Being El Nino.

Football can be cruel. In the sense that just when you think you have it all figured out, and you go running through the side lines like a bullet out of (now a little rusty) gun, receiving with élan, and passing with precision, and smiling like a fool, even planning to dare some stepovers and dummies, and trying to be modest reacting to the applause the roaring spectators. And then, the very next moment, you get a very long ball, which is the perfect cross pass, and you are supposed to receive it as if you were born to receive crosses, and you miss the cue like a fool, and the beloved football that made your dreams jump up and down with acrobatic ecstasy, quietly passes through you and bounces lazily away and out of the pitch.

And then, madness starts.

Suddenly, each defender that comes by your way, big or small, seems like Achilles brandishing his cross bow, and you keep crashing against them. Almost as if you have forgotten what you are playing, making it look like a very confused rugby game. And then suddenly you see a group of people approaching the ground for the first time in their entire excel sheet filling lives, to witness the clash of the titans in the finale. The pressure mounts...

Another pass you humbly present to the opposition, who by now think that you have a short term memory loss or something, and you avoid looking at the faces of your team members. You start thinking that it’s time to pull up socks and introspect. And then you realize that while doing that, you have already missed your marker, who went ahead and scored the goal that he might remember to tell his grandchild, and you shudder to imagine the role you would play in that story. So you give in, and when your captain asks you for a substitution, you quietly nod, and shake hands with the smirking substitute. You look at the brighter side, that at least you can introspect in peace, and your marker won’t even care. And you wish that the ground would just open up, and swallow you whole.

The crowd chants “what a waste of money” and I can’t help but helping that my team mates agree with them.