Playing football

The last time I played football was in my elementary days. It wasn't really a big sport in my school despite it being a Salesian school, which also regarded basketball as a religion just like the rest of the country.

What ever I knew of the sport became handy early this afternoon. Eight of us from our dorm jogged to a small playing field of the Grundschule just across the street. There was an even representation, four against four, their floor against ours.

The game started slow, but as soon as everyone picked up their pulse, the ball began to roll. At one point, the ball flew high up, and it was a toss between the goalkeeper and me. We collided in the struggle to gain control of the ball, and the law of gravity seemed to have intensified. In a split second, I twisted in mid air and was thrown to the ground in the impact of our collision. My chin hit the ground and my glasses were thrown an arm's reach away form me on the ground. Good thing I was able to use my hands to absorb the impact, but my left palm was unfortunately not spared from a bad bruise. My right knee also suffered a patch of contusion and minor bruises. Somebody please raise the yellow card!

We played on despite my minor injury. I think I was quite an effective goalkeeper, blocking quite a few attempted scores. However, I had several attempts to score which didn't get through. Schade. In the end, it was a draw at 5-5. We exercised to cooled down in our dorm's quadrangle. We segued in the end to a German nursery rhyme of Laurencia which I gamely joined. Why we did so, only Michael Ballack knows. It must be an unpublicized and one of the best-kept German after-football ritual.