Vets Tournament July ’14

by Dirk

We play? We cancel?

Big confusion weeks ahead of the monthly Vet’s. Obviously it seems to be too difficult to answer the EVITE system at least one week ahead. Though most of the guys play 24/7 with their fancy handphones, it is definitely too hard for some people to click on YES, NO or MAYBE. So, please, be so kind and answer that Evite thingy, so that some people can plan their schedule earlier. Two days before the tournament Goalie Michael and Coach Philipp worked extremely hard to finally arrange a team by calling each and every player by phone, two guest players included. Unfortunately bomber Philipp had to cancel in the last minute due to an injury.

At the pitch we finally had enough players, Sulee brought our old friend Dam to help out and not to forget Jens, Yilmaz and Gerd , who literally just flew in to participate. That’s the spirit! In principle we had a great team, so it was very surprising that we lost the first three games (against Japanese teams both times 0:1, against the Scans a bitter 0:4). What went wrong? We had chances to score; maybe we all watched too much World Cup the last weeks…tired anyone?

The last game against Team X showed that we still got the power: Solid defense from Dave, Ralf and Rob, safe keeper (we have to mention that Michael did NOT copy a certain German goalkeeper by playing in the defense….), fast midfield and finally our first goals this day by Dam and Dirk. So that we won 2:0 meant that we escaped the bottom of the group, only by one goal difference. Lucky bastards, aren’t we?

So we played for the shield, meaning the fifth place, against a new team, called Lotus something… Dave managed to make a nice goal from Ivan’s groundwork. With very bad luck we caught two goals and were understandably disappointed. What the heck, so we played only for the 7^th place and met again the Team X.

It was almost a copy of the first game against them, and Yilmaz , the Waterless, and Dirk scored a very well deserved 2:0 victory against an exhausted Team X. A 7^th place doesn’t sound too good, but actually we showed quite nice football, everyone in the team, without exception, played quite strong and without any big mistakes. Our problem was only the first three games, which we definitely overslept, that cost us a higher rank.

A special thanks to the following players:

• Michael and Philipp for working hard to arrange a team
• Jens for flying in from Phuket-and not getting a muscle strain this time!
• Yilmaz and Gerd for just arriving in Thailand from overseas and being able to play
• Sulee for helping us out with two fine players
• Hartwig for unusual appearance as a player
• Rob for watching his Dutch team half of the previous night but nevertheless being able to show solid defense
• Dave for arranging a strong defense as usual and score
• Ralf for fighting hard and defend as well as trying to score
• Ivan for playing the opponents dizzy
• And Dam, Dave, Yilmaz and Dirk for scoring