Dads and Kids kick off the new year in style
How do you assemble the teams when half of the players available are members of the Galal family? That was the dilemma facing the six players present this morning at Kensington Park for the first match of the new year.
With the Club team-making algorithm currently on holiday in the Tropics, it was decided to apply the principle of parsimony (also known as Occam’s razor) and choose the simplest solution: that is, have a team of Galals play against all others.
The weather was ideal, although you might wonder whether it’s normal to have 15 degrees in London in January. Every player enjoyed large spaces and the unusual luxury of being able to control the ball without being immediately surrounded by legions of opponents. Each team scored one goal. Then Yassin arrived.
Suddenly we had an odd number of players to fit, one of which is Yassin. A problem more difficult to solve than the last Fermat theorem. A rapid consultation with the Dean of Impossible Sciences at Oxford University suggested to have a team of 3 composed by the youngest players against of team of 4 more “senior” ones. The logic behind this is was that the youngsters would have been able to run more and for longer, thus compensating for being one player short. The score was reset and a new match started with the Youngsters (Yassin, Sara and Adam) versus the Experienced (Francesco, Hossam, Thomas and Chetan).
The Experienced were capable of exploiting the advantage of the extra man, dominating ball possession and scoring several goals. Francesco even managed to score after passing over Yassin with a dummy, something very rarely seen.
The Youngsters however stayed in the match, running at rocket speed from defence to attack. Their trademark play was a quick one-two combination between Yassin and Adam, with the former putting the ball in the imaginary net before their opponents even realised what was happening. If Yassin was a car, he would have been fined for going over speed limits.
“Enough with this” shouted Hossam at half time, realising that his team had occasionally been a little too indulgent, perhaps suffering from the guilt of having the extra man. “From now on we need to be ruthless” said the captain, and there were nods of approval. The Experienced increased their intensity, but so did the Youngsters. The match remained hanging by a thread, with the Experienced still one goal ahead.
When there was little time left, Al, our first-ever Lybian player appeared out of the blue to join us. He had been searching for us yesterday at 10am, going from the Pond to the Palace and back, surprised and worried not to see us. In fact, the hashtag #WhereAreTheFDs? had been trending on Twitter for the whole 1st January. With Al in the team, the Youngsters were able to launch their final attack and score in succession, first to get even and then to seal victory with the golden goal, a delicious back-heel by Yassin, rightly nominated as Man of the Match.
“This intense game was a much-needed exercise to get back in shape, after all the Panettone eaten during the holidays” said Francesco in the post-match interviews. “Now I look with more confidence to the match next Saturday when everyone is back!”