That's fresh as fuck, but the black shoes have to go. He would have never gotten such bad advice if he'd just gone to Express.
First up, I'll let Jigga fill you all in on how his son's team played the early game this morning. It was....not good. But I digress, because the TMB sponsors demand to know how their investment is going. And I gotta tell you, it's going pretty, pretty well so far. Today was a good challenge for the boys because it was a team that was 7-1 prior to today, and it's lone loss was a 2-1 affair where they scored an own goal. This was one of the of the teams that also got threatened with a suspension from the playoffs due to blowing other teams out. To be safe I held an extra practice on Thursday night and the opponent was doing the same. So everyone was looking forward to the match-up. The game starts and after a few minutes of back and forth Lamont breaks free in the middle, drives to the left and blasts home the first score of the game. I hadn't mentioned it before, but in addition to being big and fast, Lamont is a lefty. That's very valuable in our league because kids have a harder time defending lefties. A few minutes later, Team TMB pushes the ball into the opponent's box and the opposing defender clears it off to their left. The clear lands at the feet of Tib, Jr., just short of midfield at his right back position. He proceeds to blast a shot from there that skims the under side of the crossbar and goes in for the second goal of the game and his first of the season. Team TMB goes wild celebrating with him. We pretty much broke the other team's will at that point. Although the other guys never quit, we went on to score two more goals for a 4-0 lead. I then started subbing in bench players who narrowly missed on 4 more shots on goal, two of which were tremendously good saves by the opposing goalie. Hats off to that kid. We are now sitting at 9-0 with 58 goals for and 6 goals against on the season. If it doesn't rain too early tomorrow -- the forecast is bad -- we have a game we should easily win against Juventus. Then on Tuesday night we finally get to match up with one of the other two elite squads for this season, Liverpool. LFG!!!!
Lamont was supposed to be out today because he had another commitment. Then he begged his parents to let him play and they changed their plans. Today was the first time his mom was able to watch a game this season due to her work scheduling issues, and he showed out with 2 goals to make momma happy. He was also one of the first to come and celebrate with my son, Christian, after his goal.
I'm not sure what his political leanings have to do with his football skills, but he sounds like a good kid, regardless.
Big day today, boys. Big, big day. We take on one of the two other elite teams tonight for the first time in Liverpool. It's basically a three-team race for the title this year between us (Arsenal), Liverpool and Barcelona. The schedule was a little quirky this year, so we haven't played either of those teams before even though those two teams have played each other twice. Barcelona won both games, 3-0 the first time and 3-2 the second time. We'll have our chance at Barcelona in a week and a half as the last regular game of the season, then probably see them again n the playoffs. Liverpool has who I consider to be the top-ranked player in the league. Not a big kid, but a super athlete, great agility, can dribble through crowds and can pretty much shoot from anywhere south of the midfield line. Their second best player is a Brazilian kid who is very skilled, too, but not as fast or agile as their number one. The rest of the team is decent, but it is clearly a two-man show. They have also gotten the lecture about blowing other teams out so I know they score a lot. This will be the first game we're going into where I am genuinely concerned about the outcome and I want to preserve our undefeated season. Game kicks off at 6:45 so I'll probably have updates around 8:30 by the time I get home.
Before El Tiburon shares his game story team team Jigga Jr and I were tasked with saving for their first W tonight. Spoiler The other team didn’t show
Settle in for the game update, gentlemen. It's a little later than expected, but worth the wait. Like I said before, Liverpool was one of the three top shelf teams in our league and have the best individual player in the league. They also have a deeper bench than most other teams. Then I noted right before game time that their best player wasn't there and came to find out he is forced to sit out this week after his older brother was diagnosed with the 'rona. This left their 1-2 punch on offense down to a single punch. That Brazilian kid is really talented, too, but his problem is he's more of a finesse player and he's not good at creating his own shots. He relies heavily on the top player to feed him for scores. Still, their team is really good. Game gets off to a relatively quick 1-0 start after a Liverpool defender gets called for a hand ball in the box. Lamont rips a heater into the side of the net on the penalty kick before the goalie even realizes what happened. A few minutes later, one of the twins on my team intercepts a pass at midfield and scores ona one-man fast break. Just as the game looks like it's going to get out of hand, Tib, Jr., gets called for a phantom foul just outside our own box, though it looked to me like the kid in front of him just tripped over his own two feet. The Brazilian kid boots a missile into the upper right corner on the free kick and the game gets to 2-1. The same twin that scored before then does his best Tib, Jr. impression after Liverpool's goal kick lands at his feet at midfield and scores again for the 3-1 lead. From there, we never looked back. It was 5-3 just after halftime and then we just beat the brakes off of Liverpool at that point. The final score was 9-3, with the 9th goal coming after Liverpool's goalie tried to clear a ball out of the box, hit Lamont square in the belly and the ball shot forward into the goal. Team TMB improves to 10-0 on the season with the 3 regular season games left. We're now at 67 goals for and 9 goals against on the year. We have two tune-up games left before taking on Barcelona, who many say is the most complete team in the league. We might just have something to say about that.
I held practice for the boys last night to get a little tuning up in before taking on Barcelona next week. My practice was at 6:30 and Barcelona was on that field practicing already. They started at 5:30. The two British chaps that coach them were completely oblivious to our presence as we waited for them to clear the field. They also had like 4 kids with the same type of douchey haircut where the sides and back are shaved but the top is long and covers over like one eye. A really cocky group of shits. We’re gonna learn them.
The perfect season ended today, gentlemen. We got taken down 4-3 by Chelsea. I knew it was a bad sign when 2 of my top 4 players showed up with a milkshake and breakfast sandwich in hand. As soon as they started playing these two looked like they were going to puke. Chelsea scored two fast goals and my boys were in disarray. We got it to 2-1 and then Chelsea scored again on a free kick. We turned it up and scored two more to tie but gave up a late goal in the 3rd quarter then Chelsea just protected the lead from there.
The silver lining is the playoffs start in a week and a half, so this was a wake-up call to the boys. They showed up this morning thinking they could just walk out on the field and roll the other team because we've been doing it all season. By the time they woke up we were in a hole and the midfield was non-existent all game.
No, he wasn't. But at the same time, Lamont was totally off of his game today. He still scored a couple of goals, but he was clearly frustrated by the double teams against him. He also got too greedy with the ball and we lost out on two super easy scores where the left wing was standing wide open in the box but Lamont insisted on trying (and failing) to beat the double-team himself.
We at least you can now show no mercy since double secret probation should be over because now they can't ban you from playoffs.
I'm having a really hard time wrapping my head around giving your child a morning milkshake before a sporting event.
You and me both. You could see the look of pain on the kids’ faces as they ran. They’re really good athletes those twins and they couldn’t get in gear today.
Late update from yesterday, boys. Couldn’t report sooner because it was my anniversary and we were celebrating that after the game. The regular season ended yesterday, technically, but apparently there is still a “friendly” on Saturday. More on that later. As for the game, the boys took their only loss pretty hard and came out to redeem themselves yesterday. We pulled off a 4-0 win, and the score isn’t really an indicator of the domination. This Real Madrid squad had the best goalie I’ve seen in this league and he stopped at least 5 breakaways one on one that were easy goals against any other team. Madrid only had like two legit shots all game long. So we ended the regular season 11-1. We have 74 goals for and 13 against in those games. Because of the disparity in talent, the league decided to have two separate playoff brackets. Our bracket is the top six teams in the league. The weaker bracket has the other 8. The two brackets will not play each other so the “real” championship will be played by the 6-team group. It’s us (Arsenal), Barcelona, Liverpool, Chelsea, Paris St. Germain and Real Madrid. The weaker bracket is starting the playoff games on Saturday and ours don’t start until Monday. So the league decided that we would still play a friendly on Saturday against one of the other teams in the bracket. Probably Barcelona, which we haven’t played yet and is touted as the team to beat. I’ll find out tomorrow. Wish us luck!
Ugh, confirmed that we play Barcelona on Saturday. That's fine, it will be a good primer for the playoffs. The part that sucks is the game got moved to 8:30 AM and my boys always play their worst in early games. Need them to come out ready.
They’re tired because their parents don’t have the commitment to winning you do. The only answer is to have a team sleepover Friday night and make sure they are all asleep by 8:30. problem solved
FWIW we requested the 8:30 slot and they said they wanted a prime match up to get viewers for that time and pushed us to 9:30