It was the night of the 4th, June 2009; the air was calm and
cold as the players entered the arena. The tension was tenable in the
air, and the showdown was imminent.The
crowd was going wild, in anticipation for what will be remembered as the most
important soccer game in the history of the world.
Well, this may be a slight exaggeration, but it's not far
from the truth.On that night, the estudiantes
del intercambio (exchange students) had rented the artificial soccer field at
the school's Ateneo (gym).We had planned an international soccer game,
The U. S. vs. Argentina.
We had been waiting a week to see who was better at fútbol (soccer), the teams may have been
slightly uneven; but this didn't decrease trash talking.The game was really more for fun than
anything else, and what is more of a cultural exchange than trash talking?
One cultural difference between the U. S. and Argentina is
the sports.In Argentina everyone played
soccer, not necessarily competitively, but everyone played.In the U.S. soccer is not really as common of
a sport, rather fútbol Americano (football)
and baseball and others are more mainstream.
The night of our fateful soccer game, we all gathered as a
group beforehand and played video games at Pablo Salvadores' house...soccer video
games of course.After more trash
talking and such over the video games, arguing about who is better and such, we
left and walked to the field.
At the field we were greeted by a very large number of kids
playing soccer, practicing with the school entrenadores
(coaches), and this for me was the perfect example of the cultural difference
of soccer playing here and there.Not
only that, but a lot of the kids looked like they were a lot better than I
was!After the kids were done we took
the field, after a short warm-up and figuring out who was playing what, we
started our game.
Header!
It was a long hard-fought game, with one side slightly
handicapped.The final score was 5-1 and
team Argentina won.I frankly was not
surprised, but it was entirely irrelevant to me.
Orange Soda Break!
The great part of the game was just going out
and playing sports and having fun with all the guys.This concept seems very universal to me at
this point, at home maybe you go out and play baseball, but in Argentina you go
play soccer.
