"THE UNWATCHABLE" LITTLEPEOPLE
To remain among the Elite Football Schools, the Angels had to have good results on the field. Being an Elite Football School allowed for substantial public funding. Having good results meant winning. This achievement jeopardised the principles of the flagship motto, which was always proudly invoked. Making ends meet for the Angels was hell. Keeping sponsors happy, meeting expenses and trying to maintain the fees paid by the families was impossible. The families loved the flagship ideals, which made it difficult to win. The Angels were embedded in a horrible world of youth football, with widespread immoral practices. That world REQUIRED some small compromises to survive. What would have happened to the Angels if everything had come to light? That question tormented him. Now he had even thrown in: "THE UNWATCHABLE!" The commotion distracted Doubleman from his inner torment. The boys' dads, who had been summoned an hour earlier to form a group, had arrived. There was Director, Masterfestival, Ofnaples. They were joking happily. The mothers would arrive later, at the start of the game, when the temperature had improved a little. All three had become directors of the society, trying to contribute to the Angels' policies. Ofnaples in practice had a few fewer rights because of his southern Italian origins. In theory the managers were all equal, although Ofnaples's son was the one who played the least. The boy ran very little, however, when you are the son of a manager, these problems are overcome. In his case, meritocracy was put first. Director's son, on the contrary, always played, despite being a goalkeeper who exhibited disastrous ducks every game for the final result. The club avoided putting much effort into the search for other goalkeepers and claimed they could not find any. It was said: the role of goalkeeper is an undesirable one among youngsters. In small towns, friendship is often conceived as a competition for victory. Success in this competition is about proving that you are luckier than everyone else. Proving oneself to be truly happy. The competition among the dads usually centred on the family flagship, the new car, that one was about to buy. Among the mothers, on the other hand, the next holiday would probably be discussed, to snatch the prize for the most exotic destination. Jokes and banter were bouncing around among those present, when Moralsport arrived. Moralsport always conditioned the environment a little. He was in charge of dictating the rules and moralising the group. Moralsport decided that the time had come to decide who would be awarded the breakfast payment for the entire group that day. This race was also quite complicated. Winning meant demonstrating one's economic power, but it left a bitter doubt in one's mouth. In the minds of those who won it, the suspicion flashed for a moment that they had cheated themselves financially. Moralsport during the competition tried to point out a few things: those who had not paid for a long time, and those who had been too uncompetitive in recent competitions. In the end it was Moralsport himself who wanted to impose himself; he too had to take some personal satisfaction now and then. He pointed out, however, that Sanitary had not yet arrived, that he was late as usual. This aroused suspicion. They had to team up to let him win at the first opportunity. At the drop of a hat, the mothers began to arrive. Too cold to think about the summer holidays. School would have been a better topic. The end of term was approaching. For them, their children's future would surely involve something other than professional football. Some fathers, on the contrary, hid this secret ambition in their hearts. Moralsport, in particular, had a soul conflicted between regret and reason. As a young man he would have been an excellent sportsman and in his heart he regretted having chosen a different path. Family reasons had prevented him from practising competitive sport as a profession. Moralsport had had to adapt, he had worn the suit of a doctor, a suit that fit him very tightly. His sporting soul continually surfaced in the sea of regret, which he tried to keep hidden, without succeeding. In order not to drown, he sought refuge in other sports, in particular the ski races for the medical category, in which he achieved excellent results. Those competitions represented a safe shore to land on. Her son had become the team captain and this was a secret source of pride. Churchfootball, Goodmartial's mother, was an exception among mothers. She was the only one who really knew about football. When she was young, she would buy season tickets for the city team's matches, the fire of cheering was easily ignited in her soul. However, she was also a member of Catholic Action, with great religious fervour. This led her to be active in the church world as an educator. These two souls coexisted in her sometimes clashing a little. In the beginning, when she had started to watch her son's matches, the fan soul had prevailed. As a mother, she had let herself go with great emotional involvement to noisy cheering. Her son had then reprimanded her, turning to the educator's soul, which had slowly imposed itself with a progressive silence. In the end, Churchfootball watched the matches in a pained silence, without speaking, avoiding uttering any comments, and only in cases of extreme danger did she let out a high-pitched shriek like a fan mother. Doubleman returned to watch the pitch. The time of the match was approaching. Coach Simpleton had begun to warm up the boys. Everyone was busy with match-preparation exercises. Doubleman's gaze lingered on the Edilgiants billboard. "Here's another problem." He thought. Sponsors appeared on the field fence with their billboards. If a parent had compared the team line-up with the names on the billboards, they would have noticed a certain correspondence. After all, how could one deny a sponsor such a favour? In the rest of the youth football world, it was precisely the sponsor's right to have his boy play. The first thing the sponsor demanded. Sponsors were usually not too moral. They would let their protégé play, they would make some money off the books, and last but not least, they would advertise. Often they considered the advertising benefits for the company to be useless, while they showed great interest in the chance to get their boy to play and the money taken away from the clutches of the Internal Revenue Service. Thank goodness, sometimes the company was in the mother's name. The mother's surname was different from the boy's and usually less well-known. This made it possible to muddy the waters a bit. Besides, there in the Angels, no parent seemed to mind too much. Besides, Edilgiants had such a good son, that no one could have insinuated that he played for other reasons. The problem was Littlepeople, the UNWATCHABLE. But is it possible, Doubleman wondered, that when you have such a well-established business and your wife's brother is playing in League, you get such a small boy? The whistle for the start of the match brought the Angels' president back to look at the field. The boys were coming in single file. Doubleman squinted, they were all very tall, except for him: the UNWATCHABLE. Littlepeople looked like one of those children who accompany the top players onto the pitch. That year for the Angels had been bad from the start. At the age of six, in their debut championship, they had lost every game. Mister Simpleton's football theories emphasised Littlepeople's diminutive stature even more. Mr. Simpleton was very proud of the course he had completed the year before, in which he had obtained a licence to coach even in D League. At the course he had been taught that modern football had become very athletic, fast, physical. The technical qualities of the players were now of secondary importance; in time everyone would acquire them. Mr Simpleton had summarised these theories in a single element: height. Even one centimetre could make a difference. Mr Simpleton's technical choices would lead to better results in a basketball team. The tallest were the starters, although for educational reasons, very much felt in the Angels, the coach kept repeating a mantra to his boys: those who were more committed to training would play. In the course for coaches, they had also taught Mr. Simpleton the right phrases to say. Team spirit had to be created. Mr Simpleton's summaries, however, had created problems. A hotbed of rebellion had been ignited among the boys. In particular, it had developed among those who were too short to play, even though they participated with commitment in all training sessions. In their early teens, boys began to notice the differences between theory and practice, and the Angels' young footballers argued among themselves. The nice phrases learnt by Coach Simpleton in the course, but unfortunately said in the wrong circumstances, had been the ignition fuse. One boy had really exploded. He had felt mocked, and had left spitting on the Angels' emblem. Without realising it, he had spat symbolically on that flag of love, sport, friendship. Nothing like that had ever happened to the Angels. Doubleman had intervened harshly. Education was another pillar of the Elite Football School, of which he was president. The match began. The heavy pitch, which, for once, could corroborate the theories about Mr. Simpleton's height, put Littlepeople's son in great difficulty. The tiny boy looked like a drenched and cold duckling, forgotten in the grass by his mother. Even with the dry field Littlepeople found himself in difficulty. He was so tiny that, in the shoulder-to-shoulder confrontation, he really flew away. The referees usually didn't even whistle a foul. Usually Littlepeople flew away without any foul contact. He would bounce off his opponent like a ball. Even the most inexperienced football mums, the ones who ask inappropriate questions such as "which football goal should we score in?", "but which one are we?", even they would ask their teammates why Littlepeople was on the pitch among boys so much taller than him. A mother more experienced in understanding the game of football, and the behind-the-scenes, had nicknamed him: 'THE UNWATCHABLE'. The English version of the nickname had belonged for years to Masterfestival's son, who was only one centimetre taller than Littlepeople. Masterfestival worked in the city university at the Faculty of Agriculture. This job allowed him to have an estate at his disposal, where he would invite the boys from the team and their parents for an end-of-season party. Ofnaples usually took care of the kitchen. He was the son of a baker and had learned the trade as a boy. At parties he would bake excellent pizzas, focaccias, pastries and salads, which would contribute to the success of the meeting. His wife promised to help him cook, and as a rule she always arrived a little too late to turn his commitment into reality. He always seemed to find a good excuse to escape the cooker. He complained to himself, with little phrases said under his breath... THE UNWATCHABLE, contrary to what his parents and footballers thought, he believed he had finally found a team that valued his qualities. He had suffered years of injustice at other football clubs, which were full of recommenders. Littlepeople proudly took the field, despite being a forward who had not yet managed to score a single goal in the entire championship. Every now and then he let himself hit the ball with his heel, to highlight his technical superiority. In practice it was as if the team was always playing with a man less: ten against eleven. That day, the heavy pitch amplified even more the inadequacy of the 'UNWATCHABLE' Littlepeople. The boy was running around the pitch without being able to touch the ball. He continually ended up in a mud bath, covered in soggy leaves, and emerged increasingly soaked and muddy. Doubleman hoped that Mr Simpleton would replace him. He hoped it would soon end that miserable spectacle. And he hoped the question on almost everyone's mind would disappear. "Why is Littlepeople playing as a starter?" "Certainly not because of his height." The Angels had ended up one goal down; as usual they were losing. "This blessed year of the Angels is hopeless." Doubleman thought. There was a corner kick and Littlepeople was sent in by the coach to take it. The tall defenders advanced from the back to head it in and placed themselves in the middle of the penalty area. Littlepeople kicked with all his might. The soggy ball rose very little and touched the ground before reaching the first post. Artememoria was shocked. The short corner kick was a tradition that the Angels had carried with them for years, ever since Mister Shoutingloudly reigned, and Simpleton was only assistant coach. Back then, 'The unwatchable', the son of Masterfestival, kicked them. The problem was the same in the past: the ball never got high in front of the football goal. Artememoria wondered what those defenders, who had been taught to advance into the penalty area when taking corner kicks, were thinking. He wondered if they at least understood the theory. Had they understood that they had the advantage of height to hit the ball head-on, or not? In fact, the ball never arrived high, at most it arrived low, at ground level. Perhaps they thought it was an athletic, running exercise, like the many athletic exercises done during training. On the other hand, the way the ball arrived, it would have been better to leave the shorter guys in front, more skilful with their feet, more apt to hit a ball at ground level. There, perhaps, Littlepeople, would have had a real chance to score his first goal. In any case, neither Mr. Shoutingloudly nor Mr. Simpleton had had the time to take care of that basic beginner's detail. The Angels were an Elite Football School, and they had preferred to concentrate on the 3 4 3, the 5 3 1, or the 4 3 3, or other patterns of play learned for the higher leagues. The short, low corner kick was destined to remain a tradition for the Angels, an artistic touch to their way of playing. Other jealously guarded legacies were the wrong throw-in, or rejecting the ball so as to give the opposing attacker a second chance if he had missed the first shot. Artememoria was the most experienced parent in the Angels' society. He had another older son, who had reached the League football level. The boy had played in the same team for several seasons, and had left the year before his second son's football baptism. Long experience in youth football had made Artememoria the most disillusioned about the Angels' motto. He had already seen various corrections to the flag principles applied. The good results of the first son's year had led Doubleman to favour the team's victories and the best boys. Doubleman had also indulged in clumsy attempts to justify the unjustifiable. He claimed that this was the way it had always been done in the Angels, and that society certainly did not mind getting a few good results, even if the priority was education, friendship and sport. The consequence was that the less gifted boys left amidst controversy and complaints. By a peculiarity of divine design, moreover, all the 'correctives always applied' were, one by one, disproved with the sophomore year. The poor results of this vintage made the society a champion in upholding the principles of the flag motto. Many parents sincerely believed in the seriousness of that motto. Masterfestival, who came from the world of rugby, a world in which one breathes a different air from that of football, worked hard to build a good group based on the principles of sport. Many others had participated with commitment, and in this year the closest to the principles of the Angels' flag ever seen by Artememoria in youth football had been achieved among boys and parents. The ball ended up outside and the defenders quickly returned to their positions. Things were looking bad for the Angels. The more time passed, the more the team was crushed in their own half. The opponents had more and more opportunities to shoot on goal. The first half was now gone, and the second began in line with the previous one. By now, many of the boys were beginning to get tired. The soggy ground had made their legs heavy. To solve the problem, the opposing coach had made all possible substitutions, and the other team appeared, even to the public, in better athletic condition. Suggestions began to be made by the dads to Mr Simpleton. "Make substitutions!!!" They shouted. Mr Simpleton, however, would panic in emergencies. He saw the danger of imminent defeat, and would start shouting at the top of his lungs at his team. Coach Shoutingloudly had bequeathed him that valuable lesson. The fear of losing the game prevented Mr. Simpleton from implementing any defensive move. Panic closed his ears: it became impossible for him to listen to the suggestions of the public, the bench, even his own head. Mr Simpleton could only shout with great effort and all his strength, until he lost his voice. The boys on the bench looked at him despondently, hoping that the coach would be able to put them on the pitch. Anyone would have been fine. The poor UNWATCHABLE, with that muddy ground, just couldn't stand. The entry of a man from the bench would have at least put the team on an equal footing; turned the game into an eleven against eleven. The Angels' crowd, by now red-faced, would have been able to breathe again. Then the unpredictable, in the last minute: a penalty in favour. There was a chance to equalise. The captain, the son of Moralsport, was given the task of shooting it. He took the run-up and kicked. The ball went out and the match ended. Yet another defeat of the season. Doubleman was worried. How were the Angels going to remain an Elite Football School, to have that crucial public funding? Mr. Simpleton, on the other hand, was incapable of questioning himself and, without stopping to reflect on the reasons for the defeat, continued like a runaway train on his own line of thought. He remembered another thing they had taught him in the course. Those two boys were an example for the whole team. The one who had missed the penalty had to be supported. Coach Simpleton gathered the whole formation and gave a big speech. The boys on the bench listened to him anxiously, hoping that their moment had come. They were coming from a long series of defeats, the performance of the 'UNWATCHABLE Littlepeople' deserved a serious insufficiency, the captain was responsible for wasting a golden opportunity to equalise. A good coach would surely have taken the opportunity to make some temporary changes to the line-up, to please the dissatisfied boys who deserved to take the field instead of the recommended ones, and to scrape together precious points in the following matches. The coach left them all speechless; for him, the team had played an excellent match. Indeed, from his point of view, the two main culprits for the defeat, Moralsport, who had missed the penalty, but above all the UNWATCHABLE, had been the best on the pitch! |
