Best Win of the Season

The Villains marched into Lexington and came out with a huge 1-0 win that stands on its own and makes it completely unnecessary for me to try to come up with some stupid theme-related blog about Paul Revere, the Revolutionary War, or the Battles of Lexington and Concord.  Rather, we can simply explore some of the key themes of Sunday’s big victory: Excellent Goal-keeping, solid defense, good possession, timely clutch offense, and great attendance. Oh also ridiculously stupid refereeing/rule enforcement and yet another awful field.

Goal-keeping:  John played a great game in net. While he was not tested often, he came up with at least two big saves in each half that required timing, toughness, and aggression. Granted he played a couple of bouncing balls with a casual-ness often reserved for game of stoned hackey-sack, but can’t complain about zero goals-against.

Solid Defense:  The Villain defense was stellar and disciplined, for the most part avoiding playing with the ball in the back or giving up any break-aways.  There was one play involving I think Jim completely whiffing the ball, John ending up in no-man’s-land at the top of the 18 nowhere the ball, Joe coming flailing in (and flailing out) out-of-nowhere, and no other defenders anywhere near the play, but those are simply the type of plays you chalk up to being over-30, and thankful that the other team has a bunch of equally clumsy over-30-year-old shmucks who couldn’t capitalize on Villain ineptitude.

Good Possession:  The field was wide and fast (more on the negative aspects of the field later).  This allowed for the Villains to pass the ball effectively, control the ball in space, and look up-field (or square or even to supporting players) to make composed passes, rather than air-mailing thru-balls to the goal-keeper abyss. Granted there were a few of those as well, but a Villain game without a few blasts to the opposing keeper might upset the Earth’s revolution (or is it rotation) around the sun and end human civilization as we know it.

Timely Clutch Offense:  Ryan scored the goal of the season. Hands down.  Mikel, who is in the middle of every good Villain attack, got the ball to Ryan at the corner of the 18.  Ryan fought through a few defenders, dug out the ball, turned and only had the goal-keeper to beat.  Knowing that this was a golden opportunity, he had to dip into his offensive arsenal and choose one of his signature weapons. The heel pass wasn’t gonna work, so he went with the old toe-ball! Bam. 1-0 Villains

Great Attendance:  Taking a 1-0 lead into half-time, the Villains were in good shape on this hot day. Since most of the team showed up, they had ample subs to run into and out of the game to protect the lead.  Or so they thought. During half-time though, the referee refused to allow Eric to play in the 2^nd half because he didn’t have a photo ID or the stupid-ass league-issued addendum ID-of the temporary ID-of the league-mandated-yet-never-produced-or-shared-actual league ID. Confused? No shit. Bunch of idiot-ass-clowns trying to make a simple recreation over-30 soccer league into World Cup qualifying (minus the billion dollar bribes from oil-producing nations like Qatar). Problem is, when you try to make the league all official and what-not, you should probably make sure you at least have a god-damn functioning computer or printer or someone with more intelligence than a rat or yesterday’s ref over-seeing the process. This is clearly not the case at Over-The-Hill HQ. Bitch-ass-mutha-f#@&ers.

Even without Eric and Mike Koehler in the second half, the Villains still had enough subs to stay fresh a control possession.  Though the old "turf-on-top-of-cement field" didn’t do my aching back any favors. Is it too much to ask to play on one decent field on the road this season? If the league is going to get all official and run our identification through Homeland Security before allowing us to play, how about they come out and look at some of these parking lots and sand-boxes that are passed off as soccer fields?  Whatever, the only solution is to channel our inner-Major League (the movie) Cleveland Indians and “Win. The. Whole. Fucking. Thing.”  Then maybe D-4 will have some better fields to play on.

OK I guess I will just touch briefly on a historical metaphor. 200-and-some-odd years ago Paul Revere rode his horse from Boston to Lexington to warn everyone to get out their guns and fight the damn British, who were bent on taxing and ruling these new Americans. Taxation without representation or whatever. Well I think old Paulie rolled over in his grave when he heard that the city of Lexington wouldn’t allow the Villains to crack a beer on the field after a game.  Like, isn’t that the exact reason Paul Revere made the Midnight Ride in the first place? So Americans could drink cold Coors Light out in the open free of oversight from the powers-that-be?  Not to fear, Paulie rolled back over peacefully in his grave knowing that the Villains were resourceful in finding a church parking lot down the street in which to get drunk, pee all over the place, and celebrate a hard-fought clutch victory. First place Nashua next week boys. Let’s keep it rolling.