.

Day 2 - now we start with the serious business.
The opening match was against Respondez Ltd., thou we couldn’t make our impact on the opponents but ICICI Pru’s skipper (that’s me) scored the first goal of the game in last few minutes through a free kick. Wow what a curve it was, just like bend it like Beckham. Ne ways we didn’t actually perform in this game but we couldn’t ve hoped for a better start towards our campaign, we won the match with 1-0 margin to begin on a rousing note.

Our second game against Accenture, Lynston our goal keeper was the hero of this game, he made fantastic saves by clearing the ball just below his crossbar and one on one saves, there by wining himself the man of the match award for that game. We won that game by 2-1. Great show!

The third game against Mastek, heard good reviews about them. So I changed the strategy there by bringing in Valerio in the 1st five squad and me defending the game. Substitutes were Maulik, Prince, Debu and Ian. Now we play pre quarters. By now we were all saturated and were waiting for red bull girls for the Red Bull supplement (by the way the Red Bull girls were the centre of attraction and some one was full on flirting with them, he even got to know which college they were from hmmm... u know who i am talking abt, any ways moving to the main topic). This match was the best of all the games. Since we lack a left outer I asked Valerio to play on the right flank. This is the first time in his life he must ve played that position and stood out with his pace and created opportunities and not to mention he scored his 1st goal too. We were leading with 1 goal and no sooner to our surprise Mastek scored a goal. But this didn’t put us down instead prince dodged the ball into the nets on my goal kick. The match got interesting when I was given marching orders for rough game – this was first time I conceived a yellow card n was told to sit out for two minutes. Those two minutes were the longest of my life as I wanted to get in the game as early as possible. At this point of time my team plays one only with 4 players. We were again leading but to our bad luck Mastek came back into the game and slot the ball into the nets thereby leveling the game. The score line remained unchanged till the final whistle. The game was taken into penalty shoot out. This is the toughest moment for me as this part of the game is more of luck, but our guys made it easy by wining the game with 3-1. I was awarded the man of the match award for best defending.

Now we play the decider match, i.e. are we playing the finals. In the semis we had all the ingredients of exciting game missed opportunities and shock. Our strategy remained the same but this time our more focus was on not conceiving a goal. And I must say the co ordination between me and Sal was amazing. Two best defenders didn’t allow the ball to cross the goal line. Jason was at his best in this game but couldn’t make his impact since he didn’t get the required support from his right flanker. This match ended with 0-0 score and yet again we go for penalty shoot out. GTL converted their 1st penalty; Sal moved to make his mark but missed his penalty. GTL didn’t convert their 2nd penalty thanks to ultimate save from lynston. Now it was Jason to shoot but Lynston insisted that he will take penalty n I liked his confidence, he slot the ball into nets there by taking the game one step ahead. Now we were leveled with GTL. The 3rd penalty was converted by GTL there by putting pressure on us. Now we had to score to stay in the game else we go. Jason was under immense pressure and he gave the in the hands of the GTL goal keeper. The game ended in an ugly note.

It has been a tough walk on the greens but this third place is a privilege and a distinction showing that we are on the right track. We had once taken the corporate soccer by storm and then lost our way, but we will reappear with vengeance.

This is a message that I read some where “To be a winning team you have to know how to suffer in the most difficult moment, you have to have the posture, courage and fight until end”.