Forze La Panda! [5m1w: Terry Langford]

[Makonnen]

Simply Lucky. October 12, 2011

Well, here we were.

I couldn’t exactly tell you where here is: Albanian geography was never my strong point. But the field was in good shape even if the concrete surrounding it had seen better days. The crowd was already streaming in, and there was a bitter smell in the air as red and black smoke billowed from the far end where a band of Ultras had set up shop.

I was only dimly aware of any of it.

Belarus had a chance to make some sort of history today: if France beat Romania—certainly an expected result—and we could beat Albania, we would qualify for the next round of the European Championships. Not only would that make the people in Minsk happy, it would certainly help my job applications.

Assuming I ever got to make any.

Only one group is set: Greece and Croatia will go through from Group F but in each of the others second place is still up for grabs, and in Group I all we know is that two from Czechoslovakia, Scotland, and Spain will move on. I guess that’s not quite true: Belgium has virtually no chance of leapfrogging Turkey and Germany in Group A, although it is mathematically possible.

Our Albanian opponents are built around the skills of young Edgar Çani of Siena. Our challenge is at each end of the field: we need to keep Çani under wraps, and we need to figure out how to unlock a strong defense that is anchored by Everton’s veteran defender Debatik Curri.

The good news for us is between those challenges: Timofey Kalachev, Kiril Pavlyuchek, and Vladimir Karytska should give us an advantage in midfield, and if we can get Aliaksandr Hleb or Syargey Kornilenko some space, we should be able to find the back of their net.

Should.

It’s not how it happens, however: instead, we start the game well out of sorts and, seventeen minutes in, when Klodian Duro snaps a free kick against the post from thirty yards, we’re simply lucky not to be down a goal.

And I’ve never been able to sustain a lengthy positive relationship with luck.

So, when Sosnovskiy is careless with the ball just outside of our box and Çani is on him instantly, stealing the ball, turning, and burying it in the far corner, well, I can’t say I’m especially surprised.

Moments later, Hleb gets free in their box, and finds space for his left foot, but Isli Hidi blocks it well. Still, it’s a start, and we struggle our way back into the match, clawing and fighting until just before halftime, what looks like a wayward header from Karytska falls well to Kornilenko, who manages to bring it under control just before he runs into the post, sweeping it in with his trailing leg.

So we go into the locker room tied 1-1. France and Romania are tied as well, locked in a scoreless draw. I don’t know anything about the game, but France is at least putting a full strength team on the field. They should score.

We need one more point than the Romanians get from that game, so right now we ‘re cheering hard for Les Bleus while still charging forward to try to win this one outright.

Just after the start of the second half, again it’s Çani, this time on a long cross from Curri that sees the young striker just out-work and out-quick our team to the back post. It’s a horrid moment: with France and Romania still scoreless, we now need two goals here to advance.

As the clock ticks on, I find myself turning again and again to Vadim Adeev behind me who is monitoring the Romania game. He just shakes his head each time, so the pressure is squarely on our shoulders to find a result.

With just under twenty minutes to go, Sivakov crosses to Hleb, who makes a hard, hard run to the near post to tap it in. It’s a mirror of Çani’s second goal, just a matter of a natural goal scorer wanting it more than the defense.

Even so, our celebrations are muted: everyone on the field knows we need another goal.

With ten to go, we shift into a very strange formation, having pulled off Pavlyuchek for HSV’s young attacker Maxim Skavysh, who has been quite impressive during my tenure. We essentially have three forwards right now, and are asking our remaining midfielders to run all over the place, securing possession and hassling the Albanian players when they have the ball.

They do so admirably, and with three minutes to go, a long rebound frees Skavysh, but Curri turns him outside and he cannot convert the chance. It wasn’t as spectacular an opportunity as Mytnik’s miss against France, but it still was there, right in front of us.

Instead, as Roberto Amat blows his whistle, I turn a final time to Adeev and see the result in his eyes: the draw was not enough, and Romania move on by a single point.

The locker room is quiet: I thank them for their hard work, for the way they embraced playing a new style of football. And I say I hope to work with them all next spring and beyond. And that’s it: my responsibilities as the coach of Belarus are done for several months now, leaving me free to focus on my current state of unemployment with regards to a club job.

Lucky me.

European Championships Qualifying, Group D

Albania v Belarus, Qemal Stafa

Albania 2 (Edgar Çani 31 53) – Belarus 2 (Syargey Kornilenko 41, Aliaksandr Helb 73)

MoM: Çani (8.8) Belarus’ Best: Hleb (7.7)

Attendance: 26,340. Referee: Roberto Amat.

The final sixteen are set. Turkey, Germany, Russia, Serbia, France, Holland, Greece, England, Portugal, and Spain are all through. Romania has a rough road in front of them: when Northern Ireland held Italy to a surprising goalless draw, the Azzurri would be out of the tournament if Slovenia beat Estonia. They didn’t, however, and Roberto Mancini’s Italian side would face Romania in what looked like the most lopsided of the playoff match-ups.

Slovakia and Ireland tied 1-1, which means Slovakia goes through to face Bulgaria. Two goals from Kenny Miller took Scotland over Lichtenstein, earning the Scots a trip to Croatia in the spring and Denmark would face Hungary in the final of the four playoff games.

[Makonnen]

October 24, 2011

“Who was that?”

I laughed, shaking my head. “No idea. I never could really hear the name.”

Leti looked frustrated. “What did they want?”

I shrugged. “Italy. More jobs, more bizarre rumors that I want to go back.”

Leti stared at me, her eyes darkening. “Do you?”

I sighed heavily. “We’ve been through this so often. Do we have to go through it again?”

Her face was still defiant, her voice growing distant like a receding tide. “Do you?”

I crossed the room and put my hands on her shoulders, trying to look as earnest as I possibly could. “I want to be with you.” I stared down at her: the round face, the large eyes, the ever-changing hair. I felt like we were on the edge of another fall: all I wanted was to be with her, but she was never able, it seemed, to fully accept the fact, to let it wash over her and be done, settled.

I leaned over and kissed her forehead. “You want to be in America. So I want to be in America.”

She smiled and nodded and lifted her head, parting her lips slightly, and the kiss was lovely and sweet and calming. As we separated she said, grinning, “I’ve been thinking about Italy.”

I didn’t say anything, but my mind began to race. I tried to remember the name of the reporter, though, thinking maybe I would be calling them back. “And?”

“Rome would be fine. Milan. Anything in Serie A.”

I laugh in nervous relief. I don’t know what I would have said if she had mentioned something that was even vaguely possible. As it was, I could treat it as a joke. I wagged a finger at her, saying, “I’m going to hold you to that.”

She nodded towards the phone. “Was that?”

“No, of course not. That was about Sorrento and Perugia. Barely above the Pandas.”

October 29, 20111

I looked up from The Boston Herald as I heard the chime of the door to the small corner café. I smiled and waved my arm in the air as Leti entered, looking around. She slid into the booth across from me and smiled, unwrapping a red, green, and gold striped scarf and folding it neatly next to her.

Running a hand through her dreadlocks, she shook off some drops of cold rain, shivered and said, “Boston is too cold, Terry. Too, too cold.”

I laughed. “It may be cold. But if the Revolution comes calling …”

She arched her eyebrows flirtatiously. “You know I was a fan of the revolution, don’t you?”

I signaled with my hand for the waitress. She had a tattoo of a vine of roses climbing up her neck, and thick, brown disks in her ears. Leti asked her for a pot of tea, and stared after her as she moved away.

“What is that about?”

“What?”

She waved her hand in small circles by her ears. “That. Why do white people do that? The, I dunno, romanticization of tribal culture?”

“You think too much, Leti. She’s just a kid.”

Leti shrugged. “What’s that?” she asks, touching the paper.

I grimaced. “It’s an article about a job in England.”

She stared at me. “A job you want?”

“A job that is far beyond me. Reading.”

“Redding?” I nod, spinning the paper around and tapping the article. “Oh. I always thought that was Reading, you know, like books.”

“I don’t think so.”

She nods, and reads on. “Who is Rod Ridgway? I’ve never heard of him.”

“Does it really say Rod?”

She spins the paper back so I can read where it says, Currently, the leading candidate for the job at Reading is Rod Ridgway, a young American manager fresh off successful years in Italy, where he first met the Royals’ current Chairman, Alessandro Soglia. Ridgway would be the highest profile American hire in England, and while the circumstances of his departure from Italy remain somewhat mysterious, there is growing enthusiasm among Reading fans that Soglia and General Manager Paul Powell have found their man to replace Steve Bull.

I laughed and pushed the paper away. “What’s so funny?” she asked.

“His name’s Rob. Robert.” I chuckled again. “That is exactly the kind of thing that will tear him up, too. I can see it now. He’ll get asked a question by some journalist and start by insisting they spell his name correctly out loud three times.”

“You know him?”

“Yeah, a little. We came up at about the same time. Went to a few coaching clinics together, that kind of thing. And I saw him once … no, twice … in Italy. Just a handshake and good luck.”

She paused as the waitress returned. Leti watched as she placed the white ceramic teapot on the table, staring at the back of the young woman’s hands. “Is that Sanskrit?”

The waitress glanced at her. “Yeah, I mean, I think so.”

Leti glanced briefly at me, then back at the woman. “Do you know what it says?”

She shrugged, the wooden disks in her ears shaking slightly with the effort. “Not really. Can you read it?” she asked hopefully?

Leti just shook her head, reaching for the pot of tea and warming her hands around her cup, staring at me through the steam. The waitress smiled, unfazed, and turned away. Leti watched her go without comment before saying, “He sounds mean.”

“I dunno. He’s a good guy, I guess. A little old school. It’s his way or the highway, that kind of thing. Hey, he’s about to employed in the second league in England. Who the hell am I to say anything?”

November 2, 2011

“Why are we here again?”

I huddle against Leti for warmth. It’s cold in Gillette stadium, where we are among the just-under fifteen thousand who have shown up to watch the Revolution take on the New York Red Bulls. “The Revolution may fire Nicol. I mean, he’s been here forever, but if they get relegated …” I trail off and wave my hand noncommittally. “So we’re here to watch them lose.”

She pulls away from me in mock horror, her head covered in a dark blue knit cap emblazoned with the word Revolution, a red and white striped scarf wound tight around her neck. “You want them to lose?” I nod. “And you let me come to the game dressed like this?”

I nod again. “Tonight, my love, I am one hundred percent Red Bull.”

She starts to scold me, but can’t help laughing. “You know how silly that sounds?”

I kiss her and turn back to the field. New York’s coach, Jim Magilton, is being interviewed on the sideline as the players warm up behind him, their breath forming soft puffs of white across the field.

New York is in first place in the North American Select League, ten points clear of América, by far the best performance by an American team yet in the new leagues. Much of their success has been from their offense, led by two young European strikers, Ukrainian Andriy Yarmolenko and the imposing Czech international, Tomas Necid.

At the other end of the league, the Revolution have hovered all year barely above the relegation zone and at this point are fighting for their life, facing movement down to NACL for the first time in their history. Their strength has been their midfield, anchored by MLS veteran Shalrie Joseph and young Nigerian Chibuzo Okonkwo, but the play of Igor de Camargo and Michael Chidi Alozi up front has been inconsistent and the less said about their defense, the better.

Leti is up and yelling before the opening whistle. She exchanges high-fives with a few other Revolution fans around us, then settles heavily in her seat before burrowing her head into my shoulder. “If you’re all Red Bull tonight, I will have to cheer for the both of us. Viva la revolución.”

Three minutes in, Yarmolenko sheds New England’s defense and buries the shot well beyond the reach of a diving Miguel de Jesús Fuentes. As the jumbotron shows the Revolution keeper, Leti lets out a stream of white smoke in surprise. “How old is he?”

I glance up. “Fuentes? He’s forty. Forty-one? Something like that.”

“Forty? Has he been here all this time?”

“With New England? No … he was … I don’t know. Somewhere in Mexico—some local town or something, and when the new leagues formed, they found him.”

“Is he the best they have?”

I shake my head. “No. Greg Sutton is their best, but he’s old, too. And they have a kid, too.” I look down the Revolution bench. “Yeah, there, the one with the wild mane of hair and no hat? That’s John Muir. He’s, like, twenty, but should be a good one.”

She stares a moment. “Isn’t he cold? Silly. But today they go with the old man? Against the best team in the league?”

“Yep. See, that is part of why tonight, you too, should be all Red Bull. You want another beer?”

Leti nods and I head up the aisle to the concession stand. I’m back in the seat next to her just in time to see New England tie the game on a great header from de Camargo. The home crowd is loud in their appreciation, but the visiting fans are confident, and ten minutes before halftime, young Mexican striker Mario Morales is set free on a nice pass from Necid and again Fuentes is picking the ball out of his own net.

Just after halftime, New York’s Pablo Aguilar is called for a dubious foul inside his own penalty box against Chidi Alozi and when Shalrie Joseph sends the Red Bulls’ keeper, Jim Russel, the wrong way, the game is again tied at two.

Finally, just shy of an hour, the player we are supposed to be watching, New England’s Belarusian defender Ryhor Filipenko, makes an impact; or would have if the referee—some woman with long hair that goes by some silly single name—had been paying attention.

Necid made a curling run behind the defense and Filipenko slid up smartly, leaving the imposing striker a good yard offside when the pass came from Spanish veteran Corona. The flag stayed down, however, and Necid buried the ball past Fuentes who, the longer the game lasts, looks more and more every bit his age.

I turn to Leti with a smug grin. “It was harder than it should have been, but that’s it. Game over.”

She pouts, and claps enthusiastically when New England’s Steve Nicol makes all of his substitutions at once, bringing on veterans David Woods and Chris Murphy along with young starlet Gabriel Gadsby. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“We need new blood in the game.”

“He’s taking off Ryhor.” I protested.

“Not my problem. Get your Belarussians in shape, and they could play the full ninety.”

“Belarusians.”

“Whatever.” She turned back to the field, shouting, “Go Gabriel! Come on Revolution!”

Gadsby is joining AC Milan as soon as he turns 18, and looks to have the makings of a special player, but today it’s Woods who impresses most when, just two minutes after his entry, the twenty-nine year old pounces on a loose ball in the box, barely managing to poke it past a diving Russel.

Suddenly, the home crowd is ecstatic and Leti is jumping up and down, exchanging more high fives with a group of twenty-something’s brandishing Revolution scarves in front of us.

It only gets louder: the Red Bulls are totally on their back foot as the game winds down and Magilton turns to some veteran leadership, bringing Bruno Basto on to help Juan Pablo Ángel keep the troops organized.

It doesn’t work: five minutes from time, Aguilar is caught too deep on defense and Jay Heaps sends a long ball for Michael Chidi Alonzi, who is onside thanks to Aguilar’s mistake. The crowd springs to its feet in unison. The Nigerian striker is faster than any of the defenders, and he’s past Basto easily, firing a rocket between Russel and his near post.

Somehow, I find myself cheering as well. Leti looks at me in disbelief, then throws her arms around me and gives me a kiss that lasts through the restart of play. “Traitor,” she says playfully as she pulls away.

“It was a great goal. I was rooting for, you know, the good of the game.”

She pushes me back into my seat, but stays standing herself as the clock winds down. It wasn’t just a line: games like this are part of what makes us love the sport, where a team that has no chance for ninety minutes fights and battles and thrills the crowd with attacking soccer, eventually taking victory away from a heavy favorite.

There is singing as the crowd shuffles out of the stadium, and most of the faces are happy as they bundle up in scarves and the thickly padded coats preferred by those accustomed to Boston winters. But it all feels right, and even the traffic on the turnpike is not enough to pull us off the high of the game.

NASL

New England Revolution v New York Red Bulls, Gillette Stadium

Revolution 4 (Igor de Camargo 15, Shalrie Joseph 47p, David Woods 78, Michael Chidi Alozi 85) – Red Bull 3 (Andriy Yarmolenko 4, Mario Morales 36, Tomas Necid 57)

MoM: Necid (8.5) New England’s Best: de Camargo (8.1)

Attendance: 14,161. Referee: Starhawk.

[Makonnen]

November 16, 2011

Terry stared at his phone for a long time, thinking of what might have been.

The final four nations to reach the European Championships were set as Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, and Croatia all moved on to the next spring’s competition. The most dramatic match was Croatia’s visit to Glasgow, where only a seventy-ninth minute goal from Blackburn’s Nikola Kalinic allowed the Croats to progress by virtue of away goals against the Scots.

Romania, who had ousted his squad from Belarus, hardly put up any resistance against Italy and while Langford’s team would most likely have suffered the same fate, he would have appreciated the chance to match wits with Roberto Mancini. And his old physio from the years in Rodengo, Enrico Castellacci, was with the national team so at a minimum there would have been some wine and some memories.

That pretty much summed up his life right now: wine and memories.

There were no jobs. Well that wasn’t quite true: Estudiantes de Altamira had offered him the job: not an interview, but the actual job. But Leti held firm, and the attractions of life on the Gulf Coast of Mexico that Terry could find online did nothing to change her mind. So he had passed on the opportunity with as much grace as he could muster, and the Mexican club quickly hired a virtual unknown named Jorge Mar for their spot.

But there were no jobs in America, and as the weeks wound by, Terry’s days began to be filled with a growing dread. Perhaps it wasn’t the market or the end of the season or anything like that.

Perhaps it was simply him.

Perhaps he just wasn’t good enough.

The thought never came on directly, instead it held to the edges of his mind, skittish as a frightened cat, leaping out of the way whenever he happened to glance in its direction. He would try to ignore it, but when he was alone, a glass or a bottle in one hand and his head in the other, he would hear it moving in the shadows, demanding attention.

A Good Idea. November 30, 2011

“This was such a good idea.”

Leti leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Good. Yes, it was,” she said, clearly pleased with herself.

They had spent Thanksgiving in New York, a holiday that meant little to each of them, but gave them an excuse to wander the streets of Manhattan in search of music and food. It felt good to be somewhere urban, somewhere that pulsed with the intensity of thousands of lives intersecting and overlapping, crowding each other in their onward rush, reminding both of them of happier moments in Cape Town.

Over the weekend, huddled under the sheets of their hotel bed (after leaving their flat in a horrid mess on their last visit, both of them were far too embarrassed to reach out to Leti’s friends in Brooklyn), Terry received a text from Des McAleenan, who he knew from years spent in the youth leagues of Ireland and who now served as the goalkeeping coach for the New York Red Bulls.

Terry had met with Des for a few beers after the Red Bulls game in Boston the prior month, and the two had invented a friendship that never really was, united as immigrants on distant soil in the same professional world.

The text invited the two of them to the North American Select League Championship Semifinal, to be played at the small confines of James M. Shuart Stadium on the campus of Hofstra University on Long Island the following week. The Red Bulls were gifted with a virtual home game against visiting Mexican side Pumas UNAM, looking to further extend the most successful season by an American club since the soccer pyramid had been created.

It was too good of an offer to turn down, and McAleenan’s outreach filled both of them with optimism: perhaps, finally, one of Terry’s contacts would lead to an acceptable job offer.

So they extended their stay and this windy Wednesday evening found them boarding a Long Island Railroad train at Penn Station and heading east. The train was full of commuters heading home, their faces buried in their phones or their tablets or their Kindles, each intent on creating a separate world as they rumbled through the tunnels and neighborhoods that marked the first borderlands of the island.

Among them, however, were scattering of people heading the same place as Leti and Terry: Red Bulls fans in white and red and small knots of Hispanic immigrants speaking softly in quick Spanish to each other and dressed in blue and gold with the square-nosed jaguar logo on their shirts and scarves.

Not for the first time, Terry wondered at the civility of American fans: raised at the height of the media exposure of football hooliganism, he always felt anxiety when rival fans shared the same space. But in America, violence between supporters seemed unheard of: the fans would mix before and after the game with nothing more than some loud insults hurled back and forth for the most part.

Leti leaned against him, burying her cheek into the padding of his winter coat and said, “So, I know New York. Tell me about the others. They have one of ours, don’t they?”

“Pumas?” Leti nodded without lifting her head, her cheek swishing against his shoulder. “They’ve been good since the league started. Finished first one year. Never lower than fourth, I think. And, yeah. Klate. Daine Klate. Signed for them from SuperSport a few years ago. He’s done okay. But he doesn’t see a lot of time. Like a lot of these teams, they’re built around players who were always on the fringe of the national team, or who are on the front or back side of good careers.”

“Anyone I know?”

Terry shrugged as carefully as he could so as not to dislodge her head. “Maybe. Marco Antonio Palacios? Jorge Iván Estrada?” He felt her shake her head again. “Flores, you’ve probably heard of him. Salvador Flores?”

“Teenager, yeah?”

“Yeah. He’s scored, I dunno, four goals in his first six caps. Something like that. So, yeah, he’s on the way up.”

Leti made an agreeable noise and snuggled deeper towards Terry’s neck. The two sat in silence, and the rhythm of the train soon drew heavily on their eyes, sending them into a half-sleep where they were only distantly aware of the names of the stations as they rolled by.

The wind as they walked to the stadium was enough to wake them up, and after stopping for a quick cup of hot chocolate in a Styrofoam cup, they barely made it into their seats for the opening whistle.

The young Mexican starlet provided the highlight of the first half with a shot from twenty yards away that Jim Russel in New York’s goal could barely tip over the bar, but it was on the whole a drab forty-five minutes, with neither side willing to take many risks going forward.

UNAM was ascendant after the break, but just after an hour, it was New York who broke through, with a sequence that was as noted for Puma’s coach Ignacio Ambriz’ behavior as the decision by referee Lon Milo Duquette when the Red Bulls’ young Mexican striker Mario Morales was pulled down in the box by Jorge Iván Estrada.

Duquette had no hesitation in pointing to the spot, but as the Pumas players protested, Ambriz was turning and yelling at a player behind his bench.

“What is he doing” asked Leti.

“I don’t know,” answered Terry. “It looks like he’s. Holy ****, he is.”

“What?”

“He’s pulling his keeper for the penalty.”

“What?” Leti leaned forward, craning her neck towards the center of the pitch where a Pumas player stood by the fourth official. Sure enough, Alejandro Palacios was clapping his gloves together and jumping in the air, waiting for Odín Patiño to come off. Patiño had his head down, clearly furious at the decision and struggling not to let his emotions show. He gave Palacios a quick tap on the shoulder and headed straight to the end of the bench.

Palacios took his time, stopping to take the captain’s armband from Argentine forward Martín Bravo before finally taking position in front of his goal. All the while, New York’s star, Ukrainian youngster Andriy Yarmolenko, stood by the penalty spot, the ball held on his hip, a bemused expression on his face.

Finally, Duquette whistled for the kick and Yarmolenko calmly beat Pumas new keeper, sending an unstoppable penalty high into the roof of the net.

The lead only lasted two minutes however, as two quick passes sent the ball down the center of the field from Daine Klate to Bravo to Flores, who chipped the ball over an onrushing Russel. Leti was up on her feet yelling and turned to Terry with a smile on her face.

“I guess I’m rooting for them.”

Terry laughed. “You’re just rooting for Daine.”

Leti shrugged. “Gotta’ support my homie.”

Terry almost choked on a sip of beer, struggling not to spray liquid on the fans in front of them. “Your what?”

“Homie. That’s the word, right?”

Terry nodded, laughing too hard to actually speak.

Flores had another chance in stoppage time, but this time Russel was able to make the stop.

“Really?” asked Terry. “Really? Extra time?”

“It looks like it,” answered Leti as Pumas lined up for a corner four minutes into stoppage time. She finished off her bear and asked, “Will you get another couple at the break?”

Terry nodded as Estrada sent the corner high into the box, where veteran defender Rafael Medina rose high to meet it squarely. The ball rocketed downwards towards the far post, where New York’s Angelo Ogbonna dove, but was unable to get his boot on it cleanly.

Leti shrieked as the ball trickled over the line and the Pumas fans roared in approval. Moments later, Duquette’s shrill whistle marked the end of the match, and of the season for New York, whose coach, Jim Magilton, stood still as a statue for several minutes, a lone figure left to ponder the meaning of a dream season that came crashing down one win short of his goal.

NASL Championship Semifinal

New York Red Bulls v Club Universidad Nacional AC, James M. Shuart Stadium

Red Bulls 1 (Andriy Yarmolenko 68p) – Pumas UNAM 2 (Salvador Flores 70, Rafael Medina 90+4)

MoM: Martín Bravo (8.1) Best Red Bull: Yarmolenko (6.9)

Attendance: 15,534. Referee: Lon Milo Duquette.

[Makonnen]

Let's Go Home. January 19, 2012

I was pretending to read a pamphlet about The National Gallery when Terry got the news. He was looking at his phone and suddenly stiffened, inhaling sharply.

We were in Washington, and the subway had just emerged into the bright winter sun after shaking through a long series of underground tunnels and stops. I blinked against the sudden brightness, looking through a scratched window over a network of railroad tracks and warehouses that faded into a burst of diagonal lines converging on some distant horizon.

I was struck with a sudden sense of longing sparked by glimpses that reminded me of home: a bridge in Houston, men in oversized grey and green coats huddled around a steel drum burning with blue flames; a stall at a market in Boston infused with a rapidly dissipating smell of cloves; a traffic jam in Miami where the staccato pattern of horns screamed over the faint sound of surf crashing onto a distant beach.

It makes me long for the things I know I won’t see. Shanties and shebeens and goats’ heads roasting on outdoor fires; dark women in complicated wraps of tropical colors talking on cell phones on busy streetcorners. Nombi.

Most of all, Nombi.

When I looked up again, the train tracks had been replaced by a regular crosshatch pattern of streets and houses, small front porches flashing visible as we flew by. I craned my head up to see how many stops we had to go until Takoma, where some distant friends would meet us for dinner.

“What, love?” I asked. He passed the phone to me without a word. I only read the headline and the first sentence.

Ajax Hot Seat Open Again

Citing poor performances on the field, the Ajax Cape Town Board of Directors, led by the Comitis family, have decided to remove Vladislav Heric from the helm, effective immediately, the third change of managerial leadership at the club in the past five years.

Home! We could go home. The thought washed over me like a wave, shocking and cold and heavier than expected. I looked up to find Terry carefully watching me, his blue eyes piercing and attentive. “And?” I asked.

He took his phone back. “That’s not the real thing. That’s just the beginning.” He ran his finger along the screen a bit. “Here.”

“You know you’re getting pretty good with that thing.” He just rolled his eyes and again pushed the phone in my direction. I took it, and there was an e-mail from an address I knew all too well.

Terry,

We’re looking to move very quickly on this. Dad still speaks quite strongly of you. Do you have any interest?

-Mike Comitis

That was the younger Comitis, who had slowly replaced his father as the power behind Ajax Cape town. Home. I stared at the screen until I heard his voice asking, “Is it what you want?”

I took his hand in mine. “I want to be with you.”

He withdrew his hand, turning in his seat to face me more directly. “Leti. Luv. I know that. But this, what we’re doing. It’s not working. It’s almost New Years. And all we’re doing is burning through your savings. All of your savings. Nothing else is going right. I’m tired of talking to people and tired of … I dunno. Everything.”

He stopped short and just looked at me. I swear I could see myself in those pale eyes, and I felt the tears swell inside me. It broke my heart to see him like this, to see the wounds he carried so close to the surface.

“Would you want to go back?” I asked.

He shook his head. “I want a job.” He laughed a short, mean laugh. “Or I want to know I’m just not good enough and I can go, whatever, learn to be a waiter.”

I smile at him. “You know you’re a good coach. You know it and I know it and someday the rest of the world will know it, too. And, besides, you’d be a terrible waiter.”

“It’d be something.”

The car shuddered to a stop and I looked up again. “One more stop.”

He took a deep breath and rubbed his eyes. “If you want to go home, Leti, let’s go home. I don’t know if Mike will have me back, even if John speaks well of me. But that’s okay. Someone will. Swallows. Or AmaZulu. Even FC Cape Town.”

“You’re serious.”

He smiled thinly, a flash of white behind his lips. It was a look he gave when he meant what he said. “Not about FC Cape Town. But the rest. Yeah, I am.”

I turned back to the window as a carefully tended forest of telephone poles streamed by in a regular rhythm, cutting the world into neatly divided slices. A house. An intersection with a gas station. A building under construction. Then we turned and the train began to slow down.

I grabbed the silver rail that lined the top of the bench in front of us and pulled myself up. “This is it.” He stayed in his seat a moment. “I’m thinking. We’ll talk on the way back. OK?”

He nodded, rose to his feet, and we made our way out of the station, huddling against each other on the long escalator that brought us out and into the twilight where we searched the crowd for faces that reminded us of our friends.

[Makonnen]

January 20, 2012

We had been up half the night, only falling asleep after a couple shots of tequila each. Maybe more than a couple. I wake up with a thick and slightly sour taste in my mouth, and stumble my way to the kitchen, shot glasses in my hand. I rinse them out, cringing at the sound of the glass clattering against the stained enamel of the sink, and stand there for several long minutes, feeling the coldness of the water on my hands.

I splash my face and move back to the bedroom.

Leti is sound asleep, the generous curves of her body forming a soft landscape beneath the covers. I stare at her for a while, then grab the bottle of tequila and walk out onto the small deck that hangs off our second story room like the opening into another world.

It’s freezing cold: my feet protest shrilly as they shrink against the dusting of snow. I gasp and my breath explodes from my chest in a fog that hangs in front of me for a moment before fading away. I inhale and the cold slices through my lungs, a painful reminder of being alive. I take a drink from the bottle and start coughing, as much from the chill as from the alcohol.

When I come back inside, Leti is sitting up, her back against the headboard. “You okay?” she asks, the words distorted by an expansive yawn.

“Fine. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

She looked at me skeptically. “That was pretty loud,” she said, glancing outside.

“Yeah, well. It’s ****ing cold out there.”

“It’s the middle of winter, what did you expect?”

We both catch ourselves, thrown for a moment: in Cape Town, it is high summer right now, the city exploding in bloom and the beaches packed with families on vacation. Last night’s conversation comes rushing back into the room, suddenly filling the space between us as if it never left.

She looks at the bottle, her eyebrows arching in question.

“I know. It got the taste out of my mouth.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

She reaches out and I pass her the bottle, taking it back as she winces and shakes her head. “That’s nasty.”

“It’s tequila.”

She bows her chin to her chest and reaches up with a hand on each side, quickly running them along her scalp. I’ve seen her do this thousands of times now and I wait for the inevitable tilt of the head, the smoothing of the absurdly excited hair into a quick shell. She reaches back and behind her head, quickly twisting it into a short braid, but I can’t watch: the blanket has fallen away, and her Vote for Pedro shirt is shaking seductively with the effort.

She notices my eyes have drifted. “That all you think about?”

“How lovely and sexy you are? Yeah, pretty much.”

She drops her hands from her hair and just shakes her head. I climb next to her, placing the bottle carefully on the nightstand. “What are we going to do, Leti?”

“I’ve been thinking.”

“Have you?”

“I have.” Her voice drops and I know this is no longer flirtatious banter. I lift my arm, making space for her to move closer.

“And?”

She gazes out the window for a while before answering, her eyes tracing the thick flakes as they dance erratically in the wind. When she does start to speak, her voice is thick in her throat and she has to stop a few times to compose herself.

“I left home. I left my family. My sister. Everything.” I hold very still, unsure of what she is going to say next. “And it’s been hard. But the past few months have taught me one thing, Terry.” She turns and looks up at me, and her large eyes are overflowing with bright tears. “I love you so much. And your future is not in South Africa. So mine is not, too.”

I don’t know what to day, so I just lean over and kiss her forehead, my hand brushing the wetness away from her cheeks. She leans against my chest, and soon her breath settles into a long regular pattern. I reach over and ease the bottle into my hand with my fingertips, not wanting to wake her.

Some History. January 21, 2012

“Jesus that was fast.”

“What?”

I slide the phone to Leti. “Ajax. They’ve hired Bright.”

“David Bright? The guy from Bay United?”

I nod. She scans the screen for a moment and reaches out her hand, squeezing mine gently. “Well, that’s that.”

I nod and take a sip of coffee. We’re in a small bakery on Capitol Hill, filling the mid-morning void between the long lines of breakfast items taken to go and eaten hastily on the subway and the inevitable flood of office-workers for lunch. It’s quiet here, and the staff are busy, but relaxed, simultaneously resting and preparing for the looming rush.

I watch them interact with each other, with the heavy-set, dark-skinned woman who is, I assume, their manager. They work well together, balancing assignments, checking on each other, conversations easily moving from gossip to gentle chiding to the business at hand. Leti laughs at me as my eyes follow them around the restaurant.

“What?”

“You can’t stop, can you?” I shake my head. She’s right, but it feels so hollow: the ways in which this group is similar to a football team are a poor imitation, an impoverished cousin that only reminds you of the real thing in certain dim light.

“So, now what?”

I fiddle with my silverware for a moment. “Saint Louis.”

“Saint Louis?”

I nod. “It’s a place we can start. The job’s open. The city has decent support. And it’s got some history.”

“The club?” Her voice is confused.

“No, the city.”

She grins a teasing grin. “History, huh?” She stretches the word out, elongating the first syllable. “You mean it’s not quite as lily-white as Boise?”

I smile and drop my head, muttering “Something like that.”

A few moments pass in silence before she speaks again. “How do they say it? Is it Saint Louis?” she asks, exaggerating the French accent in both words, and losing the final consonants entirely. “Or,” she asks, her voice leaping high into her nose, her vowels flattening out like the plains of the Midwest, and the final “s” elongating like the hiss of a viper, “is it Saint Louis?”

I shake my head. “Damned if I know.” I grin at her. “But hopefully we’ll find out.”

[Makonnen]

Quicksand. February 13, 2012

“You’re really going to apply?”

“For Ghana?” Leti nods at me, a warm smile on her face. “Why not? Doing ****-all else at the moment.”

Her smile drops to concern. “Still no word?”

I reach for my drink–a decent imitation of a Shandy, the pale ale brightened by notes of citrus. We’re at a somebody’s vision of an Indian restaurant in San Diego. There are brightly colored ovals on the wall that I think are supposed to represent peacock feathers, but I’m not sure the designers have ever seen a live peacock up close. Or been to India for that matter.

But the food is good, and there is enough spice that my third Shandy is going down well. We weren’t really sure why we were in San Diego. The Seals would start their preseason in a few days, and I knew this guy on their staff, Mick Davies, who had invited me to help out. But that wasn’t really it.

It was the time in Saint Louis. The few days we spent there were so depressing that we had to escape to someplace with breezes and beaches, where we could sit and listen to the endless drumming of the surf against the sand.

It wasn’t the city itself. We actually liked what we saw: the open spaces around the river and the arch, the mixture of old and new and new architecture. Leti even seemed optimistic about creating a life for herself there.

Instead, it was the crushing uncertainty of the job that made it unbearable, that coated their time in a thick fog that made everything take more time and effort than it should. They spent days in bed at the hotel, emerging only for a dinner and an evening at a bar.

The club was still in takeover talks, and had been for months. While the chairman—the current chairman—Liam Hunt assured me they were going well and that the job was as good as mine, nothing could be made official without the approval of the new board.

Somehow I had managed to get a job that didn’t exist for a club that began play in under three months. I should be knee-deep in scouting reports and staff interviews. Instead, I felt like I was sinking, being drawn under by some irresistible quicksand that seemed an inescapable part of our lives.

“No, not really. He keeps saying any day now.”

Leti looks down and pushes some chickpea and carrot concoction around on her plate for a moment. “How long do they expect you to wait?”

“Who knows. I mean, they kind of hold the cards here, Leti. It’s not like jobs we like are growing on trees.”

“I know. It’s just hard.”

I empty my glass and signal our waiter for another. We sit in silence until it arrives. I squeeze the slices of lemon and lime into the pale golden liquid and take a drink. Everything feels a little soft, like the world is more liquid than solid.

“May,” I say. “It’s what we decided, right?” We could survive until May. If nothing came through by then, I would take a job as an assistant coach somewhere. Openings were plentiful and it could give me a small paycheck as we waited for the real thing. In the meantime, money would start coming in from the Football Federation of Belarus in September when the qualifying campaign for the 2014 World Cup started.

We had been drawn in Group 8. It would be a challenge: Portugal was the class of the six teams, and while we should finish ahead of the Faroe Islands, second place qualification would be a battle between us, Scotland and our old foes, Albania and Romania.

I am looking carefully at Leti, who finally raises her head to meet my gaze. She nods, and I can see herself shoving her worries away, carefully pushing them out of reach. She smiles and lifts her martini glass towards me. “May.”

[Makonnen]

Any News. March 20, 2012

Terry took a deep breath and tapped a number into his phone. “Hello, Alex?”

“Yeah, Terry?”

“Yes, it’s me.” He had known Alex Brown for a few years. A couple shared coaching clinics, a few friends saying they should get in touch with each other—really, they should. Alex had made vague plans to come to Italy and stay in Rodengo for a month or so before, well, before that all went to hell.

He and Leti had dinner with him in San Diego, where Alex was doing some preseason scouting for his hometown club, the Honolulu Spinners, and the conversation had continued in the hotel bar long after Leti had retired upstairs. The two men had hit it off, although they seemed at first to have little in common.

Alex had been raised in Hawaii, the son of two Navy brats who finally found posts that let them settle in one place. For all its beauty, it wasn’t an easy life: there were few other African-American kids and the ones that showed up usually moved away after a year or two, when their parents’ duty rotated.

On an island whose heritage was largely defined by the multiracial mix of its population, Alex grew up deeply aware that he was something else entirely, belonging unambiguously to a single category. Many of his friends were dark-skinned, but almost none of them were black and, even for the ones that were, it didn’t seem to carry the same weight as it did in the Brown household, where he was raised on a diet of Huey Newton and Malcolm X, Afrika Bambaata and the Lost Poets.

Decades later, he still struggled to make sense of it: the cultural radicalism of his parents seemed to be in direct conflict with their continued employment by the United States military, something that, in his angry young man phase, he was more than willing to throw in their faces during one of their all too frequent shouting matches.

Soccer had given him a way out, a scholarship to the University of California at San Diego, and five years of the freedom of campus life (he had red-shirted his freshman year after tearing his ACL in the second week of school).

Even before the injury, he was more intelligent than athletically gifted, a player that always knew where to be, with a keen eye for noticing small things on the pitch: how a certain player always touched the ball inside before he shot, how another would bump you on the hip if he was guessing you were going left but not right. Coaches loved him for it: they saw in him a reflection of the player they once saw themselves becoming.

It was a mirage. Like most of them, in the end, he just wasn’t good enough. Intelligence and craft and observation will only take you so far; at some point, you can no longer compensate for the difference in speed and technique and strength of the best players. When he graduated, there were a few tryouts, first from Chivas USA, then for a few of the teams at the lower levels of American soccer and at some point, he just realized it wasn’t going to happen.

It was as if a glass door slid shut, sealing him away from his past: he could see his history with the sport on the other side, but nothing crossed the barrier, no sound, no memory, nothing. He was done with the game and he never really looked back—even a few of his close friends didn’t know he once played. The past ten years had been hard: moving from job to job without direction or security, let alone health insurance, while dodging his parents continued attempts to recruit him into the service.

“America is no place for a young black man,” they would tell him. “No opportunity, no future, and you don’t know when a bullet might have your name on it.”

“You’re worried about my safety, so you want me to join the military?”

“We’re worried about your life, so we want you to have a future.”

They rarely finished a conversation: one side or the other would cut off the call in anger, and a few days would go by before a message would appear on his Facebook page, or he would get a text from one of his sisters.

U need 2 call mom. I cant have her crying 2 me all time.

As soccer exploded in North America, as he recognized names from his playing days either getting roster spots with the swarm of new teams or getting coaching positions, he felt the pull more and more until one day the door slid open and it all came rushing back in, the way players worked together, the combination of grace and brutality that marked the game, the beauty of a shot curving towards goal.

Two weeks later, he called his college coach and asked for help getting him a job.

He hadn’t known much about the process, so it took a few more years before he could get his badges; a few more years of working in offices that were always the same whether they belonged to an insurance company, a financial consulting firm, or a medical records processor. That was followed by a few more years of being introduced to people and sending carefully constructed e-mails saying how great it was to meet them and how he hoped they would keep him in mind if anything were to open up in Boise or Yuma or Charlotte or Toledo.

And now, it looked like it might be happening. He hadn’t thought much of Terry at first. He liked him, sure, and he’d have a beer with him anytime. But it sure looked like a longshot for employment.

And then a few weeks ago, he called and began talking about the opportunity with the club in Saint Louis. And it kept rolling along with each conversation, and while the club was still working through the logistics of a new Board of Directors, it had moved from unlikely to distinctly possible.

He took a deep breath and answered, “Terry. Good to hear from you. Any news?”

Terry sighed before replying, “No, not really. Look, Alex.” Terry stumbled, unsure of what to say. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. We’ve been here for two weeks now and it feels like nothings moving.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone. “What does that mean?”

“Just that. I don’t feel good about what’s happening. Look, Alex, if San Diego offers you something or if the Spinners come through for you, I think you should take it.”

“As a scout?”

“As anything. Look, man, I’ve been unemployed for what feels like years at this point. If San Diego wanted me to sell tickets, I’d have to think about it.”

There is another pause. “You still want me, Terry?”

“What?”

“You heard. If this is some, I dunno, some ******** so you can give the job to someone else, just tell me, alright?”

“No. No, I promise. If this happens, I want you with me.”

“Alright.”

The silence is expectant, but Terry doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say. “Alright what?”

“Alright. I’ll wait it out. You just call me when you got some good news.”

Terry couldn’t help but smile, although he had to say, “It could be a while.”

[Makonnen]

Get This Done. March 30, 2012

Terry stood uncomfortably at the bar, one foot on the railing, a hand absent-mindedly spinning a coaster in a lazy curve across the slick surface. He took another sip of water and sighed, wanting to order something stronger, but knowing it would be a mistake.

Leti’s voice drifted through his head. “This is it, Terry,” she said. “We can celebrate after. We can.”

His face was turned away from the crowd, his eyes searching the sidewalk outside. People appeared in flashes of clarity as they walked by, their figures obscured by the swirls of etched glass that unwound across the bottom of the full-height window. The door would open and Terry would feel the cool flow of air and the expansion of sound that accompanied it before twisting further in his seat to examine at the people who walked in, couples and small groups mostly, come to this downtown bar from the office and looking for a few drinks before moving on with their Friday nights.

Finally, the long face and thinning hair of Michael Hall appeared in the doorway. Terry took a deep breath and forced himself to be still, resisting the impulse to move towards the lanky man who looked around, running a hand across his head, spreading a few shocks of straw-colored hair across his scalp. He saw Terry at the bar and gave a wave and a grim smile as he found his way through the crowd.

“Terry,” he said, his hand extended in greeting.

“Mr. Hall.”

A smile briefly crossed the tall man’s face, crinkles appearing on either side of his thin, pointed nose. “Please, Michael. Have you been here long?”

Terry shook his head unconvincingly as Hall waved at the bartender. “Two martinis, extra dry.” He turned to Terry. “You’ll have one with me, yes?” Terry pressed his lips together and nodded.

As they waited for the drinks to arrive, Terry tried to think of something to say, some bit of smalltalk that would make this easier, but he couldn’t. Something in Hall’s demeanor, the fatigue in his eyes, the tightness of his jaw, kept Terry silent, dreading the worst.

Hall forced his face into a smile. “Well, no use in stretching it out.” The bartender came over and placed the two triangular glasses in front of them. Hall nodded his thanks and took a drink, savoring it a moment before he continued. “We weren’t able to finish it.”

Terry looked at him glumly, still mute. One hand curled into itself, his wrist tight, his fingers clenched.

“We’ve been going at it all day. All day. And at some point, Hunt just needed a break. He said he had to be in Vegas late tonight. I don’t know. He is a minor owner of, whatever, of the Wynn up there. You ever been there?” Terry shook his head. “Nice place. Anyway. I don’t know. He said he’d be back on Monday.”

Finally, Terry found his voice. “Monday?”

Michael nodded. “But I can’t guarantee anything. I think it’s going to happen, Terry. I really do. But I know you needed something by the end of the month. Tomorrow.”

Terry felt like he was very far away, like he was observing Hall through a distant telescope. He reached for his drink and took a deep swallow, savoring the cutting taste on the back of his throat, the faint hints of pepper and citrus. The drink seemed to collapse the distance between them, bringing Terry back to the bar, back to the small details: the subtle pinstripe of Hall’s powder blue button-down, the 1981 emblazoned on the side of his class ring.

“You think it will go through?”

Hall shrugged. “I can’t promise anything. Deals can fall apart.” He reached out and put a hand on Terry’s shoulder. It was a theatrical move, but it was still reassuring to Terry. Michael Hall projected an earnestness that let him get away with gestures like that, as if he had learned everything he knew about business from American television, but it had all worked out for him anyway. He looked Terry in the eye before continuing, “But I think it will. We know Hunt wants out, we know the offer we’ve made is fair. There are a few things he wants the we’ll give him, some others we won’t. But on the whole, I think it will get done.”

Terry nodded and took another drink. “Next week?”

“We’re going to try.” Terry just nodded. “Look,” Hall continued, a slight edge coming into his voice, “you don’t have to wait. Just say the word, you can go, and when it comes through, the new board will start the search again. If you want, you can come in then. No hard feelings.”

Terry tried to keep his frustration out of his voice: Hall knew quite well that there weren’t any other offers on the table for Terry. “No, this is the job I want. We can extend our setup another week?” He meant it as a statement, but his voice betrayed him, rising at the end and turning it into a question.

Michael smiled. “Sure, of course. I’ll send the per diem over to the hotel tomorrow and we’ll get the reservation extended. One week.” He lifted his glass from the bar. “To the Red River,” he said, raising it to his lips.

Terry muttered the same and drained his glass: the Red River was the local nickname for AC Saint Louis. Hall smiled. “Good, good. We’ll get this done, Terry, We will.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a silver money clip, and motioned to the bartender. “Here,” he said, peeling off a bill too quickly for Terry to see the denomination, “keep his glass full of whatever he wants, OK?”

The bartender glanced at Terry and nodded, taking the bill. Hall took a step away from the bar. “Alright. I’ll call you if I hear anything, OK? You and Leticia have a good weekend. Try not to think about it too much.”

With that, he was gone, leaving Terry to ponder the impossibility of his last words. He turned back to the bartender who was staring after Hall’s tall form. “Another?”

Terry shook his head. “No.” He thought a moment. “Tequila.” He drew his finger across the bar, trailing a thin line of moisture for just over a foot. “Line up shots from here to here. And pour one for yourself.”

[Makonnen]

FIN FIN FIN​ (10 chars)

Terry and Leti's adventures continue here.