Soccer Night In America

Last night was the big game for us in the league. We were playing the second place team. As the game started I glanced over at the two team's benches. The other team had a good 7 or 8 people on the bench. Looking at my team, we had 2. Plus our regular goalie wasn't there. And our back up goalie, The General, was a no show. What a great teammate. I knew we had our work cut out for us. Within the first 2 or 3 minutes, the other team takes a shot, it glances off my leg and into our goal, we are down 1-0. Not good. My nephew, Pickle, played the game before me. They play the game as if it is an outdoor game on an indoor field, without a lot of substitutions. The indoor game is meant to be fast and played with players in an all out sprint the entire time they are out on the field. So Pickle was playing the entire game. I only sat out 2 minutes in the first half. I was pretty tired. We struggled through the whole game to keep pace. At half time it was 3-3. And going into the last 10 minutes we had a 5-4 league. I remember telling one of my teammates while I was on the bench, we just need one more goal, then we can pack it in on the defensive end and make them chase us. We never got that goal. The game end in a 5-5 tie. I was pretty disappointed with my offensive output. I couldn't connect on two breakaways. I also had two free kicks that I got around the wall and on goal, but the goalie got to both of them before they could hit the back of the net. And I missed another two or three shots over the course of the game. It is too bad, because I know if we had our full team, we would probably beat these guys by four or five goals.