Tuesday, April 24, 2007

lacing up

got an email at work today concerning a charity corporate soccer tournament. Excuse me, football tournament. I'm not really good at the sport, in fact you could even call me a very mediocre soccer player, but one of my favorite Sunday activities in Paris was getting together with friends at Bagatelle for an afternoon of the beautiful game. Having almost never played from ages 0-18 I'll never get over my gross technical shortcomings, but I try to use stuff I learned from other sports in order to avoid looking like a less-agile Mr Bean out on the pitch, to varying results.
Still, to make absolutely sure there would be no misgivings about my potential prowess, I made sure to be very clear in the following answer to one of the confirmation email questions ("what's the highest level you played at?"):
To be honest, occasional Sunday games in the park is the extent of my "experience". Though I haven't played since moving to London, 3 months ago
With this, and the upcoming training sessions, I'd be surprised if I'm picked to be in anything but the worst team, which is just the way it should be. But just wait for the corporate swimming tournament, and then I'll be talking up a storm about my uncanny athletic abilities. Some people are above trash talking, and I'm clearly not one of them (mostly because I like to have fun and reserve my buddhist tendencies to meditating weekend train trips).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I love Bagatelles ! One of my favourite place in Paris :) is it really allowed to play football in such park ?

matt said...

you most certainly can play there. There's a big field at the bottom part of the park with all sorts of going-ons: soccer, kite-flying, even a cricket association in their prim white uniforms.
It's not as prestigious as the Invalides lawns we used to play on, but at least you don't get kicked off by the Man in the middle of a game.