FCAK

Yesterday was football with FCAK. Match day.

Usually at practice we'll do 4 or 5 complicated drills that necessitate much stick drawing in the dirt and folded arms, furrowed brows and explanations. Last practice Hiroshi turned to me after the introduction to the drill and apologised in his own laconic manner, 'I would have translated...but...I don't understand'.

But yesterday was match day. 3 short matches actually, against teams in red/white, blue/black and orange strips, in that order. We play in an old Celtic, black away kit. (I say 50 Hail Marys after each occasion I am forced to pull on the jersey). In the same sports centre complex the local professional team (Yamagata Montedio) had a match too, a proper one against a J2 team from Osaka. 'Somewhere over the rainbow', the occasional trilling organ solo and roughly cut, abrasive blasts of house music amounts to Montedio's stadium music.

FCAK are like any pub football team, just without the pub. The football we play is the kind made up more of clumsiness, chance and laughter than actual skill. Lofty balls thumped high into the sky by the defence. I tracked one and my gaze got snagged on the mountains as the ball fell back down. Mis-trapping the ball and watching it skim along the surface underneath your foot, behind you, away to the edge of the pitch and beyond. Skewed passes. Fags at half time. Sore muscles.

The pitch wasn't exactly turf, nor astro, nor any surface I 've ever played on. It's made of fake grass and black rubber grains that the ball splashes when it bounces, like the pitch is waterlogged with bog-water.

Anyway, we won, won, lost. Damned orange team weren't so much of a pub football team. Far classier affair than that.