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In the book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell says that for someone to become an expert, they need to work on their craft for about 10,000 hours. For some reason or another, I brought this up with my friend Aaron over Christmas break when we were talking about soccer. He thought we may have put in the requisite 10,000 hours by this point in our life. So of course, I had to nerdify this theory and create a spreadsheet, and estimate the amount of time I spent practicing and playing soccer throughout my life. The results:
Elementary School
Though I don't remember it myself, my parents have told me that for my very first game, when the coach went to sub me in, I started crying and sat out. Anyway, from kindergarten through 6th grade, I basically play on 1 team in the fall and 1 team in the spring. By 4th grade, I'm filling in the rest of the year with summer baseball and winter basketball. By 6th grade, I had gone from a sobbing pansy to a fairly decent player.
Junior High
Games get a little more intense. The number of practices increase. I become a captain for the mighty St. Anne Eagles. I feel like a stud, sometimes playing striker, sometimes playing sweeper.
High School
I go to one of best soccer high schools in the state and no longer feel like a stud. I feel out-classed. The number of practices and games skyrocket, as I discover indoor soccer in the winter, dropping basketball in the process, and drop baseball for more soccer in the summer, as soccer becomes a year-round gig.
As a back-up forward on the freshmen team, I score a measly one goal and my ego really gets brought back down to Earth. However, as a sophomore on the JV team, I find my calling and start playing defense. I'm a starter again. Hooray.
Going into my junior year though, I was terrified. As I said, my high school has been fielding one of the best teams in the state for the last 25 years, with 5 state titles, 1 World Cup player, and countless players that end up playing in college on scholarship. And in high school, my least favorite day of the year was the first day of tryouts. Our coach was a stickler for 2 things - discipline and stamina, and the stamina was put to the test more so at our school's tryouts than any other. We didn't touch a soccer ball the first morning of tryouts, which typically consisted of being timed in a 2 mile run and then running sprints until lunch. And while I may be a decent runner these days, I was an asthmatic disaster with any sort of distance running back then (and yes, I'm counting a 2 miler as a distance run). We were supposed to break 12:30. I ran 14:10. It was not pretty. But somehow, the miraculous happens and I just barely make the team, as our coach tells me I was the last player to make it. It was a confusing day for the ego. I ride a lot of pine that year, we get ousted in regionals, and 12 years after it first happened, soccer once again makes me cry.
Senior year sees one of the great examples of the "what doesn't kill me only makes me stronger" theory. On the eve of tryouts (again, my most hated day of the year), I get a phone call at 11:00pm. It's my girlfriend Christy. My first love. A fellow soccer player who's been by my side for 8 months (an eternity in high school relationships) . . . and she's dumping me. Yeah, that sucked. But I end up going out that week and absolutely KILLING tryouts. I earn a starting spot on a team that finishes the regular season with no losses and just a single tie. We dominate . . . until we play in a monsoon-filled mud-bowl of a game in regionals. Our stud players get neutralized by the weather and the field, and we lose 2-0. Tears are shed again, as my varsity jacket with an empty line on the back never gets filled out with "State Champs." That team becomes my Al Bundy "4 touchdowns in a single game" moment.
College
Time spent playing obviously goes down, but I still play a shit ton of games, in intramural leagues and in a city league. I start working for the intramural department, and start playing even more. "Oh, your team is a down person and needs someone? Well I'm an intramural supervisor, and I'll just supervise myself onto your team while I'm still on the clock." It was a nice perk.
While playing intramurals though I suffer my one of only 2 injuries to ever sideline me extensively. I break my shin playing in a coed game. Clean play. 50-50 ball. He just happened to get the ball and all of my shin, breaking it in 2, despite me wearing shin guards (the same pair that I had been wearing since junior high, and the same pair I wear today. I think they've been washed about 5 times in their lifespan. I love them). I spend 6 weeks in a full leg cast, 6 with a cast on just my lower leg, and 6 in a walking boot. Sadly the casts don't work like magic with the ladies like I hoped they would.
Post-College
I play in some fairly hardcore Boston leagues. The league winners typically end up winning the state cup (ummm, that's not us). We practice in mid-March with snow on the ground. We nearly end up in fights in about 1/3 of the games. One game ends 15 minutes into it as an opposing player, slightly disgruntled with a call, throws a punch at the ref. Eventually, I decide these leagues are more work than fun.
Grad school sees a whole lot of pick-up soccer with other grad students. We play in the Purdue intramural league and end up playing a team of freshmen in the finals. Youth and speed vs experience, and experience wins out. It was gratifying . . . stupid punk kids with their FaceSpaces and their hip-hoppy music.
However, while playing indoor I suffer side-lining injury #2 - a badly sprained ankle. While not actually broken, it keeps me from playing for 6 months. Lethargy starts to set in.
After grad school, after moving back to Boston, I continue to not play for awhile. I get fatter. Eventually, I say "what the fuck am I doing?" I join several coed-yet-competitive leagues, drop the weight, and once again appreciate the love of my life. Yeah, that sounds lame, but I'm ALWAYS happy playing soccer, so deal with it.
Results
If you want to get nerdy and see the spreadsheet, it's HERE.
Estimated # of games played: ~900
Estimated # of practices: ~750
Estimated total hours: ~2,000
Wow. That's a shit ton of soccer, but its still WAAAAAY short of the 10,000 required for being an expert. Even if I was short by 50%, and even if you count every hour I've spent watching games or even playing soccer video games, I'd still be only halfway there. The dream of playing professional soccer? . . . Dead. Sigh.
But what those numbers do mean is that I fucking LOVE soccer, and it means that since I was about 14, I've dreamed of seeing a soccer game in Europe. I've been lucky enough to see 3 international games so far, 1 of them being a World Cup game, but since they all took place in the US, the atmosphere was "good" at best.
The friendly game between the US and England in 2005 actually had a better atmosphere than the World Cup game between the US and Switzerland back in 1994, thanks mainly to the 20,000 or so English fans in attendance. They were outnumbered, but they ran Soldier Field that day. Drunken singing and chanting all game. My personal favorite was them signing "George Bush is a wanker", to which we responded . . . . by also singing "George Bush is a wanker".
Thus, a European league game has been #1 on my bucket list since early high school. So when Yaneeka asked me to meet up with her and Buddy in Barcelona, before I even checked the cost of flights, I grabbed my phone and checked FC Barcelona's schedule. They were playing at home that weekend, and money immediately became meaningless to me. I was going.
The Game
As if Yaneeka scoring a hotel room wasn't enough. She was able to get her company's corporate tickets to the game. So we weren't just going to see the world's best team, with the world's best player in Messi, we were going in style. The tickets (valued at about $400) gave us access to Snooty Central - a lounge that served free food, wine and beer an hour before the game and an hour after. It was ridiculous, and I literally had to buy dress shoes while over there so I could get into the lounge. But $70 dress shoes are small price to pay for fulfilling your #1 lifetime goal.
$400 worth of Snooty Pre-Gaming. I'm 90% sure we ended up sitting next to guys in the Russian mafia
But before we even got up to the lounge, I had my Christmas morning moment. We got our tickets scanned, and I immediately ran to the first entrance I could find, walked out, saw this . . .
. . . and was in heaven. It was absolutely surreal to finally be standing there, less than an hour from game time. Absolutely . . . surreal.
The game itself was pretty damn good. Barcelona took a 1-0 lead on a David Villa goal 3 minutes. Athletico Bilbao tied it up in the 50th on a penalty kick, after a weak foul, but thy lord and savior Lionel Messi put Barca back on top in the 78th minute. He had magical moment after magical moment, but it was a fairly simple cross in the end that he scored on. On the whole, Barca DOMINATED the game. I checked the numbers afterwards and they held possession for 79% of the game. That's unfathomable. Those numbers are better than video game numbers. Ridiculous. Anyway, a few shots from the game:
Messi and Dani Alves warming up. I could have watched this for an hour and been happy.
One of my favorite players, Pique, going for a header (though he played like shit that game)
God, taking a corner kick
Pep giving David Villa a good-game-butt-slap
And my favorite video is probably this one. Sometimes you watch a pro game and think "eh, these guys are good, but I might be able to hang for awhile." But then you watch them do a half-ass warm-up drill playing keep-away and your jaw drops. They're, ummm, really good. Really Really good.
So the game was everything I hoped it could be, as I now search for a new top item for my bucket list. And if I didn't do another Do-52-New list item all year, I'd be OK, because the list helped me get to this formerly-unthinkable goal. Again, absolutely surreal.
Though one of the most memorable scenes occurred immediately after the game. Sometimes after Red Sox games, you'll hear a "Yankees suck" chant on the subway ride home. It's amusing . . . for awhile. But in the subway after the Barca game, there was no hate. Only joy. Eight or so decked-out fans broke out in song. A good minute or so long, with lines for nearly every starter on the team. "Fiesta . . . fiesta fiesta . . . Andres Iiiiiiiniesta." And god damn it was beautiful.
- Yaneeka . . . what else can I say? You rock. Thanks again for everything. The shot below couldn't have happened without you.
Pure . . . Joy
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