A Game of (nearly) Two Halves

As you can imagine, moving from Manchester to the US has often led conversation round to the subject of football - sorry, soccer (when in Rome and all that). This is mainly thanks to Manchester United (spits on floor) who i have made a point of disliking largely on principle but mainly because of the immensely annoying (and always red-faced) Alex Ferguson. So, with an Englishman amongst the ranks, a few of the guys decided to organise a kick-around on Sunday and, naturally, i was invited along. I don't know if they were expecting me to be the next David Beckham (although i can do a pretty good vocal impression) or what, but i went along none-the-less, if only to burn off a few of the hearty American calories that i've consumed since i got here as much as anything else.

Okay, so point one - organising to meet at 5PM was not the best idea, particularly when the sun is still up and it's rather toasty to say the least. Point two, it's nearly impossible to run for more than five minutes in these conditions without having a shot of adrenaline and a few hundred volts from the cardiac paddles. Three - running around in sweat-soaked T-shirts is not very comfortable. Four - playing on the opposite side to an Italian is not the best idea in the world. And five, its very hard to play football - sorry, soccer - when you have at least a foot excess of limbs. Suffice to say, it was entertaining (at least for the passers-by who watched on occasion) and we all felt a bit better for it after. At least, that is, until we got up this morning. Thus, i have spent the best part of the day wandering around with immensely stiff and sore legs. I kind of get an idea why footballers get paid such ridiculously large sums of money now.