Sunderland 2 - 0 Arsenal: match report

I didn’t much know anything about club soccer until middle school. But I knew what what soccer was. I knew general stuff, stuff about what the major leagues in the world were. I knew which clubs were good. I knew that the English and Spanish and Italian leagues were good. I knew that MLS sucked (was true, not really anymore). I knew what Manchester Utd and Arsenal were. I knew what Real Madrid and Inter Milan were. I knew that Brazil were good and England overrated. I knew what the world cup was. But I didn’t really care. I was too young and too impatient to watch soccer. I only played. And I only played when I had to go to my team’s practices and games. If I had done more, I’d probably be playing for a college. But that’s the past, and it’s not what happened. I did have soccer on the TV all the time. My dad was a phenomenal player and loved to watch. He got that from a childhood in Nigeria. Ethnically speaking, I shouldn’t be playing soccer. I should be adoring cricket and tennis and field hockey. But the only sport I care about is soccer. I remember my dad could dribble around anyone. He could do things that I could barely comprehend. He still dances around men half his age. And he used to record soccer. Back in the 90’s, it was hard to find soccer on tv. There was no internet to stream it on. I remember during the 2002 World Cup (for some reason, I do not recall the 98 one at all) my dad would get up extra early and record every single match in the Japan/Korea World Cup, as he had for the past two. I remember watching China lose 3-0 to Brazil and thought that they had not played too bad, at least after I had considered their opposition. I was 9 years old. I knew Brazil was going to win the world cup (didn’t everyone?). And that’s all that really registered about pro soccer.
When I played, I was awful, even by elementary school rec league standards. I didn’t practice. I wasn’t fast. I couldn’t dribble. I lacked stamina. But I didn’t quit (my teammates were so shocked when I fouled a player when trying to get the ball in my first game). I certainly didn’t help my team. My first season, we started off by losing by over 5 goals to nil. My dad came in as the assistant coach. Suddenly, we started to lower the score, and get the ball into the other net. We still didn’t win, but we kept it competitive. The next season, my dad was the assistant coach again with almost totally different players. This time, we got 4th. My dad started coaching my younger brother and skipped a spring season. ( I got lucky and got first place). That fall season, my dad became the head coach. We had 2 scheduled scrimmages to start the season. We lost those. We then went through the entire league schedule undefeated. We drew only one game. We went to an open tournament and placed second. After the season, we went to regionals and lost to the team that beat us in the other tournament. After that, my family moved across town. The one team that my team had tied turned out to be an all-star team for the local team. Because of my dad’s record, they automatically gave him the head coach position for my brother’s team, over another father who wanted it. My dad then went and coached my brother and, for a time, my sister for the next 6 years simultaneously). He then started coaching me, along with my brother ( my sister no longer played). The only reasons my father started coaching me was because he was tired of seeing me get stuck with crappy coaches, and I had improved vastly after I severely injured my shoulder. With 5 seasons, each 3 months long (spring and fall), my team won first place once, and second place once. The other seasons were last place, or near last. My last season of rec soccer, my dad had a team with my younger brother. There were no stars. All the players were decent. none exceptional. There was one team that was stacked with maybe the 5 best players in the league. They would mercy rule their opponents. My dad found a way to match that scoreline, with an average team. In the final game, their team would have tied for first place (no tie breakers) but a significant player skipped a half. So they settled with second. My brother then tried out for a select team. He made the 4th team. The coach for that team had to step down, so my dad volunteered to step in. He rebuilt the team with mostly rec players. The first game, they got destroyed. When they played the same opponents in the last game, they lost 1-0 (the refs recorded it as a draw though!) Come spring, the same players became mid table. That fall, a lot of players left and the organization compensated by moving the 4 d team to 3 d. My dad was moved up and took most of the player with him. For some reason, the team was placed in the 2nd division instead of the 3rd. My dad barely got relegated ( I’d blame horrible refs). Throughout this time, my dad turned poor players/average players into stars. He got performances out of players who had no right in being any good. He turned me from the worst player a team had, to my team’s star in my last season. My dad became so well known in the league that when they “randomly” distributed the players, they would give my dad some weak players because he could make them better. My dad understood the game. He once came in after a third of the games had been played and turned an indoor team of mine that always played a man down because not enough players showed, into a team that regularly came back to win. My point is, my dad has been the best coach/player developer that I’ve ever met. And he had lots of periods of lows between me, and my two siblings. But he was able to pull together teams of decent players and win leagues. And the way I see it, Wenger is a bit like that. I started caring about Arsenal after they had lost Henry. My hero’s had been RvP, Adebayour, Nasri and Fabregas. We’ve lost most of those players now. But I figure, Wenger will be like my dad. After a period of struggle with players who are honestly over achieving (at least according to others), the right cards will be dealt and the wins will come back. Wenger has shown that he is something special. I went years being shuffled from one coach to another. I know it when I see a special coach.
Sorry if this was overly long and rambling.