Football Fun

So in case you didn't know, football (soccer) is a big deal everywhere in the world outside of the US. Maybe not in Iraq. But poissibly there too. Literally at all hours of day, and sometimes night, when I go outside from our house there are guys playing some kind of pick-up game of football in the street/parking lot. It's just what they do. And they all play together all the time, so they tend to be quite good. 

One of the churches in Iasi organizes an annual football tournament amongst the evangelical churches in the city. So in come the guys from our church, all good players, but not so much able to play as a team. But boy do they have a good time doing it. I watched some of their practices, and they just have FUN. It's great. But as for the tournament, we weren't quite sure how our team would fare in an actual competition. That requires such things as SCORING GOALS in order to do things like ADVANCE. Against people who aren't your Nigerian friend but Romanians who play together year-round. But we gathered our friends to go and cheer for the three games we were guaranteed. And we promptly lost games one and two. Mostly because we didn't play as a team. But man was it fun to cheer. Let me tell you what- people have seriously organized cheering sections- flags, noise makers, chants, songs, cheers. For a charity football tournament. Serious business. Our cheering section- not so much. We thought it would be dandy to wear our team colors, but we were sorely mistaken to think that was anything special. However, we did manage to draw a fair amount of attention because of the large quantity of not-white people gathered and screaming in languages other than Romanian.

Since we had to win 2 of the 3 games to proceed any further, we knew we would be eliminated. But perhaps it was just the motivation our guys needed to actually play as a team. Because they SHOWED UP for the third game. As did a whole lotta people from our church. So it made for an exciting afternoon. Because it's just a lot more fun to cheer for your team when they're winning. And so we won. Not that it made any difference other than going out victorious. And we most certainly had fun doing it. Just think, now we have a whole year to practice... 

The guys warming up

Our cheering section during one of the games

Team and Fan Club gathered after a game