Sacramento was all abuzz last week with the home opener of
the inaugural season of the Sacramento Republic FC! Can you believe it? I know,
right? Me neither. What the hell is the Sacramento Republic FC?
All the Facebook reports were that everyone was very
excited, but no one was getting into any greater detail than “Republic FC, very
excited!” I was starting to think it was a band or a concert of some kind until
I Googled it and found out that FC stands for Football Club. I was mildly
interested until I realized they meant Futbol. Soccer.
Professional soccer? Here in Sacramento? Why?
I have never been able to get excited about a sport played
on 2000 acres of grass where the players run back and forth for an hour and a
half, nothing happens, everyone starts faking injuries toward the end to run
out the clock, the ref puts a random amount of time back on the clock after the
final whistle - based solely on his interpretation of how well the players
faked their injuries - and when that time runs out, the game ends in a tie.
Sorry. Not awesome.
Apparently, not everyone in this fair city shares my utter
distain for soccer, as they had quite the turnout to the stadium on the first night.
Is it called a stadium? I never know with soccer. I know that they like to call
the Central Park-size expanse of grass that makes up a soccer field a “pitch,”
but I don’t know why that is, either. Anyway, the place where they play was
very crowded, and they sold out of Sacramento Republic FC scarves. Dammit!
After some further investigation, I found out that the
Republic is part of the USL Pro league. I have to assume that USL stands for Unsatisfying
Stalemate Letdown, or Uninjured Spaniards Limping, or something like that, but
we will probably never know. The USL Pro league is one step below the MLS,
which I found out stands for Major League Soccer! If you thought the MLS was
just the Realtors’ version of Google, you were wrong! It’s also soccer! Or is
it football? Or futbol? Why didn’t they go with MLF? Tough to say.
Anyway, our very own Republic FC happens to be affiliated
with not one, but two MLS squads: The Portland Timbers and the San Jose
Earthquakes, two other teams I have never heard of.
Of the fourteen unknown teams battling in the USL Pro
league, I’m proud to announce that the Republic is currently ranked third, with
a record of 2-2-1. (That would be wins-loses-ties, in case, like me, you had no
idea why we needed a third number until you remembered we were talking about
soccer, where games regularly end in a tie. The only other American game that
results in as many ties is Monopoly, and that’s only because no one ever wants
to actually finish.) Anyway, we are absolutely trouncing the Pittsburg
Riverhounds and the Richmond Kickers. Wow, great job on the club names, fellas!
The Kickers. How many beers in were you guys when you came up with that gem?
I was also surprised to find out that our FC’s motto is “Indomitable
City, Indomitable Club.” I was surprised mostly because I didn’t know what
“indomitable” meant. Must be a soccer word, like “pitch” or “corner kick” or
“hooligan.”
After looking it up in my dictionary, I found it to mean “unable
to be subdued or overcome, as courage.” I would assume they meant it in the “courage”
sense, since the USL Pro standings show the Republic FC has been domitabled
twice already, and tie-domitabled once. It was also not lost on me that I found
the word “indomitable” flanked in my dictionary between “Indo-European” and “Indonesia.”
Perhaps they were searching the Merriam-Webster for a better place to have an
FC, and came across a fun motto instead.
As ambivalent about the Republic as I am, I’m willing to
give them some expert advice. If you gentlemen want to put some more ink in the
win column, you need to take a lesson from Son Number Three’s soccer team.
During the very first practice of the season last year, we
noticed something unusual happening with his six-and-under squad. It was the
first time that this particular group of boys had ever played together, and we
were afraid they were going to kill each other. They were not fighting or angry
in any way, they were just all aggressive. And I mean AGGRESSIVE. Every time
the coaches did a drill where the players needed to run to the ball and try to
win it, we thought someone was going to die. Every single kid on the team went
after the ball with their head down, charging like a bull. There was no fear
and no timidness to be found out on the pitch that day, my friend.
As a baseball coach (a game that rarely results in an
unsatisfying tie), I had never seen a regular-season team without at least one
wallflower. Watching these kids throw themselves at each other reminded me of
something, but I couldn’t immediately put my finger on it. Then it finally
dawned on me; this looks like my house when the boys have been in a room
together for more than two minutes. These kids are crazy. We knew about half
the families on the team already, prior to the season starting, and I asked
around to the parents I was just meeting to see if my hunch was correct. It was…
Of the twelve kids on the squad, eleven of them had older
brothers. Most were the youngest in the family, and amazingly, there was not
one sister to be found. The twelfth was an only child, but he had been blessed
with the same genes as the rest of the group, and his main playmate was a boy
three years older than him.
We had inadvertently created a team of younger brothers.
They had been fighting for scraps their whole lives. They feared nothing. We
had a perfect storm of five-year-olds on our hands. Left to themselves, it
would have been Lord of the Flies, but with some excellent soccer coaching,
they were turned into a truly indomitable force. Twelve hard charging,
fearless, sister-less, head down, slightly crazy kids, unleashed upon the
unsuspecting Rocklin Soccer League.
The first-borns and sister-havers of the league never knew
what hit them. We found ourselves apologizing to the other parents after most
games.
“Sorry about all that. They’re all younger brothers. Nothing
we could do about it.”
So there it is, Sacramento Republic FC. Time will tell if
Sacramento really is a soccer city, but if you find yourselves needing to kick
it up a notch in the aggressive department, or you just get tired of having so
many soul-crushing ties, you might want to think about recruiting players based
on family demographics.
Younger brothers from all-boy families aren’t afraid of
anything. They don’t like to tie and they REFUSE to be domitated.
See you soon,
-Smidge
Copyright © 2014 Marc Schmatjen
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