“You did what?”

“I squeezed them together and told him to go ahead and look.”

Laney Schultz shook her head and laughed at her best friend. Bones was spread lazily on Laney’s bed, one hand absent-mindedly twirling a thick strand of her burnt red hair. Beyond the bed, scarves and gauzy cloth obscured a large smudged window, taking the faint light of a streetlight and transforming it into a faint rosy glow that struggled into the room. The rest of the small space was a chaotic mess of color and clothes, with a half dozen outfits that had already been rejected for the night strewn about most available surfaces and the chipped and discolored top of the light blond dresser covered with jewelry, bottles, a stack of bright red plastic cups, and a half-dozen shot glasses. The walls were a crowded pastiche of postcards and pictures torn from fashion magazines interwoven with a dizzying variety of personal memorabilia—ticket stubs and bar coasters, mardi gras beads and strips of photobooth portraits. It was a room where you could lose yourself in the walls, never lacking for a landscape to look at or a face peering back out at you.

Laney drained a cup, crumpled it, and tossed it into a wastebasket by her chair. She reached a long arm over to the dresser and handed something to Bones, shaking her head and saying, “You are such a slut. Here.”

Without replying, Bones took the tightly rolled joint and inhaled deeply, her eyes closing as she slowly let out a soft plume of smoke that curled above her, hanging momentarily like a question mark before fading away. She turned onto her side, reaching to place the roach in a small ashtray on the bedside table before grabbing a dark red pillow and hugging it to her stomach. “I guess.”

“You guess? You have a perfectly good man wrapped around your finger and you’re shoving your titties in his best friend’s face and you guess you’re a slut?”

Bones made a non-committal sound, feeling the warm haze spread through her body, a rolling wave that seemed to elongate the space between her head and the rest of her body. She could feel the throbbing bass line coming from Laney’s speakers pulsing in her skull, a jagged beat that kept stuttering forward, punctuated by slices of a horn riff that kept seeming about to spin out of control, but never quite did. She opened her eyes and pushed herself to a sitting position, moving her head in short, sharp movements to the bass line. “What is this?”

“Something from Chicago. DJ Trackman, Tracks, Traxman, something like that. Traxman, I think.”

Bones nodded. “You ever been there?”

“Chicago?” Another nod. “No, you?”

Bones got up and examined herself in the full length mirror that leaned casually against the wall by Laney’s dresser. She turned, smoothing her camisole over her stomach and eyeing her profile. “Yeah, once when I was really young. There was this park with a big sculpture, like a curved thing, kinda like a mushroom. You could see yourself in it. It was pretty cool.”

“Speaking of mushrooms …”

Bones ran both hands through her hair, pulling it into a copper knot above her head and frowned. She let it fall around her shoulders and turned to face Laney. “You have some?”

Laney shook her head as she dug through her purse. “No. But … here we are.” She brought out a couple of pills and held one out towards Bones. “You want one?”

She considered a moment and sighed. “I’ll pass. Wouldn’t want to turn into a slut on you.”

Laney shrugged and carefully put one pill back in her purse before tossing the other into her mouth and swallowing. “Alright. Let’s get out of here before this kicks in.”

November 30, 2011

Levi settled into his chair, flipping on the television. A beer, icy condensation still dripping down the sides of the can, sat on the table, and beside it, a notepad and pen. He leaned forward, picking up both, and wrote on the pad, Nov 30, 2011. Cruz Azul v América. NASL Semifinal.

The camera showed the two coaches, Cruz Azul’s Pedro Muñoz and América’s Pepe Treviño shaking hands before heading back to their benches. These were two of the most successful franchises in the short history of the North American Select League, neither finishing lower than sixth in the three years of its existence. Both had used their success to expand their international reach slightly, but both were still largely focused on Mexican players, with the occasional import from other Central and South American countries. Cruz Azul had made more of a show of breaking the pattern, signing both American defender Jed Zayner and South Korean winger Choi Tae-Wook, but neither had seen significant time throughout the season.

Instead, the best players on each team were familiar to fans of soccer in the Spanish-speaking new world: Cruz Azul was led by Paraguayan Pablo Zeballos and Argentine Emanuel Villa, with Villa having such a good year that he had even been mentioned as potentially meriting his debut with the Argentine national team. América’s best player on the year was also an Argentine, but Daniel Montenegro was injured for this game, leaving them to depend on veteran midfielders Juan Carlos Mosqueda and Jean Beausejour.

Levi wrote down Beausejour’s name on the right hand side of the page, under América. Since he had taken over the reins of the Chilean national team, the veteran attacker had yet to feature in his squads, something he had heard some complaints about, especially in the Mexican and Chilean press, which he would huddle over with Chris Snitko, trying to catch the nuances of the Spanish. Usually, they would e-mail their best guess to one of the Comets’ scouts, Alejandro Rivero, who would mock them incessantly for confusing their verb tenses and missing what he considered basic idioms.

The bottom line was clear, though: Chile’s somewhat lackluster start in the labyrinthine South American World Cup Qualifiers had raised concerns and many were convinced that the attacking width offered by Beausejour was the answer. Levi didn’t exactly disagree: much of the player’s omission had been due to injuries: the past year had seen Beausejour miss time with hamstring issues, shin splints, a broken cheekbone, and broken ribs.

He jotted down a couple other names: Mosqueda and nineteen year old phenom Héctor Tapia for América and Maidana for Cruz Azul. Tapia was an interesting case: he had scored twelve times in only fifteen league appearances, bursting onto the national scene from relative obscurity on the basis of an amazing ability to bring the ball under control instantly no matter how poor the service.

Levi thought that this had the potential to be a high-scoring game: neither team was very good at the back, and neither goalkeeper was particularly impressive although Cruz Azul probably had the edge there with José de Jesús Corona between the sticks.

He turned up the volume and settled in, but despite his best intentions, found it hard to get into the game: it was a lackluster first half with Cruz Azul having more of the ball, but looking far less likely to do something with it than Club América.

In first-half stoppage time, América’s Santiago Fernández sent the ball upfield to Paulo Sosa who did well to old off the challenge from Azul’s Gerardo Torrado before sending it on to Tapia. The youngster sent it on with a deft flick of the outside of his foot to an unmarked Mosqueda who launched a volley from twenty yards out that skidded passed Corona’s outstretched hands.

It was a great shot, and one that sent the seventy thousand fans at Estadio México 68 into contrasting displays of jubilation and dismay.

In the end, nothing went according to Levi’s expectations: in América’s goal, Michel Alves outplayed Corona with two saves in the final ten minutes on what looked like certain goals from Alejandro Vela and the defenses, led for Cruz Azul by young Antonio Íñiguez and for América by veteran Jesús Sánchez both were stout throughout the ninety minutes. As the final whistle blew, Levi yawned and looked at his paper: it was sparse, the only notes being a reference to Tapia’s skill in the air and Maidana’s ability to successfully stop opposition attacks with his timing and strength in the tackle.

He sighed and put the pad down and lifted up the beer, shaking it to confirm that only dregs remained. He drained them and wandered into the kitchen, tossing it into a green recycling bin as he did so.

América would now play Pumas UNAM in the NASL championship game with each club looking to join Toluca and Atlas as holding the title of champion of North America’s top league.

Levi grabbed another beer from his fridge and flopped down on the couch, staring blankly at the ceiling. He felt empty and disappointed and wasn’t sure why: the game had been anti-climactic, but that couldn’t be it. He thought for a moment of the Comets playing in that game, but the gap in skill was obvious: Matty Richardson was good on the wing; Maidana and Beausejour were simply better, a pattern repeated across the field. Maybe McSweeney could play at that level. Maybe, just maybe if the glimpses this year were true, Buster could. And maybe one of his forwards on a good day—Bancé was a physical beast no matter where he was and Pekhart’s potential could carry him that far.

But that wasn’t it, really: he felt good about his job right now and other than the uncertainty of how they would compete next season in another new league, was happy to see himself in red and black for the foreseeable future.

His eyes closed and he drifted off to a fitful and anxious sleep. In his dreams, he was dribbling a copper colored ball through an endless hallway. The ball kept speeding up, rolling just out of his reach, and he had to keep sprinting to keep up with it. At one point, Julian emerged from a doorway and called his name. “Not now,” Levi called over his shoulder. “I have to catch the red ball.”

“Wait, Lee,” his friend called as he sped away, “why is the ball dribbling you?”

NASL Championship Semifinal
Club Deportivo, Social, y Cultural Cruz Azul v Club América, Estadio México 68
Cruz Azul 0 – América 1 (Juan Carlos Mosqueda 45+3)
MoM: Mosqueda (8.2) Cruz Azul’s Best: Antonio Íñiguez (7.5)
Attendance: 72,449. Referee: Victor Anderson.

Terry stared at his phone for a long time, thinking of what might have been.

The final four nations to reach the European Championships were set as Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, and Croatia all moved on to the next spring’s competition. The most dramatic match was Croatia’s visit to Glasgow, where only a seventy-ninth minute goal from Blackburn’s Nikola Kalinic allowed the Croats to progress by virtue of away goals against the Scots.

Romania, who had ousted his squad from Belarus, hardly put up any resistance against Italy and while Langford’s team would most likely have suffered the same fate, he would have appreciated the chance to match wits with Roberto Mancini. And his old physio from the years in Rodengo, Enrico Castellacci, was with the national team so at a minimum there would have been some wine and some memories.

That pretty much summed up his life right now: wine and memories.

There were no jobs. Well that wasn’t quite true: Estudiantes de Altamira had offered him the job: not an interview, but the actual job. But Leti held firm, and the attractions of life on the Gulf Coast of Mexico that Terry could find online did nothing to change her mind. So he had passed on the opportunity with as much grace as he could muster, and the Mexican club quickly hired a virtual unknown named Jorge Mar for their spot.

But there were no jobs in America, and as the weeks wound by, Terry’s days began to be filled with a growing dread. Perhaps it wasn’t the market or the end of the season or anything like that.

Perhaps it was simply him.

Perhaps he just wasn’t good enough.

The thought never came on directly, instead it held to the edges of his mind, skittish as a frightened cat, leaping out of the way whenever he happened to glance in its direction. He would try to ignore it, but when he was alone, a glass or a bottle in one hand and his head in the other, he would hear it moving in the shadows, demanding attention.

November 30, 2011

“This was such a good idea.”

Leti leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Good. Yes, it was,” she said, clearly pleased with herself.

They had spent Thanksgiving in New York, a holiday that meant little to each of them, but gave them an excuse to wander the streets of Manhattan in search of music and food. It felt good to be somewhere urban, somewhere that pulsed with the intensity of thousands of lives intersecting and overlapping, crowding each other in their onward rush, reminding both of them of happier moments in Cape Town.

Over the weekend, huddled under the sheets of their hotel bed (after leaving their flat in a horrid mess on their last visit, both of them were far too embarrassed to reach out to Leti’s friends in Brooklyn), Terry received a text from Des McAleenan, who he knew from years spent in the youth leagues of Ireland and who now served as the goalkeeping coach for the New York Red Bulls.

Terry had met with Des for a few beers after the Red Bulls game in Boston the prior month, and the two had invented a friendship that never really was, united as immigrants on distant soil in the same professional world.

The text invited the two of them to the North American Select League Championship Semifinal, to be played at the small confines of James M. Shuart Stadium on the campus of Hofstra University on Long Island the following week. The Red Bulls were gifted with a virtual home game against visiting Mexican side Pumas UNAM, looking to further extend the most successful season by an American club since the soccer pyramid had been created.

It was too good of an offer to turn down, and McAleenan’s outreach filled both of them with optimism: perhaps, finally, one of Terry’s contacts would lead to an acceptable job offer.

So they extended their stay and this windy Wednesday evening found them boarding a Long Island Railroad train at Penn Station and heading east. The train was full of commuters heading home, their faces buried in their phones or their tablets or their Kindles, each intent on creating a separate world as they rumbled through the tunnels and neighborhoods that marked the first borderlands of the island.

Among them, however, were scattering of people heading the same place as Leti and Terry: Red Bulls fans in white and red and small knots of Hispanic immigrants speaking softly in quick Spanish to each other and dressed in blue and gold with the square-nosed jaguar logo on their shirts and scarves.

Not for the first time, Terry wondered at the civility of American fans: raised at the height of the media exposure of football hooliganism, he always felt anxiety when rival fans shared the same space. But in America, violence between supporters seemed unheard of: the fans would mix before and after the game with nothing more than some loud insults hurled back and forth for the most part.

Leti leaned against him, burying her cheek into the padding of his winter coat and said, “So, I know New York. Tell me about the others. They have one of ours, don’t they?”

“Pumas?” Leti nodded without lifting her head, her cheek swishing against his shoulder. “They’ve been good since the league started. Finished first one year. Never lower than fourth, I think. And, yeah. Klate. Daine Klate. Signed for them from SuperSport a few years ago. He’s done okay. But he doesn’t see a lot of time. Like a lot of these teams, they’re built around players who were always on the fringe of the national team, or who are on the front or back side of good careers.”

“Anyone I know?”

Terry shrugged as carefully as he could so as not to dislodge her head. “Maybe. Marco Antonio Palacios? Jorge Iván Estrada?” He felt her shake her head again. “Flores, you’ve probably heard of him. Salvador Flores?”

“Teenager, yeah?”

“Yeah. He’s scored, I dunno, four goals in his first six caps. Something like that. So, yeah, he’s on the way up.”

Leti made an agreeable noise and snuggled deeper towards Terry’s neck. The two sat in silence, and the rhythm of the train soon drew heavily on their eyes, sending them into a half-sleep where they were only distantly aware of the names of the stations as they rolled by.

The wind as they walked to the stadium was enough to wake them up, and after stopping for a quick cup of hot chocolate in a Styrofoam cup, they barely made it into their seats for the opening whistle.

The young Mexican starlet provided the highlight of the first half with a shot from twenty yards away that Jim Russel in New York’s goal could barely tip over the bar, but it was on the whole a drab forty-five minutes, with neither side willing to take many risks going forward.

UNAM was ascendant after the break, but just after an hour, it was New York who broke through, with a sequence that was as noted for Puma’s coach Ignacio Ambriz’ behavior as the decision by referee Lon Milo Duquette when the Red Bulls’ young Mexican striker Mario Morales was pulled down in the box by Jorge Iván Estrada.

Duquette had no hesitation in pointing to the spot, but as the Pumas players protested, Ambriz was turning and yelling at a player behind his bench.

“What is he doing” asked Leti.

“I don’t know,” answered Terry. “It looks like he’s. Holy shit, he is.”

“What?”

“He’s pulling his keeper for the penalty.”

“What?” Leti leaned forward, craning her neck towards the center of the pitch where a Pumas player stood by the fourth official. Sure enough, Alejandro Palacios was clapping his gloves together and jumping in the air, waiting for Odín Patiño to come off. Patiño had his head down, clearly furious at the decision and struggling not to let his emotions show. He gave Palacios a quick tap on the shoulder and headed straight to the end of the bench.

Palacios took his time, stopping to take the captain’s armband from Argentine forward Martín Bravo before finally taking position in front of his goal. All the while, New York’s star, Ukrainian youngster Andriy Yarmolenko, stood by the penalty spot, the ball held on his hip, a bemused expression on his face.

Finally, Duquette whistled for the kick and Yarmolenko calmly beat Pumas new keeper, sending an unstoppable penalty high into the roof of the net.

The lead only lasted two minutes however, as two quick passes sent the ball down the center of the field from Daine Klate to Bravo to Flores, who chipped the ball over an onrushing Russel. Leti was up on her feet yelling and turned to Terry with a smile on her face.

“I guess I’m rooting for them.”

Terry laughed. “You’re just rooting for Daine.”

Leti shrugged. “Gotta’ support my homie.”

Terry almost choked on a sip of beer, struggling not to spray liquid on the fans in front of them. “Your what?”

“Homie. That’s the word, right?”

Terry nodded, laughing too hard to actually speak.

Flores had another chance in stoppage time, but this time Russel was able to make the stop.

“Really?” asked Terry. “Really? Extra time?”

“It looks like it,” answered Leti as Pumas lined up for a corner four minutes into stoppage time. She finished off her bear and asked, “Will you get another couple at the break?”

Terry nodded as Estrada sent the corner high into the box, where veteran defender Rafael Medina rose high to meet it squarely. The ball rocketed downwards towards the far post, where New York’s Angelo Ogbonna dove, but was unable to get his boot on it cleanly.

Leti shrieked as the ball trickled over the line and the Pumas fans roared in approval. Moments later, Duquette’s shrill whistle marked the end of the match, and of the season for New York, whose coach, Jim Magilton, stood still as a statue for several minutes, a lone figure left to ponder the meaning of a dream season that came crashing down one win short of his goal.

NASL Championship Semifinal
New York Red Bulls v Club Universidad Nacional AC, James M. Shuart Stadium
Red Bulls 1 (Andriy Yarmolenko 68p) – Pumas UNAM 2 (Salvador Flores 70, Rafael Medina 90+4)
MoM: Martín Bravo (8.1) Best Red Bull: Yarmolenko (6.9)
Attendance: 15,534. Referee: Lon Milo Duquette.

NADII: Yashin
Club Tijuana Xoloitzcuintles de Caliente v Racing Club Haïtien, Estadio Caliente
X. Tijuana 3 (Alejandro Leyva 1 50, Carlos Reyes 30) – Racing Club 0
MoM: Leyva (8.8) Best Old Lion: Philbert Wilson (7.2)
Attendance: 9276. Referee: Kieran Casey.

Even when Kieran Casey blew for the final whistle, we didn’t know our fate: we started the day one point ahead of Jamaican club Harbour View FC, who were up against the league leaders, Zacatepec. We knew that Harbour View’s Congolese striker, Rudy Bhebey-Ndey, had scored in the second half to give them the lead, and we knew that Zacatepec had equalized through the veteran from New Zealand, Nathan Knox.

But we hadn’t heard anything about how it ended: if Zacatepec ended up on top, we would be in the playoffs, despite our difficulties in Mexico against Los Cholos. We just weren’t very good today. I mean, it wasn’t bad for a bunch of kids playing a game like this for the first time, but … well, we just weren’t very good.

I looked around for our coaches and saw Benjamin Jack hunched over, his arms tight against his body, fingers moving across the screen of his phone. He frowned and looked up, catching my eye, and shook his head.

I grabbed Dayán and gave him the news. His eyes flicked towards Jack and back to me. “Guete.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “Now what?”

I laughed. I didn’t really mean to, but the pain in his voice seemed so incongruous with what we had accomplished. “D, it was a fucking great year. Great.” I nodded with my head towards the field. “Today wasn’t so good. But come on. We can’t be sad about this.”

We headed into the locker room, where I continued in the same vein: “What you did this year surprised everyone outside of this room. Nobody thought you could do it, and you did. We have a ways to go—we still struggle when a team has a single great player. That’s what Leyva did to us today, it’s what a couple others have done in the past. We’re still learning how to play as a complete unit. And you’re still learning what it takes to be professionals.” I turn towards McNulty. “And for some of you I don’t hold out much hope.”

I waited for the noise to quiet down. “Here’s your challenge. Here’s what I want from you over the next few months. Next year, we deserve to be here. This year was a surprise. Next year.” I shake my head. “Next year, no surprises. No surprises. Now get dressed, get packed. Bus leaves in forty.”

We’re delayed at the airport for a few hours, and by the time we’re on the plane, the mood is anxious and tired, and more than a little grumpy. Dayán has his eyes closed but I suspect he’s not actually asleep, but instead is rather trying to ignore the noise around him—three of our coaches are arguing about something that I cannot quite catch, and I hear McNulty begging for a beer behind me. I turn around and glare at our teenage star and he settles down, the attendant mouthing “thank you” to me as she disappears further down the aisle.

I take out a pad and start scribbling on it.

“Ki sa yo ou ap fè?” asks Dayán.

I’m surprised, and the words are unfamiliar for a moment. “Oh. Not asleep, huh? Why do you always do that?”

“What?”

“Talk to me in Kreyòl on airplanes?”

“Do I?”

I nod and he doesn’t reply, looking instead at the paper in front of me. “Already?”

“Already,” I say, tapping the paper where I’ve begun to list out the players we’ll depend on next season.

“What are the numbers?”

“Age.”

“Age?”

I nod and smile. “You know what I like about it? Most of them start with two.”

I turn the pad so it faces him and he traces his finger down the list—only McNulty and Ian Fuller look to be regulars next year as teenagers, although both Hayden Zurinaga and Alberto Morrison will continue to see time with the first time—as will a few others. But Frederick, Lawler, Fouad Guichard, Kwame Charles, even Parmentier and Luccioni all join Chery and Azor as being over twenty years old.

I order a beer for both of us and after we touch dark plastic together with a soft knock, I say, “To experience.”

Dayán laughs. “They’re twenty. Not exactly seasoned veterans.”

I take a drink. “We’ll take what we can get, D. We’ll take what we can get.”

“You see the Dynamo game?”

It was Julian who as usual burst into my office without so much as a knock. I shook my head before answering, “Saturday?”

“Yeah.”

“I did.” The Dynamo had played FC Dallas at home, always a key game for them. This week, though, it was no match: goals from Eneramo, Ching, José Manuel Serrano, and Dan Gosling had seen the hosts romp all over the visitors from North Texas—not only a great win, but the victory clinched promotion for the Dynamo, who next year would be returning to the top ranks of North American soccer in the North American Select League.

“Guess we won’t be in the same league as them.”

“Guess not.”

He sat down across from me, arms clasped behind his head. “You enjoying life as a champion?”

I grinned for a moment before adopting a more serious tone. “We do have a game today that matters, you know.”

He laughed. “Yeah, that’s why Stevens and Le Li are starting and Diallo and Hemming are on the bench, right? Because it matters?”

I tried to look angry and failed, my face dissolving into laughter. “OK. Yeah, you’re right. We’ll go back to the regulars to close the season. Today, we’ll take a look at the kids, see what happens.”

In the end, what happened was Tomas Pekhart: the young Czech was just too strong and too gifted for St. Louis’ defenders, and his first-half hat trick was well earned. There are rumors that Owain Lawgoch, St. Louis’ coach, is going to be moving up even if they get relegated, and his halftime adjustments certainly supported his reputation as a master tactician: the Redbirds came out a different team, with Jamaican veteran Fabian Dawkins and promising teenager Jarrod Smith combining several times to threaten McSweeney in his first appearance back in goal for us after international duty. When Smith finally slid one home late in the game, it was well deserved, but we were never losing the game.

Penn Yan, Memphis, the New York Giants, and Phoenix were all facing relegation: with the loss, St. Louis dropped into a group with Mérida, Salamanaca, and Santa Fé fighting to avoid the same fate.

NADI: Hamm
Houston Comets v St. Louis Athletic Club, Rice Track & Soccer Stadium
Comets 3 (Tomas Pekhart 7 12 34) – AC St. Louis 1 (Jarrod Smith 70)
MoM: Pekhart (9.4)
Attendance: 5236. Referee: Pat Maher.

November 23, 2011

This is it.

Our work is done for the year and, sadly for them, so is that of the Giants: their first season in NADI will be their last, as they are headed back down next year.

New York has been led by American veteran Eddie Johnson, who really deserves better than this, and, well, that’s about it. Carlos Alberto Rosas has been solid in midfield and Burkinabe teenager Hiro looks to be a solid goal scorer for the future, but Joe Di Giamarino needs an infusion of talent before he can really think about taking the team very far. It’s a hard situation for him: New York now has four teams, but the Giants will be the only one at the lowest level of the pyramid next season, while the Red Bulls have arguably had the greatest season in the history of American soccer, the Liberty are in the thick of the playoff hunt in our division, and the Brooklyn Bushwicks look safe to remain in NACL next year.

Julian and I had talked to Aristide Bancé about the Giants’ two central defenders: he is stronger and faster than both Algerian veteran Smaïl Diss and Robert Granados, and there’s no reason he can’t put a cap on a great season. He has a brilliant chance in the first five minutes and then again with twelve remaining, but both brush the wrong side of the post.

In between those two moments, we are mundane, lifeless, and utterly staid. Lots of possession, but virtually no intensity and no matter how Julian and I yell from the sidelines, we seem unable to inject the smallest bit of life into the game.

The locker room is subdued. There are a few half-hearted yells of “NACL, Baby!” or “Champions!” but everyone knows that we were, at best, very average today. I gather their attention, unsure if I should be angry or not, but ultimately, more than disappointment, I just feel empty, like the year scooped everything out of me.

“Not the way we wanted to end the year.” I shrugged. “But that’s how we ended. There is something there for us from this game. You can’t walk onto the field expecting to win. And if you couldn’t do it today against them, against a team that is moving down. Well, you know you won’t be able to do it next year. Colorado. Philadelphia. Salt Lake. Toronto. Santos Laguna. Pachuca. That’s who we’re facing next year. So when you go home, when you work out, when you think about next year, I want you to remember today. Remember the year. Remember how good we were. But also remember today. And how quickly it can all change.” I stopped and looked around the room, and smiled.

“But mostly remember how fucking good we were.”

It worked: the locker room brightened , the bittersweet notes of melancholy and disappointment faded away, and the flight home was relaxed, with players and coaches making plans for the holidays and the off-season.

But that night, once I was in my bed, I couldn’t sleep. All I could do was lie there, with doubts bouncing around my head like ping-pong balls. I got up and wandered to the kitchen to grab a glass of water and moved over to the window to drink it. Downtown blinked back at me, buildings edged with green and red neon and, to my right, the flashing lights of the Medical Center sent their steady pulse into the sky.

I was suddenly afraid, and leaned heavily against the back of my chair, the glass slipping from my hand. I felt it slide down my leg, and then felt the coldness of the water as it pooled around my foot. I just stood there, staring out into the night, feeling my thoughts lock into place.

We had done it. I had done what I thought I was so scared of doing, had succeeded where I thought I was paralyzed with failure. But I could feel the sickness trickling through my head, the thickness of it gumming up the works, causing mental gears to jerk and jam.

It’s hard to describe: my brain was active, if anything it was busier than usual, thoughts ringing through it like the peal of a bell in a large, open courtyard. But there was no fluidity. I couldn’t change what I was thinking, couldn’t shift into a new subject or a new perspective. Instead, everything was frozen and unmoving on the surface and below that there was a thickness that had to be moved through, something that made thinking difficult and exhausting, a grueling exercise in ominous repetition.

If failing on the sidelines wasn’t it, if the tension of meeting the high expectations that dogged us throughout the season wasn’t the issue, what was I really afraid of?

NADI: Hamm
New York Giants Football Club v Houston Comets, Icahn Stadium
Giants 0 – Comets 0
MoM: Simon Booth (7.6)
Attendance: 5622. Referee: Brian Mellor.

David sat across from Ayida, trying to concentrate on the flame that danced above a tall white candle on the low table between the two of them. It was difficult: her skin glowed like copper in the flickering light and her simple white robe showed the graceful curve of her neck connecting to the strong precipice of her collarbone. As the candle moved, the slight swell of her breasts would emerge from the shadows and disappear again, and his eyes kept flicking from the candle to her and back.

Her eyes were closed and she was swaying slightly, her voice a low chant that David could barely hear, rising and falling in a flowing rhythm. David tried to let go, centering himself on the sound of her voice, his eyes slowly softening and as his lids drooped slightly, the edges of the flame blurred and sparkled. He knew it was just the wick, but it looked like there was a dark shape at the pure white center of the fire, dancing in rhythm to the slowly rising volume of Ayida’s voice.

The flame danced on, white surrounded by yellow fading to a brilliant orange on the edges, a liquid sunrise that pulsed in time with his heartbeat, growing larger and larger. The dark shape in the middle began to move more distinctly, expanding, bulges pushing outwards from the center column of blackness and resolving to what looked like limbs, a whirling, elongated figure that spun and twisted, arms flung high above its head at the center of the fire.

The voice in David’s head that protested against what was happening slowly faded, pushed aside by the immediacy of the experience, by the heat on his face and the slow reduction in the chatter of his thoughts to simple observation. His mind quieted, became nothing but a reflective surface that slowly filled with flame, the pure white center slowly spreading throughout him until he felt like his entire being was infused with light and heat.

He heard Ayida’s voice, muted and distant, and slowly he recognized that she was calling his name, over and over.

He opened his eyes, but it took a few moments for them to adjust and he blinked rapidly trying to bring the blurred shapes around him into focus. The candle had burned down, and the only light was that of the waning moon leaking weakly in through the high window. There was a flash of light and the rumble of thunder, and in that instant David clearly saw Ayida across from him, the flat ledges of her knees pulled up to her chin, her hands clasped around her shins.

Once the echoes of thunder had rolled away, he licked his lips which suddenly felt cracked and dry as if he had been wandering for hours on the beach on a windy day, and tried to speak. His voice would not come, and he swallowed hard before managing a weak “Hey.”

Ayida looked at him a moment and grinned. “Hey. You okay?”

David looked around, the room now pulling into sharper focus: the low table between them inlaid with silver in a geometric pattern against dark, thick-grained wood, the glass cabinet behind Ayida with the lion–claw feet that curved around thick wooden balls. He heard the first heavy drops of rain against the windows, and the room flashed again with lightning.

“Yeah. I think so. I’m starving. What time is it?”

“Just after eleven.”

“What? Eleven?”

Ayida grinned again. “Yeah.”

“That was three hours?” Ayida nodded. “Wow. It felt like just a few minutes.”

“What happened?”

David stretched, his joints popping softly. “Nothing. I mean … something if it was three hours. But I was just watching the flame, and everything turned white.”

“That’s all?”

David thought a moment. “There was a time it looked like there was someone dancing in the flame. But afterwards, it was just white. Warm. Not hot, just warm.”

“Nothing else?” David shook his head. “No other colors, no voices?”

“Just yours at the end.”

“Mine?”

“Yeah. You were calling my name.”

Ayida shook her head. “No. I was just sitting here watching you.”

“Really?”

Ayida nodded. “Are you sure you heard a voice?”

“Yes. Positive.”

“Are you sure it was mine?”

David began to answer and stopped. “I guess not.”

Ayida nodded and gracefully unfolded herself from the floor, reaching out a hand to help David rise unsteadily to his feet. “Let’s eat,” she said, leading him back down the hallway.

November 20, 2011

For the first twenty minutes, the team from Costa Rica looked the more likely to score, dominating possession against their Haitian hosts. Racing Club’s first chance of the game came when a well-weighted ball from Jimmy McNulty set Bidre’Ce Azor free on goal, but the angle proved too tight and his chip came off the back post to Ishmael Butler, whose shot could also only find the woodwork.

Saprissa recovered and dominated possession for the next five minutes, with Josue Arguedas and Wilson Soto keeping possession just outside Racing Club’s box. Finally, Soto launched a shot towards Charley Julien in Racing Club’s goal, but Fouad Guichard was able to clear the ball with a powerful header that sent Azor sprinting up the right side of the field. Azor dodged past Rónald Rodriguez and spotted Butler streaking towards the box from the left. A pass into space and a hard volley later, and the ball was past Kevin Gutiérrez in Saprissa’s goal and the hosts had an early 1-0 lead.

The goal, well against the run of play, seemed to take all life out of the visitors, as if their disbelief that all their hard work could go for naught led to an overall weakening of their will and two minutes later, the focus of the Saprissa back line on McNulty allowed Azor to find a wide open Devon Frederick, who calmly finished for a two goal lead that The Old Lions took into the locker room.

The second half would provide more of the same, with Frederick remaining the star: first he played provider, using a marvelous pull-back to gain enough space to find Edens Chery whose one-touch volley set up Azor’s goal just after halftime and then claiming his brace with fifteen minutes to go with a well placed shot from the edge of the box.

As surprising as the offensive explosion by Racing Club Haïtien over the past two games has been, the victory was keyed by dominant performances from both outside defenders, with Jemieko Jennings and Fouad Guichard controlling the wings all day on both sides of the ball. The win leaves the Haitian pretenders in a shocking position: fourth place in the division, fighting off Harbour View and Herediano for the final playoff spot.

NADII: Yashin
Racing Club Haïtien v Club Deportivo Saprissa, Sylvio Cator
Racing Club 4 (Ishmael Butler 26, Devon Frederick 29 73, Bidre’Ce Azor 48) – Saprissa 0
MoM: Frederick (9.3)
Attendance: 10,209. Referee: Paul Harrison.

Premier Division
Chelsea v Burnley, Stamford Bridge
Chelsea 5 (Fernando Torres 6 56, Frank Lampard 14, Simon Vukcevic 18, John Obi Mikel 49) – Burnley 1 (Matt Derbyshire 82)
MoM: Lampard (9.3)
Attendance: 40,629. Referee: Howard Webb.

November 13, 2011

Shaking his head as the familiar theme music started up, Danyil stood in the archway that opened into their small living room. He held two glasses of wine in his hands and, crossing the room, he offered one to Ruud. Why do you watch this silliness?

Ruud smiled, and the two men gently touched glasses before he answered. It amuses me. And sometimes, they even show pictures of you.

Danyil rolled his eyes as the logos of the teams in the Premier League morphed one into the next, ending with a cartoon cluster of cannons firing behind the Arsenal logo. Whatever. It’s silly. Just a litany of goals and fouls with the occasional save thrown in.

Ruud adopted a shocked expression. What, there’s more to football than that?

Oh, hush you.

The two settled in next to each other and as the television screen showed a parade of two lines of players, one in red and the other in blue, exiting the tunnel, Ruud turned towards Danyil. Wow. You win five one and still don’t get first billing.

Danyil only nodded as the parade of goals by Manchester United unfolded. The Red Devils had beaten Wigan 7-0, continuing their unbeaten run at the top of the table.

Ruud’s face turned serious as Dimitar Berbatov knocked in the final score, an easy volley past Ali Al Habsi in Wigan’s goal after he had deflected a shot from Rooney that looked destined to net United’s star a hat-trick on the day. You think you can catch them?

Danyil nodded without hesitation. Those Brazilian twins can’t play like this the whole year. And I really think they let too much good talent go—Young to Inter. Nani leaving in January. They’re weaker than they were.

Even with Busquets?

Danyil shrugged. I like any of our three more.

Sure, but how long will you have them?

Yaya and Essien, forever. Well … Essien at least for a few more years. De Rossi … Danyil paused to take another sip of wine. Well. We haven’t gotten any offers for him. But I wouldn’t be surprised to see him return to Italy. He sees the writing on the wall.

Ruud nodded, his eyes flickering back to the screen. He smiled and nodded towards the TV. Ah, look, there you are.

The opening shot was of the players in blue lined up before the game, the camera stopping at the brown-haired visage of Fernando Torres. And then, a goal most who saw would remember for quite some time: Torres, taking a quick pass from Frank Lampard well inside his own half and then out-sprinting most of the Burnley defense. At the last moment, André Bikey crossed to force him hard to the touchline, but the Spanish international deftly changed direction and fired a shot from a near-impossible angle beyond Dorus de Vries’ dive.

A shot of the players in a celebratory huddle was followed by a close up of Danyil’s face, largely expressionless as he watched. The female announcer’s voice-over continued, But the single goal seemed not to satisfy Danyil Oranje on the Chelsea sideline. Luckily for the Dutch manager, more were to come.

Danyil snorted. I loved the goal. The look was about Bikey.

Bikey?

Yeah. His on the fringe for the Cup of Nations.

He won’t have to face Torres.

Before Danyil could reply, the show continued with Chelsea’s domination of Burnley: a Lampard drive from thirty yards, a solid volley from inside the box from Vukcevic, a header near the end to give Torres his brace. But the largest celebration shown was when, just shy of an hour in, Jon Obi Mikel took a diagonal pass from De Rossi and, from a few steps outside the box, sent a looping shot that ducked just inside the upper right corner of the goal.

It was a rare score for the Nigerian playmaker, who was seeing less and less playing time as the Chelsea squad’s depth at holding midfielder kept him mostly to the reserves. This time, when the camera found Danyil, he was clapping enthusiastically, a broad smile on his face.

November 19, 2011

We were in Madrid. We were playing Real Madrid. But we weren’t playing at the Bernabéu. Instead, we were at a small stadium, home to some second rate Spanish team.

Sometimes the bureaucracies of modern international football confound me.

Instead of a neutral site—which is what the competition demands—we are playing what is in essence a home game for Los Blancos in front of fifteen thousand screaming fans.

It’s only this Imposters Cup thing, but Manuel Pelligrini is fielding a good side, if not quite his first choice. The same could be said of us, with Ochoa in goal, young Danish international Michael Larsen in the starting eleven and with Daniel Sturridge playing a largely unfamiliar central role behind Dzeko and Torres. It’s not his natural position by a long shot, but with the freedom Yaya and De Rossi have to move forward, he’ll spend plenty of time on the wings where he belongs.

It could be tough going on both sides of the ball: we need to break down a back line of Sergio Ramos, Arbeola, Pepe, and Raúl Albiol and defend against an attacking four of Kaká, Higuaín, Raúl and, of course, pretty boy Cristiano Ronaldo.

The game starts at a breakneck pace: five minutes in, Iker Casillas sees that Ochoa has moved off his line and sends a free kick high and deep towards our goal. The crowd roars as the ball is in the air, thinking Casillas has a shot at a goal that will live forever, but Ochoa moves back in time to calmly catch the ball, much to their dismay.

A few minutes later, De Rossi takes a free kick outside their penalty box and absolutely lashes the ball, which takes a deflection off Pepe and into the corner of the net. It’s a lucky goal, but a goal nonetheless, and despite the whistles from the crowd, we enthusiastically celebrate being up by one.

Both Xabi and Higuaín miss by inches within the next ten minutes, Xabi looping a shot off the top of the crossbar that has Ochoa beaten, and our Mexican keeper barely able to tip a curling shot from Higuaín around the post.

Despite the frantic pace, we’re beginning to exert our will on the game, especially in the defensive half, where De Rossi and Touré are intercepting more passes than Real Madrid are able to connect. This is frustrating the Real Madrid players and, just over twenty minutes in, Xabi takes it out on Edin Dzeko, who falls to the ground with a yell, clutching his ankle. It’s bad: he doesn’t move, just lays there with his hands around his leg, mouthing a silent scream of pain.

Drogba warms up in a hurry and after he enters the game, play calms down with the only moments of note a dipping shot from Ronaldo that grazes the side post and a mazy, twisting run from Torres that leads an attack for us that ultimately fizzles out.

Sturridge is thriving in the center—his pace is too much for them, but so far, their back line has held off our attacks and we go into halftime up the one goal but with everything left to play for.

The second half seems them in the ascendancy, with us hanging onto our lead by our fingernails. On the hour, a foolish foul by Essien gives them a free kick from just under thirty yards out and an opposing manager’s worst nightmare unfolds before my eyes: the chiseled face of Cristiano Ronaldo gazing at your defenders lined up in a wall as he prepares a free kick. It’s on target, a rocket that seems destined for the corner of our goal until Sturridge is able to kick it away at the last moment with a sliding effort. He was out of position for his defensive assignment, having lost Xabi Alonso in the shuffle, but luckily was in the right place to preserve the clean sheet.

It only underscores how narrow our advantage—if we have any—is.

But football is a fickle game and just a few minutes later, we move the ball quickly from Larsen to Drogba to Torres, who sees that Christoph Metzelder (on for Lassana Diarra), Albiol and Pepe have all pulled too tight towards his side of the field. Torres lays the ball into the open space where a streaking Sturridge is able to meet it squarely, sending it just under Casillas’ dive.

Only two minutes later, Larsen sends the ball long towards their defense. Everyone in the stadium—including the Real Madrid back line—sees Drogba, who is well offsides. He stands still, letting the ball bounce past him and, before the defenders in white are able to react, Torres is onto the ball at full speed. He takes one touch and powers a shot past Casillas that seems like it will burst through the back of the net, it’s hit so hard and true.

I don’t know if we deserve it, and when Ochoa gets his revenge on Casillas with ten minutes left, sending a goal kick almost into their penalty box where it is again corralled by Torres who scores our fourth, the scoreline is undoubtedly unkind to our hosts.

But it holds, and we successfully defend the Imposter’s Cup, something that will pale in comparison to the Premier League or the Champions League, but is still some hardware for the cabinet.

Imposter’s Cup Final
Real Madrid CF v Chelsea, Nuevo Vallecas Teresa Rivero
Real Madrid 0 – Chelsea 4 (Pepe 8og, Daniel Sturridge 67, Fernando Torres 69 82)
MoM: Torres (9.3)
Attendance: 15,524. Referee: Steve Tanner.

As I pulled into the parking lot at Levi’s, I instinctively scanned for an empty spot by his car. It was tucked away in the corner, his usual place, and I had to make a second go at it to fit my truck next to his old Toyota.

I was apprehensive when I knocked on his door, but he came quickly and looked to have been up for a while—his hair was combed, and his hallway smelled faintly of coffee. He waved me in and I took my usual place on the beige couch, stretching my legs and feeling around the worn cushions for his remote.

“You want coffee?” he asked from the small kitchen alcove.

“Sure, thanks.”

I found the remote and picked it up, then thought better of it and tossed it on top of a pile of the past week’s Houston Chronicle. Lee appeared a moment later, handing me a big mug of steaming coffee bearing the logo of some oil and gas company.

“Thanks,” I said as he settled into an old chair that he’s had as long as I’ve known him—even back in college, when we had to take his window off its frame to fit it into his room one year. It was a worn thing, frayed yarn spilling out of it like patches of unruly hair, but he loved it.

We sat a moment in silence, and when Lee spoke, his voice was dry and brittle. “You remember sophomore year? When I went to Switzerland?” I nodded, puzzled. “Well. I didn’t go to Switzerland.”

My look of confusion deepened and Lee suddenly stood up, crossing over to his window that looked out towards the jagged expanse of downtown Houston. He began speaking, softly at first, but soon turning around to face me, leaning against the window, his arms crossed, his eyes not quite focused on anything in the room as he spoke.

He told me about how as far back as he could remember he had these days where things just froze, about how he didn’t know what happened, about some place in Colorado, about how since he went there it had been better, but never quite absent.

I never knew. Never had an inkling.

As he began to talk, I could feel myself getting angry, like I had been excluded from something I should have known. But the more he spoke, about the treatment, about how he never really accepted the term “OCD,” about the moments and days when it was bad, I felt my anger fade away.

This was my best friend. This was real.

His voice trailed off and his eyes, shining with tears, rose to meet mine. “Jesus, Lee. Just … Jesus.”

He laughed and shrugged. “Yeah.”

“So, what do we do? I mean … do you need to get, I dunno’, on the drugs again?”

He shook his head sternly. “No. No. They … I don’t like who I am on them. It’s just not a good thing.”

“But that was years ago. Maybe they’ve changed?” He just shook his head again. “OK. OK. So … what?”

Levi smiled, but it wasn’t convincing, and moved back towards his chair. “I think it’s OK now, Jay. Yesterday, at halftime, I don’t know, I just felt something go away. I think it’s done.”

“Just like that?”

He shrugged and fell backwards into the chair, one leg draping over the arm and swinging slowly back and forth. “It’s how it goes. Nothing changes from the bad days to the good ones, they just go away.”

I’m watching his leg and thinking of how his hands have seemed so nervous lately, flopping around like a fish that you just put on the end of a stringer. His leg is keeping a steady beat as it swings from side to side, regular and calm. I know it’s not the best of evidence, but it’s something. I grin in his direction. “Alright. So how we gonna’ take care of business tomorrow?”

He reaches down on the other side of his chair, and I raise my hands without thinking about it. Sure enough, a red and black mini soccer ball comes whizzing towards my head. I pick it out of the air and toss it back to him.

“I think we go with the twin towers up top.”

“PK still hurt?”

He grimaces and nods as he send the ball back my way. Pierre Koulibaly had missed a few weeks with a calf injury, and now it looked like he could be absent for the rest of the season.

“Lance behind them?” Levi nodded again. There wasn’t much of a choice there—Stanton Lewis had just played his first competitive soccer in a month, and Saint-Preux wasn’t in great condition either.

“You know what I’m worried about?” he asked.

I had to stretch to catch the ball, but managed to avoid knocking over a tall lamp that stood by the couch. “Midfield.”

“Fucking midfield. Matty’s pushing it, but he’s not ready. And Sach is only good for a short bit.”

“Again?” The young Indian midfielder’s talent was undeniable, but so was his fragility. He was heading back to the Dynamo in a few weeks, and unlike our loanee’s from last season, I couldn’t really see trying to change that. “So where does that leave us?”

Lee grinned. “I’m planning on stealing from my defense again.”

“Booth or Micó?”

“Nope. Buster.”

I was in the middle of a throw and short-armed it in surprise, sending the ball skittering across the table, narrowly missing Lee’s coffee cup. “Really?”

“Yup. We’ll start with Westwood and Amoo, and at some point, bring in Buster. And probably Sach. But, yeah.”

I’m so glad to be doing this, to be talking to Lee this way, that I can’t mount much of a protest.

November 17, 2011

“Alright, gentlemen. You know what’s at stake as well as I do. We win, we’re champions. That simple. Champions. That sounds good to me. Let’s do this.”

With Matty Richardson out of the game, veteran defender Gianmarco De Carlo held the captain’s armband for the day. As Levi McKinnon finished his speech, De Carlo began clapping, bringing the team into a huddle around him and leading them in a brief cheer. It was out of character for the taciturn defender, and a reflection of how much this game mattered to the team and the franchise.

As they emptied out onto the field, McKinnon and his assistant coach, Julian Johnson, huddled close in conversation. “Manzonelli’s not even dressed.”

Johnson nodded: the young midfielder was unlikely to make the bench for the Liberty’s coach, Jean Baudrillard, but there had been rumors he might recover from a strained thigh in time. More importantly, the Liberty’s second leading scorer, Jacob Peterson, was also sidelined through injury. Most had thought that Baudrillard would recall the sixteen year old man-child Činggis Qayan who had been relegated to their youth squad after a good run with the main team, but instead the French coach opted to start young Kevin Carr alongside their primary scorer, veteran Michael Schütte.

Still, the Liberty were left with plenty of attacking strength, highlighted by Schütte’s tireless runs and the sheer brilliance of their veteran midfielder, Alfa Oumar Diallo.

Johnson turned away and spat. “Doesn’t matter. We’re ready for them.”

“Ready for Diallo?” asked McKinnon. This was the fourth time the teams had met this year, and in spite of the Comets posting two victories in those games with the other contest ending a 2-2 tie, Diallo was usually the best player on the field.

Johnson nodded. “Born ready. Just take care of it up front.”

McKinnon headed over to the fourth official for a short conversation and soon, Jason Hook was blowing his whistle, bringing the game underway on a windy day in Houston.

Ten minutes in, Lance Miller, again playing behind the two strikers, sent a tightly angled pass towards the six yard box that Tristan Bowen met in full stride, easily slamming the ball past Joe Cooke and into the back of the net.

The pattern was familiar: again Diallo was the best player on the field, his runs causing constant issues for young David Amoo on the left flank for the Liberty, and pulling Houston’s deep midfielder, Alioune Gueye, out of position, freeing the middle of the field for Schütte and Carr, as well as for Baudrillard’s other two midfielders, Vit Valenta and Jovan Markoski.

Just shy of twenty minutes in, the stadium would explode in noise again when Simon Booth sent a pass two-thirds the length of the field to a waiting Aristide Bancé, who held off his defender, then spun around him to slide the ball across to an open Bowen. This time the goal was a simple tap-in, and suddenly Houston was up by two, both courtesy of the young striker on loan from the Los Angeles Galaxy.

At halftime, Levi raised his hands for quiet in the locker room. As the players settled down, he surveyed the room. They were in a jovial mood, but all he felt was an anxious burning at the base of his stomach. “Alright. Listen up,” he said, hand raised, as the last bits of conversation faded away. He turned to the board, and wrote the number forty-five in big strokes.

“That’s what we need,” he said. “Forty-five minutes.” He paused and looked around the room. “You are not champions yet. Don’t forget that. We haven’t won a damn thing today. Not a damn thing. But we can. And this is what it will take: forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes of concentration. Forty-five minutes of teamwork. Forty-five minutes of out-working, out-hustling, out-wanting the other man.”

He banged the board, hard enough to shake a few pens off the corrugated metal ledge and onto the floor. “Forty-five minutes.” He turned and walked out, quickly followed by Johnson and the rest of the coaching staff. They heard noise from the locker room, and were soon joined on the field by the players, who were subdued, their faces tense with focus.

The Comets had a chance to truly put the game away when Lance Miller flashed free at the top of the box for a cross from Bowen, but Jovan Markoski was able to dispossess Miller with a brilliant last-ditch tackle to send the ball bounding back out of the penalty area.

With twenty minutes remaining, the tension in the stadium rose as Nick Zimmerman was able to convert with a chip in the box over the rushing Andrew Kartunen, a goal that owed as much to Zimmerman’s deft touch as to the passing that preceded it from Diallo and the Liberty substitute, Dan Antoniuk.

But the Comets’ defense was resolute, led by fantastic efforts in the middle from Andy Iro and De Carlo, and the home red and black saw more of the goal at the end of the game, including two clear opportunities for David Amoo to score his first significant senior goal. Both went wide, but in stoppage time, Bowen was able to seal his hat trick, barely getting a toe on a long cross from Sachin Tendulkar to send the ball spinning inside Cooke’s far post.

The final whistle came on the first touch after the kickoff, but the celebrations had already begun on the Comets’ sidelines: the victory meant they were the regular season champions of the North American Division One Hamm Conference, earning automatic promotion to the North American Champions League next season.

After being mobbed by his players and sharing a long hug with Johnson, McKinnon was grabbed by a television crew on the field. The reporter, a brunette in her late twenties who, just that morning, had been complaining about being stuck in the backwaters of American sport, asked him, “Coach, what are your thoughts on winning your division?”

McKinnon, a large grin plastered on his face and his hair still wet from the Gatorade shower he received just before Bowen’s final goal, replied, “It was our goal at the start of the season, and we’re just ecstatic. What can I say? It was a great game for us, we got the effort we needed on defense, and Tristan’s been great for us all year, just a great game and a great season.”

She nodded enthusiastically. “With Tristan Bowen winning it for you with a hat-trick, do you think we might see him next year in a Comets’ uniform?”

McKinnon laughed. “Next year? I don’t know. We’ll look at the squad after the end of the season, we’ll figure out what our budget is, all that stuff. But for now, we’re just going to let them celebrate.”

Before she could ask another question, more players had run by, screaming as the red, black, and white confetti continued to fall, grabbing their coach in a rough embrace, dragging him back up the tunnel and towards the locker room.

NADI: Hamm
Houston Comets v New York Liberty, Rice Track & Soccer Stadium
Comets 3 (Tristan Bowen 11 19 90+4) – Liberty 1 (Nick Zimmerman 70)
MoM: Bowen (9.5)
Attendance: 5056. Referee: Jason Hook.

It’s been the same for weeks now.

Ever since our eyes met and he saw me. I still don’t understand what happened, but he saw me. I wasn’t dreaming that somebody saw me: he was in my dream, but he was real. It was the gaze of somebody tangible, not just some creation of my subconscious.

I know I can’t prove that, but I know it. I know it as sure as I know that, if I reach behind me, my hand will find the lithe form of Ayida, warm from sleep, the heat of her body a faint wave moving in the space between us.

As sure as I know that, if I get up, the Haitian night will greet me with the sound of distant horns and a clear sky scattered with stars like jewels tossed carelessly on distant velvet.

My dreams are a long series of near-misses, of chases without resolution. I flee as soon as I see the flash of sand-colored hair that signals his approach, as soon as I see his body racing down the sideline of the pitch.

I don’t really understand what is happening, but I am convinced that I cannot, must not, let him see me.

It’s not that I’m afraid. Or, not of him at least. It’s just that I know somehow that if he were to see me again, if he were to really see me, it would break some basic law of physics, some bedrock principle that I cannot bear to face. It would be as if something had the potential to eliminate gravity: not in the sense of allowing you to fly, but in the sense of a single moment where everything surrounding you would rip apart, set loose from its moorings by the momentary removal of the most fundamental of forces.

So I run and I duck into alleys that lead back to the nightmare carnival that has become a constant landmark in my dreams or I sprint up the hard concrete stadium steps two at a time, never looking over my shoulder no matter how loud the roars of the crowd.

But it’s getting harder.

He’s getting faster and better at anticipating what I will do, and he keeps showing up in the most unusual places: in one dream I was at my grandmother’s kitchen table, the mountains familiar, jagged, and magnificent in the distance. There was a pie on the windowsill, and the heavy smell of fruit in the air mixed lightly with the floral undertones of her perfume. I looked up, and there he was, his face seeming to float above the pie, my chair clattering to the floor as I shoved myself backwards and ducked under the table.

Just before I woke, the last thing I heard was his voice crying, “Wait, we need to talk. I need to …”

When I told Ayida, she asked me, “So why don’t you talk to him?”

I had no answer for her, and the question has haunted me ever since, eating at me as I stand on the sidelines and watch the team practice ahead of Real España’s visit on Wednesday.

This is a game we should win, Dayán’s statistics be damned.

But we’re missing a lot of players, not through injuries, but through international call-ups. It’s an odd situation, something we’ve never really had to deal with before and, I guess, a sign of progress. Jemieko Jennings is away with Bermuda, Liam Parmentier and Keneil Luccioni are with the Guadeloupe squad, and six players are with the Haitian Under-20’s.

It’s not quite the same situation Chelsea or Barçelona have to deal with or whatever, but it’s something.

November 16, 2011

NADII: Yashin
Racing Club Haïtien v Real Club Deportivo España, Sylvio Cator
Racing Club 6 (Ishmael Butler 24, José Matute 26og, Devon Frederick 39 40 60, Bidre’Ce Azor 53) – Real España 0
MoM: Frederick (9.6)
Attendance: 9546. Referee: Karl Barnes.

When Karl Barnes blew the final whistle, I turned to Dayán and said, “Regression to the mean, my ass.”

He glared at me for a moment and then broke into a wide grin.

How could he not? It was simply the best offensive performance we’d seen since we started working with Racing Club, a six goal demolition of Real España that included a hat trick for Devon Frederick, a magnificent shot from well outside the box from Butterfly Butler, and Bidre’Ce Azor’s first goal for the club in I don’t know how long.

And almost lost in all the firepower was Fouad Guichard’s best game for us since we signed him: he was a terror on the left wing, stopping Real España’s Sergio Reyes and Osmán Anariva time and time again, holding possession for us and sending cross after cross into the box.

The only blemish on the game was a silly red card from Kelvin de los Reyes, but even his lack of discipline couldn’t lessen the jubilation in our locker room.

Julian and I are on the field, watching the stands begin to fill up with a sea of orange. In the distance, we can hear the drums and horns of the Dynamo bands as they wind their way through the parking lot. I’m staring out towards the campus of the University of Houston, past signs with the names of past players for the Cougars. The only one I recognize is Andre Ware, who I think played quarterback and might have won the Heismann. But I’m not sure.

I sigh and turn to Julian, feeling that I need to say something, but I’m not sure what. I know I haven’t been very good company for a while now, and I know today’s game is unlikely to change that. I look around, seeing the signs of wear in the stadium, its box and concrete feel. “Think they’ll play here much longer?”

Julian shrugs. “I dunno. There’s a spot over behind downtown they keep talking about. But, you know what?” I shake my head. “Maybe they fall down next year. Maybe we sparkle. Maybe that spot becomes Comets Stadium.”

“Maybe.” I force a laugh before turning away.

He means well but I’m not in the mood. Was the game against Santa Fé a return to form or a mirage? Were we going to make it?

Was I going to make it?

I move away from Julian, down towards where Andrew Kartunen was warming up. He would be starting in goal for us today with Graham McSweeney still away with the Irish Under-21 team. McSweeney had been one of the key stories for us all year: a walk-on that we found purely through luck before the season had emerged as not only our best keeper, but arguably the best in our division.

Kartunen was taking a rapid series of shots from Chris Snitko, one to the left, one to the right, forcing him to dive back and forth until he raised a hand to stop, and stood for a moment, wiping his brow and catching his breath.

He nodded grimly in my direction. He wasn’t happy this year, and I could understand it: last year, Kartunen had wrested our starting spot away from Ronnie Pascale and Jordan James, eventually forcing both of them out of the organization; this year, he had barely played as McSweeney had a stranglehold on the job. Today was a big game for him: a trophy on the line, television coverage, and if he was to find a home elsewhere next year, which I genuinely hoped he would, he needed to impress between the sticks.

I kept going until I was behind the goal and turned to face the field, watching the players stretch and run, balls moving everywhere between patches of orange and white clad men.

Was I going to make it.   I don’t know how long it had been going on, but sometime in the last few days, I realized it was happening. Again.

I hadn’t been this way in years. Maybe decades. And nobody, not even Julian, knew about it. He thinks that during our sophomore year, I took some time off in an abbreviated study abroad program in Europe. Switzerland. That was it, we said I went to Switzerland. I need to remember that.

Instead, I spent three weeks at Riverbend, a treatment facility in Colorado. I don’t remember a lot about the place—a big hill with Adirondack chairs painted in muted colors where we would sit and watch the sun suddenly dip behind the mountains; a cafeteria with chipped Formica tables and trays all a slightly different color of puke, a nurse that all the teenage boys talked about fucking. Shania, or Shane, or Sonia. Something like that.

But things were better since then. I mean, yeah, there were a few days each year that I couldn’t really remember. And sometimes I couldn’t seem to get out of my own head, couldn’t really switch from thought to thought like I should. But those days seemed rare and they never seemed to really get in the way of life, if that makes any sense.

Until this year. Until now.

I didn’t know if it was the team, or this ridiculous thing with Bones, or what.

But I know it’s been going on for a while, and I think it’s been bad. I can see it in some of how Julian looks at me, in some of the questions he asks. But I don’t think I can ask him what’s happened, not without spilling all the beans at once.

And, today?

I hated putting out a weaker side than we could, but that’s what we had decided. I mean, the team was good, and maybe we could make up the two goals. But we weren’t going all out: Flit and Murph weren’t our strongest pair in the back, and the experiment of playing Friedland in midfield was still uncertain.

Still, Stanton Lewis was back from injury, and while neither Burkinabe star would play up front for us, Bowen and Pekhart were both playing well.

So, maybe it was possible. We had to contain Eneramo, of course, but I had to feel we had a chance.

A chance.

I took a breath and moved over to Snitko to ask him how Kartunen looked. He shrugged, as he always did, and said what he always said: “He’ll do fine. Make sure we get ours, he’ll keep them from getting theirs.”

I smile and clap him on the shoulder, and head back towards the middle of the field, where I see the tall form of Felix Garcia, stretching with the assistance of one of the Dynamo physios. Garcia’s done well since leaving us, scoring a half-dozen goals for the Dynamo and forcing himself into the rotation on a team that has no shortage of attacking talent behind Eneramo. I wait until he gets on his feet, swinging his lanky arms in long circles. He sees me and smiles.

“Felix,” I say, extending a hand.

“Coach.” He shakes it warmly.

“How you doing?”

He nods. “Good. Good. I’m getting some time, trying to work hard.” He pauses for a moment, his voice dropping a little. “It’s hard. The game is faster up here. I mean, nothing against you, you know? Nothing at all. But the clubs we’re up against.” He shakes his head, an appreciative smile on his face.

“You enjoying it, then?” He nods. “Good. Keep it up. Keep working, yeah? And good luck today.”

“You too, Coach.”

I head back to our side of the field and slide next to Julian. “Hey.” He turns and spits, which passes for saying hello in his book. “You all set.”

He nods and stares at me for a moment before saying pointedly, “Yeah. You all set?”

I shrug. “We just need to hold them off and get one back. Get within one, anything can happen.”

Julian nods and starts to say something else but stops himself. I don’t press, and we stand in silence until Marie Laveau’s whistle starts the game.

Five minutes in, and it comes undone: Garcia sends a nifty pass inside the box to Dare Vrsic and the Slovenian veteran is able to drill it past Kartunen in our goal. I sit down heavily on the bench, and feel like the game is fading into the distance. I watch the rest of the half, but it’s largely in a haze. Nobody scores, but I couldn’t tell you who came close and who didn’t.

“Lee. Lee.” I look up at Julian. “Lee. It’s half. Come on.”

I grab him as we head down the tunnel. “What you got?”

He frowns and turns away from me in frustration. One hand lashes out and bangs against the side of the portable structure, a dull echo rippling away from us in both directions. He looks behind me and scowls, muttering something under his breath before grabbing me and moving more quickly into the building. I turn just in time to see a couple of local reporters looking curiously in our direction.

Julian pulls me into a small opening just before the door to the locker room. “Lee, what the hell?”

“What?”

“Don’t what me. We just played our asses off for forty minutes out there,” he says, gesturing back towards the field and his voice rising in pitch. “We gave up a goal early and since then have locked them down entirely. Murph is so deep in Eneramo’s jock, they’d be married in some states.” He shakes his head in exasperation. “We’re playing fucking great soccer and all you can say is, ‘What you got?’”

“That’s not.” I stop. He’s right. At the end of the day, he’s right. I take a deep breath. “OK. Look, you deserve an explanation. So do they,” I say, nodding towards the locker room. “I don’t know, but you’re right. You’re right.” I rub my face a moment. “We do anything up top?” Julian shakes his head in silence. “OK. Look, you take the talk. You’ve done it before. I’ll …” My voice trails off. I’m not sure what I will do. What I should do. “I’ll figure out something at the end.”

Julian doesn’t move.

“Look, I know, OK? We’ll talk tomorrow. Tonight. Whatever. But we’ve got a team in there, and they’re waiting.”

Something in my words or my tone moves him and he nods, turning towards the locker room.

I don’t remember much of what he says, but I do remember the second half. We are strong, and Murph is playing like a man possessed, denying Eneramo time and time again. Felix plays well, but he doesn’t seem sure of how to compensate for us being able to control his Nigerian strike partner, and it’s clear Nowak is looking to replace him.

Julian nods towards where the Dynamo reserves are jogging and stretching.

“Who you think it’s going to be?”

I frown. “Ching. Him or Davis, but that would leave Eneramo alone up front. So, yeah, Ching.”

Julian nods in agreement, his face betraying his memories of how Ching has caused us problems in the past. “Well. He’s older, we’re better. Simple.” He gets up and walks over towards the sideline, yelling encouragement to Gaudence Raphael, who is having a very strong game over on the right side.

“Buster! More of that, yeah?” Julian’s arms swing back and forth in front of his body. “Track back, but push as hard as you can.” Sometime in the last few weeks, Gaudence got his nickname. It stuck immediately, and even the TV announcers had taken to calling him Buster. Raphael was still a kid—only eighteen—but we had seen glimpses this year of a talent that would be making news in Europe at some point. Our job was to nurture it and to wish him well when it was time: some kids you fight to keep, others you know will, at some point, simply be out of your league.

I look down the sidelines, and see Ching standing by the fourth official, which answers that question. Today, however, there is no magic for him against us: our defense is too strong.

The down side is that we show very little at the other end, and when Lewis comes off, exhausted by his first hour of match time in a few months, we go almost totally limp in attack. Fifteen minutes from time I walk over to where Bancé is on our bench.

“You good for fifteen?”

He grins that slow grin and nods. “I got it.”

“OK. Get warmed. And,” I continue, looking down the group, “Marcus, you too.” Westwood is surprised, but just nods, stripping off his jacket and following Aristide. It was clearly Marcus’ last year with us, and he’d handled it well. At this point of the year, injuries to our best midfielders had forced us into some moments of desperation: not only had I been playing three of our defenders wide on the left at times, but both Westwood and young David Amoo were seeing time there as well.

It took a few minutes for the substitution to happen, and I stayed by the edge of the field until Tristan Bowen had come off after exchanging a brief hug with Bancé. His head was down, but I reached out to grab him before he could move past.

“Hard day.” He nodded, but still wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Don’t worry about it. You’re better than you were out there. You know it and we know it. We’re going to need you more this year.” He’s looking at me now, his facing nodding almost imperceptibly. “Alright. Shake it off, come back strong, right?”

The substitutions don’t change the game, and the scoreline remains unchanged when Laveau blows the final whistle.

It’s an odd locker room afterwards: we lost the game, we lost the cup, but our performance felt strong, and there is optimism in the air, fueled by the realization that our game against New York on Thursday is a chance to seal promotion: if we win, we make it.

I don’t know how that is a surprise to me, but it is. After the player’s filter out, I go back to me desk to check. And double check.

It’s true.

The realization hits me hard, as it’s a sign of just how far away I’ve been. I mean, this is what I was so concerned about, and I didn’t even know how close we were. Are. How close we are.

I’m happy as I leave the stadium. It’s the first time in ages I can say that.

Silver Boot Final Second Leg
Houston Dynamo v Houston Comets, Robertson Stadium
Dynamo 1 (Dare Vrsic 5) – Comets 0 [Dynamo win 3-0 on aggregate]
MoM: Ralph Murphy (7.4)
Attendance: 32,045. Referee: Marie Laveau.

The players had the day off, but the staff weren’t as lucky. I had sent them all a message early in the morning that I wanted to do a film run through on Santa Fé at 3:00. It was 2:15 and most of them were already here.

That made it harder to pretend these games were anything other than what they are: the deciding games of a long season where we have a shot at promotion after a single year in NADII. It was the hardest part of the race, the moment when it feels easier to just stop than to press on.

And that means it is even more important to pay attention to details, to keep finding things to improve upon.

I stared at the schedule on my desk: today the Red Devils, a day off before Houston in the second leg of the Golden Boot, then a day off before the Liberty, who were threatening us in the standings.

Usually, you could pick a couple of games, juggle the lineup, figure out which matches meant more than the others and focus on them. But not now. They all meant something now. I could feel a dull throbbing in my forehead. I couldn’t remember the last time I didn’t have a headache.

My desk seemed to recede slightly, my vision graying at the edges. I took a deep breath and extended both arms, steadying myself and staring at the boxes on the calendar. Slowly, the darkness faded away and the paper with Santa Fé, 11/13/11 at the top came back into focus.

I sighed and stood up, gathering a couple folders and popping a CD-ROM out of my drive before adding it to the pile. When I walked into the film room, a half-dozen people were already there, and we quickly settled into position.

The Red Devils had been struggling all year, and despite the prodigious talents of teenage striker Jack Beckerman, looked destined for relegation at the end of the season. One reason was that their defenders were, across the board, too young and too small: Héctor Álvarez Cuevas and Anthony Peters were tall, but both still had the stringbean look of a teenager about them.

The film clips focused on how Jonesy tended to position his defense, on how Ryan Garlick and Jason Martin liked to work the ball up to the front line, and on how we might be able to keep Beckerman and Ricardo Flores from scoring.

After the coaches had cleared out, it was just me and Julian. He was fiddling with the laptop, disconnecting it from the projector and I was putting my scouting notes back in order.

“You hungry?” he asked.

“I could eat.”

“Alright. You up for company?”

“Sure.”

“Let me text Bones, see what she feels like.”

I felt the same stab of guilt that shot through me whenever he mentioned her name. I couldn’t help myself: I would see her hair and remember the touch of her lips on mine, the shyly conspiratorial smile she flashed just after.

I swallowed and answered, “Good. Let me put this crap away, I’ll meet you out front in ten, yeah?”

Forty-five minutes later, we were at a sushi restaurant, Bones and I laughing as Julian contorted himself into his seat. The restaurant had tables where the seats were dug into the floor, creating a sort of box with the table above it, so you sat very low, but with plenty of leg room. But getting in and out could be a bitch.

“Fuck y’all. Fuck both of y’all.” Bones and I giggled some more. “Goddamn. Make me go to a place they don’t even cook the damn food, then you sit in the floor.” He shook his head and trailed off into silence.

Bones and I looked at each other and burst out laughing again. She composed her face into a stern mask and shook a finger at him. “Now, now. We voted. You lost. No whining.”

He picked up a menu with a sullen look. “Is anything in here cooked?”

I glanced at my menu. “Yeah, look at the first three pages. It’s all cooked.”

He grunted. I looked up at Bones and grinned again. “So, raw fish?”

She flashed her smile at me and I looked away as quickly as I could, burying my nose in the menu.

We ordered and convinced Julian to try some sake. Between the rice wine and his grudging admittance that his beef and noodles dish was quite good, the meal turned into a relaxing evening, something I desperately needed. I stared out the window, watching the headlights move through a light rain that had just started.

“Lee?” It was Julian.

“What? Oh, sorry.” I fidgeted with chopsticks for a moment.

“You thinking about the game?”

“Not really.”

“Thinking about anything?”

I tried to smile. “Not really.”

He shook his head. “Alright. Well. I need to go see a man about a horse. How the hell do I get out of here.”

Bones pushed him playfully in the shoulder, then escaped her seat in a graceful shimmy. Julian followed with far less grace, but managing only to bump his knee once. “Goddamit,” he muttered as he headed off towards the restrooms, Bones’ eyes trailing behind.

She sipped her sake and stared at me. I forced myself not to look away until she smiled and deftly picked up a piece of neatly rolled sushi between two chopsticks. “You know what I like about rolls?” Her eyes were green and sparkling and the splash of freckles across her face was utterly distracting.

I shook my head.

“All the little bits,” she said, her eyes locked onto mine. She pursed her lips and her tongue flicked out of her mouth, teasing a ruby piece of salmon from its white rice surroundings.

“Bones, what.” I looked down, not really knowing what I wanted to ask. “What are you doing?”

She leaned back in her seat and smiled, squeezing her arms against her sides which had the effect of pushing her breasts forward. I forced myself not to look, but I knew her nipples were clearly defined under the front of her shirt. She laughed, and it was the sound of glass breaking. “You can look. Everyone does.”

I shook my head and aimed my gaze pointedly out the window.

“Lee … “ I felt her hand on mine, and I jerked my arm back, knocking it into my container of soy sauce and sending a dark stain spreading slowly across the table. She laughed as I wiped at it with my napkin. “Lee. I’m doing it because I want to. Because I like you. Because I can.” Her eyes darted over my shoulder. “Oh, look, here comes Jay. Also,” she said, her voice dropping, “because I think we would have a lot of fun in bed.”

Those words threw me. I don’t consider myself a prude, but I don’t think I’d ever heard those words aimed at me; at least, not before the fact. I busied myself cleaning up the last of the soy sauce while I tried to regain my sense of balance, and when Julian asked what happened, Bones just laughed. “He’s just a bit of a klutz, hon, that’s all.”

November 13, 2011

I didn’t sleep much last night. I felt like I was hopped up on caffeine, but that wasn’t it. I was just anxious. Anxious about today. And every time I thought I was about to fall asleep, there was the vision of Bones, a red cloud floating around her emerald eyes.

Fuck.

Have to just shake it off. All of it. The fatigue. The fear of failing at the last gasp again. The image of my best friend’s girl.

Like everyone else, we’re scrambling to field a fit eleven. It’s part of why we’ve been cross-training almost everyone all year and part of why Lance has been spending so much time learning to play behind the strikers, a role he seems to enjoy, even if it doesn’t quite play to his strengths. And, up front, we’re going with the twin towers: Tristan Bowen alongside Aristide.

I grabbed the huge Burkinabe before the game, letting him know that we needed him to be the veteran leader out there. “You’ve got Lance behind you and Tristan in front. Be smart out there: give them the ball in good spots, and if they go to the wrong place, you tell them, OK?”

Bancé smiled his grin, which moves slowly across his face like sun in the early morning. “Can I yell at them?”

I clapped him on the shoulder. “All you fucking want.”

I shouldn’t have worried. Four minutes into the game, Leonel Saint-Preux’s shot was well parried by Keith Wiggins in Santa Fe’s goal, but Bancé was there for the rebound and, twenty minutes later, when Dave Crabb pulled him down hard in the box, Aristide drilled the penalty home for his brace and a 2-0 lead.

Not two minutes later, Miller sent a cross towards Aristide with a deft header. Bancé could have gone for his hat trick and not raised any eyebrows, but he saw Bowen streaking for the far post, and sent it on to him, also with a hard header. Bowen was able to find a final burst of speed and nod it into the net, and we were up by three under half an hour in.

From there, the Red Devils just folded: it was surprising, as Jonesy usually has them fighting hard for ninety minutes. But this is, I guess, part of why they’re headed back down and we may, just may, move up a division.

Bowen added another, as did Saint-Preux, and the scoring was capped by a jaw-dropping strike from Alioune Gueye, a volley that soared into the net from thirty-two yards out. Wiggins had a better chance of breaking a finger than of stopping it, and I couldn’t be happier for Alioune. Our holder and our wingers don’t get a lot of opportunities to score, but they’re as key to our game as the three men up front.

NADI: Hamm
Houston Comets v Santa Fe Red Devils, Rice Track & Soccer Stadium
Comets 6 (Aristide Bancé 4 26p, Tristan Bowen 28 32, Leonel Saint-Preux 68, Alioune Gueye 70) – Red Devils 1 (Jack Beckerman 45+1)
MoM: Saint-Preux (9.4)
Attendance: 4374. Referee: Kieran Casey.