“Goals are like bananas, they often come in bunches”
Did the Italians exhaust all their energy and luck with Euro2020?
The question loomed around as a self-assembled teams of unbibbed Italians+ (including the adopted Victor), struggled to deal with a bibbed international ensemble that included Germans, French, Egyptians and more.
The Italians felt solid, with Alessandro in goal and Paride and Victor in defence. Youngsters Marco and Diego had a lot of runs, well assisted by Francesco, Christian and Giuseppe from midfield, and played with generosity and ingenuity. But all their efforts were frustrated by majestic opposition from the likes of Chetan, Hannes, Johannes and Hossam, always ready to steal the ball at the right moment and launch fatal counter-attacks. Upfront the task was managed by two Jeremys (JeremyT and JeremyG), while Sara and Julien provided the usual flair on the sides.
Not surprisingly, the Bibs scored the first goal. The Italians drew moments later, thanks to an unusual distraction by Hannes. The German missed to intercept an harmless Marco’s shot and confused his own goalkeeper, TonyL, allowing the ball to get in the net. They jury is still out as to whether this should count as an own goal or not.
Bibs then scored two more in successions, with Johannes and Julien, this time on the right goal. The Italians gave their best effort and had multiple shots, with Francesco possibly missing the easiest one, paralysed by TonyL’s fearless goalkeeping. Eventually, they gained a penalty when Hannes felt for a CR7-like move by Christian, putting him on the ground. Antonio converted the penalty with a strong and precise shot reducing the gap to only one goal (3-2). But that was not enough to reopen the game.
The Bibs retook control and scored three times in succession, including two razor-like head shots by Julien (Man of the Match), securing a result (6-2) generally seen only on tennis grounds. The Italians were pleased to score at least the golden goal with Victor, but went home wondering what went wrong and how to get back on track. They did however take some comfort in acknowledging the immense quality of the opponents, a team that would have created problems also to Mancini’s Azzurri.
The match was played by the Pond, as our precious old ground was once again occupied by a legion of organised kids football schools. The players complained about the state of the pitch but the change didn’t bother our fans, who moved graciously with us.
One of them sat at half line shouting words of encouragement and appreciation to both teams for the entire match. At the end he approached us to let us know how impressed he was with our skills and how much he enjoyed the performance. Imagine if he had seen Yassin in action.
In the after-match the team savoured the traditional post-match banana kindly provided by Paride ‘aka the Bananaman”. Pictures circulated online generated an obvious hype in the food industry, with Chiquita, DelMonte and Dole already fighting to put their best sponsorship offer in front of the Club. Others were quick to point out the correlation between the yellow fruit and the large number of goals scored. After all, as someone once said, “goals are like bananas, they often come in bunches”. Imagine if we ate it before the match instead of after…
BIBS – UNBIBS 6-3
GOALS:
BIBS: JeremyT (3), Julien (2), Johannes
UNBIBS: Hannes (OG), Giuseppe (P), Victor