AHA Media

Coach Alan Bates writes:

Hi Street Soccer Canada fans,

Sorry to be a day late again. Our days have been very busy as I’ll fill you in on below.

I ended the last update by letting you know that we were having some interpersonal difficulties on the team the night before our second day of games. We’d had a rough ride against Ireland and the Romanian-Brazilian alliance and we have 8 players and me stuffed into a room that’s three quarters the size of an average bedroom. Some conflict was inevitable.

But enough with the excuses. Our morning yesterday can only be described as disgraceful. When the opening whistle went for our morning game against Cambodia, it was clear that we were already in full process of losing. We started losing against Cambodia at about 8pm the night before. Team Cambodia have become good friends of ours. We’ve cheered for them through their loses and they’ve cheered for us through ours. They’re an easy team to cheer for. They just look like an underdog. Despite their youngest player being 17 and the rest of their team being well over 20, they all look like they’re about 12 by Canadian body-structure and size standards.

By the time we played them, we’d already seen them get pushed around and generally pasted by two other teams. I think our team was ready to play a team that would surely lose to the old-ladies home, let alone a bunch of big bad guys from the hood in Vancity. We were ready for sure glory. Instead, the ball was in our net within the first three seconds. The game pretty much continued along those lines. I didn’t recognize our team out there. We didn’t get back to defend, we didn’t attack as a team, we didn’t communicate at all, and we got out-muscled and out-classed by a Cambodian team that deserves credit for bringing their A-game against us. Goals by Jeremy Isaac and Peter Chow were too little too late.

After every game, we meet as a team on the beach to talk about what went right and what went wrong. The players speak first and then Daniel Errey and I summarize what we agree with and make the points we want to add. Usually, I try to be pretty positive and I don’t anger easily. I didn’t have anything good to say about our game. I did have strong opinions on how our poor conduct the night before had lead to our abysmal performance and I didn’t hold back on sharing them with the team. And if they hadn’t really got the message from me, they sure had by the time team organizer extraordinaire Kalin See had translated my words into the players’ more familiar Downtown Eastside dialect.

The post-game discussion prompted co-captain Patrick Oleman to call a players-only meeting. The players had their meeting while all the volunteers also got together to talk about how things were going and how to optimize all the organization. I don’t know what was said in the players-only meeting, but they came away from it a different team. Despite not being the source of any of the conflict, Richard Mountain came back from the meeting with his teammates to offer a heartfelt apology on behalf of the team for letting down all the people supporting us back in Canada. The rest of the team seemed equally convinced they had a new direction.

We had a great warm-up for our game against Mexico. The team had new determination. I was wishing that we were playing a team that would allow this new attitude to translate into a win. Based on their easy victory over Ireland who creamed us 17-1, I figured we would need a miracle to beat Mexico. In the end, a win wasn’t necessary for us to get all the satisfaction we needed out of the game.

We played amazing. Coming hard right out of the gates, we actually went up 1-0 and spent most of the first half losing by scores of only 2-1 or 3-2 (after goals by Robert Milton and Peter Chow). We were on fire. Everyone was getting back to defend and we were attacking with enough pressure to let the Mexicans know they had a real game on their hands.

The MVP performance was definitely by goalkeeper Randy Comiso who probably put on the best performance by a Canadian keeper in an international game ever (Craig who?). The Mexicans can really shoot and Randy was getting a piece of everything. Unfortunately, he got too small a piece of one particularly hard shot and had to leave the game with a bad thumb sprain that required a trip to the hospital. For a great account of the Canada-Mexico game see: http://www.homelessworldcup.org/news/canada-2-11-mexico .

We were really proud of our performance against Mexico and fortunately there were some great things planned for the players that evening that were fitting celebrations. While Randy and I made a trip to the hospital,

In case you’re curious about the hospital, I’ll describe it briefly. When we pulled up to Miguel Couto public hospital, we found the front steps full of people who were apparently waiting to get into Emergency. The “triage” system seemed to consist of a large security guard who eyed each new person and either let them in or told them to wait on the steps. He let Randy and our interpreter in, but wouldn’t let me come in with them. So I spent a couple hours trying to figure out the system for the people on the steps. I never did. In the end, Randy didn’t have to wait much longer than he would at a Canadian hospital. He did have to wait in several long lineups though. The good news was that there were no fractures and by today he is already able to move the thumb quite well.

The rest of the team went to see the Christ the Redeemer statue up close. They all described it as an incredible experience. After getting back from the hospital, Randy and I were able to join everyone else for a full-moon gondola ride up to the top of Sugar Loaf. The views of the lights spreading around and sprawling up the hills of Rio were awesome. We started the day on a bad note, but definitely ended on the right one.

Pictures for day 6 for you:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=492765&id=852065453&l=c0b918624c

Time for some sleep.

Thanks for your support.

Alan