It seems a long time ago that I am one of a few kids who played football in the middle of the afternoon no matter how bright and hot the sunlight is. To others (including me now), we looked like 'sohai' at that time. But looking back, that is the time when I enjoyed playing football most. I enjoyed so much that at that time, eventhough playing under such hot conditions, yet I still doesn't feel stupid. xD
Gone are those days...
Days of fully enjoying football and playing without pressure is replaced by intense and pressured matches. I don't know why. Recently, every match is like a very intense competition, that sometimes even looked like a fight to me. I saw 'monsters' on the pitch. That whenever the ball is with you, you had them tackling you without a second thought. Monsters... Some of them are really monsters!!! Seriously, I already treat some of them as monsters. The only thing they lacked is the ability to shoot fire out of their mouth. Other than that, the way they hunt you down, trying to injure you, is like nothing else but a monster. Look here, I'm not saying that you can't have sliding tackles while playing football, but what are we playing now? World Cup? Olympics? English Premier League? Spanish Premera Liga? Or Serie A Italia? NO! We are not even playing in a amateur school competition in Malaysia! So why must you play that rough? Or is it whether you don't have the brains to think that such rough tackles might injure people? Or are you just like what I said: Monsters? My health is more important, I don't wanna play with monsters and risk myself getting injured.
And because of such intense matches, as Chinese say 火药味, the pressure rises. There will be zero margin and tolerance for mistakes. Whenever you did a mistake, in your ears, words of blame from your teammates are the only words you heard. Just like today, I shot three times, none went in. But that's not what I'm frustrated with, what I'm frustrated with is after each of the three shots I took, I heard complains, I heard blames. 'Walao, you should have passed the ball!', 'Damn, you think you can score from there?', 'WTF are you doing? How can you shoot from there?', 'Can't you cross a better ball?'... And the faces I see, all are blaming expressions.
I wasn't angry, I was just frustrated...
I had enough, when football has become such a rough game, and the pressure to play well is such high, I think it's time to take a break. I don't wanna have any conflicts with my teammates and my opponents as well. I know that if I continue playing under such conditions and pressure, it's not gonna be a matter of whether I will run riot, but when I'm gonna run riot.
It shouldn't be this way, it just shouldn't be this way.
When I missed a shot, what I wanna hear is 'Good try!', not 'Walao... what are you doing?'
When I did not pass the ball well, what I wanna hear is 'Try to pass this way...', not 'Can't you see that I'm here, why did you pass there?'
When I scored a goal, what I wanna see is clapping hands, not faces with expressions that read 'Oh! That is what you should have managed! (理所当然) Nothing to celebrate then...'
But I blame nobody, there's nobody to blame. Its just that the nature of this game has changed. Playing under such intense pressure just make people crack out those demoralising words. I admit that even I myself might say those things to my teammates (even teammates who are my good friends) when they do not play well. But what I wanna say is, it just shouldn't be this way...
I think its fair to say because of these, I've fallen out of love with football. I'm sick of playing with pressure. The football that I wanna play is zero pressure, 100% recreational football. I wanna play football that is win or lose, life goes on... I don't want to play football where you lose and there's like no tomorrow.
Today, I tried to show what I feel. When I had a mistake, I was blamed, but I said loudly 'Nevermind lar! (又不用紧啦)'. I know at that moment nobody is gonna catch what I actually mean. But what I really wanna say is: Why scold me? It's just another mistake. Life goes on right? It's not the end of the world! Why so pressure?
I've said that I wanna take a break from playing football. And hell yeah I seriously mean it! I don't know for how long. A week? A fortnight? A month? A year? I don't have a single clue now. But football is in my blood. I love sports, and football IS my favourite sport. 1 thing is for sure: I will be back!
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