Comeback and Farewell
While quite a few of the lions were still licking the wounds from the MG9 fight, ten players would not let the Saturday go without their weekly adrenaline intake.
It was a day of comeback and departure. Sara managed to dribble her A Level and was back ruling her proprietary left flank squaring the ball the way Beckham aspired to in his good old days.
On the exit side unfortunately Khaled is going back to UAE but hopefully we will still see him every now and then. Officially he goes for business reasons but we all know he is the kind of player that can attract the sort of offer that the likes of Benzema and Kante have just bagged in.
Khaled is quite an exquisite all rounder: passing and shooting with both feet, excellent header of the ball and able to play in any part of the pitch, at ease in any League. A proper Football Dad. Farewell KHALED!
As for the game the Italians decided to give Rest of the World a run for their money. A brave decision as it turned out.
Initially Marco managed to put Italy in front with Matej doubling up but those in the knowledge could see that the ROW would not tolerate that for much longer.
At one point Johaness had a solo run on the left and put an inviting ball in the middle of the Italian defence: Giancarlo got there before anyone else and with a quick touch gave Alessandro no chance whatsoever to save it. Unfortunately for Giancarlo the goal had to be filed as an own goal as Johaness was on the opposition while Alessandro his own keeper.
That triggered the expected ROW reaction which in a fairly limited amount of time put the score at 5-2 exposing the weakness of the Italian team. Johannes and Khaled scored at will proving the theory that any team fielding them both is unlikely to be beaten.
At that point the Regulator intervened forcing a switch between Giancarlo and Bijan with a view to make the game more balanced. In just one shot the ROW team aged by some 30 years and such wealth of experience proved critical in resisting the Italian comeback and bringing home a precious victory. Julien put the cherry on the cake for ROW by scoring the golden goal.
Marco had an handful taking home both the hat trick ball and the Man of the Match award: one goal alone, a shot from the distance into the roof of the net, justified the selection. His Dad more prosaically took home as usual both set of goals…
ITALY-ROW 5-8
GOALS:
ITALY: Marco (3), Matej, Bijan
ROW: Giancarlo (og), Khaled (2), Johaness (3), Julien, Bijan
TEAMS:
ITALY: Alessandro, Christian, Giancarlo (Bijan), Marco, Matej
ROW: Johannes, Khaled, Bijan (Giancarlo), Julien, Sara