Capacity Issues

Today morning as planned we played against Pasha, a very important game — especially for me as this also acted like a selection for me.

Even though I scored 7 goals and assisted 7 the game ended 18-17 for Pasha, thus breaking my 15-game unbeaten record and making this my 2nd loss out of two games in Zigana and 3rd loss out of three games against Pasha.
I would call my performance one of my personal best ever, except I couldn’t take advantage of 2 one-on-ones and a free kick (except that free kick, I took advantage of all the other ones and assisted goals). And though that sounds like defending myself the ball was the type 13 year old kids play with and it was smaller than the standard for adults, therefore my shots didn’t go where I wanted them.
Our team had a lot of bad players and to be honest Kadir and I were the only ones even running and going for the ball in the opposition’s half. There was a lot of positions where three players would tackle me or Kadir at once and even though we do say we’re better, when you’re outnumbered you can’t expect your best performance really. And funnier is that we would have tied 17-17 if it wasn’t for Ardi heading a very fast ball to our own net. His only goal of the game. Good for him.

In the end whether it was Mahmut really expected me to dribble through his team’s defence by myself for 90 minutes or he just didn’t want to say I’m good, I don’t know but he claimed ‘I wasn’t as good as expected’. So what’s next I don’t know, only time will tell. I just hope he had a sense of reality to see 8 vs. 2 isn’t fair and the latter can’t win — even with the best players.

Then was the kids team’s match at 5 pm, ALSO having a lot of organization problems as the minibus of the team didn’t arrive and the club president used his own car to get the kids to the ground. Of course he had to go and come back to get them there in two attempts as there were like 20 players (and of course omitting me in the process!).

I was sure they would lose without me, cause Ardi doesn’t really use his common sense when I’m not around. Also several players including Tarık, Enes, Hasan, Deniz, Barış, Melih, Özgür and Burak ( most of them in the starting 8 ) are my personal friends and play better when I’m watching the game. I’m not their coach, I’m really one of their best friends. It’s not like the typical player-coach situation, they all like to share their stories and entertainment with me and stuff. Therefore when I didn’t go with the team I was sure something bad is bound to happen. And it did. They lost 10-2, their worst loss out of 5 games. I guess the club president has some better organizing to do if he wants better results in the future.