Team:

G: Kris

D: Jean – Nils – Ben

M: Hodge – Rich – Luka – Steve - Philpot

A: Dries – Daniel

S: Kevin, Thomas, Mickey, Sylvain

The morning was dark, cold and rainy. Judging the weather, the gods loathed FC Portugal perhaps even more as all other ABSSA teams, referees and every living soul combined. Clearly an omen, predicting a somewhat troublesome afternoon for our Southern European "friends”. Because it was not only the best day of the week, but also money time with RBBFC –FC Portugal as headliner of the week.

Around 1PM everybody gathered in the changing room, got changed and debated on how many layers of underwear, hats, gloves and boot warmers he was going to wear…. Tension was rising and the team was eagerly looking forward to some Braveheart style, pre-game motivational speeches. Our Welsh captain however clearly wasn’t a fan of William Wallace. Instead, he studied his ABSSA manual of football cliché’s and came up with the traditional BS, every coach comes up with before a hugely important game: "Guys, this game is not more important than the other games, it is just one game and there will be eight more after this…” The only reason everybody was nodding and still all ears was because he smartly pushed the squad line up to the end of his discours. Coach Mc Grath Sr. stroke a slightly different tone with quotes as: if one of you tries to to help a Portuguese back on his feet, it better be by his hair… Blood was shooting from his eyes… That was more like it and off we went into the rainy afternoon.

Thirty minutes later, kick off was finely there. Battle plan was very straight forward. First thought is the best, quickly deep and into the corners away from their big fat center back. Our first ten minutes however were a bit difficult. Not that the Bruno’s and Sergio’s were creating lots of chances but we were struggling to put the pressure on them. Until all of sudden, lighting struck. A flash on the right side looking 40 but in reality somewhere in his 20-ies, cannon balled a cross to the center where Double D nicely put it in the back of the net. Left hook right on the jaw! This was what we needed. Defenders got on top of the Portuguese offence, Schteve annoyed the shit out of every opponent which came within 10 meters distance, offence was cutting through butter and Dries almost doubled the score with a header, nicely saved by the Bruno/Sergio in goal. And then Lucic’ moment came: controlling the ball with his chest and majestically volleying it over the keeper just under the bar. Boom, straight punch on the nose! Another great shot from our Modric deserved better as it exploded on the top corner.

Second half seemed more or less a copy of the first one. Sergio/Bruno reassembled their strengths and pressured RBBFC’s finest. But they always found a wall of concrete in front of them. One of these excellent defensive interceptions lead to launching our Dutch striker from our own half of the pitch. Leaving everybody behind, he professionally played around their grabbling goalie and boom upper cut on the chin, K.O. Subs were coming on and physically drained the little energy in our opponents legs. The 4-0 (nice header from Nils on a great free kick from our captain) was like punching and kicking a corpse: great fun! Add to that a referee providing Bruno/Sergio with 4 or 5 yellow and red cards and the result was a miserable bunch of depressed Portuguese craving for the end of the game. Job done and more than that. But to quote a very eloquent captain: it’s only 3 points with 8 games ahead…

This leaves us to address one more thing. Why, in heavens name, was a goalie awarded MoM? Ok, he caught more balls this game than the previous ten combined (and even more than Johnny on an average Saturday night). On top of that some say he was helped by accidently spilling Red Bull on his gloves making them stick on everything… But in the end it was clear for everybody. After 5 seasons of lots of trial and even more error. And after some (strong) suggestions from coach McGrath during the first games of the season, he did finally, materially improve the length of his goal kicks. Not in the least because they were now taken by his center backs. But hey, I’ll take any reason and luckily electronic banking facilities finally found their way to Rosière J.

MOM and Reporter: Kris Mercelis