Shaolin Soccer

Who’d have thought the soccer scene would be so healthy in Shanghai?  I
joined an expat league here, and racial clustering being what it is, the
league is unofficially segregated by race.  The American contingency here,
sucking on baseball bats and growing third chins in left field, failed to
field a team, so I find myself with a bunch o’ Brits.  They’re a great bunch
of guys.  I’ll shank the ball twenty feet above the goal and they’ll just
say “Unlucky!” and pat me on the back.  Then we all hit the pub after
practice and order pot pies.

I’ve been playing with the locals too.  Chinese soccer is a little
different.  For starters, there’s a lot of smoking.  Players smoke on the
sidelines.  Our goalie was smoking on the field, casual as you please.  On
the other team’s attack, he’d wedge his cancer stick between piggies number
2 and 3 and put up his hands, ready for the block.  He deflects the ball
back to the midfield, loosens up, and then he’s back to sucking on his adult
pacifier.

Many of the local players are pansies.  They play tricksy soccer, dancing
like sprites on the ball in a charming game of one-on-one keep away, even
deep in their own backfield.  They’re deft, no doubt, but when push comes to
shove, they fall over too easily.  They cry foul and massage the spot where
I barely stepped on their foot (by accident) and glare at me, the
perpetrator who dared to interrupt his little leprechaun jig.  Sorry pixie
man.  Try passing the ball next time.

A few locals on my team played in university, so they know the drill.
They’re fighting hard for possession and drawing even colder stares than I
am.

“It’s just a friendly match!” says a pixie man, tendering his calf.
“What game are you playing?  In real soccer there is pushing,” retorts my
teammate.  It’s your own fault for not being stronger, and you’re blaming
me?”

Our team is on the sideline for a round, so I drink in my surroundings.  The
field we’re on is a real people-fest, four simultaneous games on a standard
pitch.  Too many bodies, not enough space.  Bats flap about the nighttime
sky, attracted to the stadium lighting.  They’re cute little guys, small
enough to pass for sparrows if you don’t look carefully.

One player catches my attention, a shirtless guy with a sizable belly.
There’s something monumental about him.  It’s the defiant grimace painted on
his face in angry strokes.  It’s his posture, legs planted firmly a yard
apart, ready to tackle a bull.  It’s the sweat dripping down the smooth
surface of his turgid burger baby.  He’s a living monolith.  The star
player, a skinny guy in his early 20s, does a few loopy-loops and spins
right into fatty’s stomach, falling over.  Fatty just watches him fall and
doesn’t budge an inch, doesn’t bother paying attention to the ball.
Laughter ripples through the body of onlookers.  The fazed star player looks
like he ran into a wall.  Which, by all means, he did.

It’s still the beautiful game out here, but for different reasons.