Old Man Soccer

So I'm at the mid point of playing in an over 30 soccer league. When you first enter at age 30, you feel like freakin Maradona circa 1984. You are faster, more agile, and have better endurance than the other people in the league.  By the time you leave, you look like Maradona circa 2008.

There is a legend in Argentina that once, in fit of rage during a World Cup game, Maradona ate the game ball 

Currently I'm not a liability, but I'm also not the prized asset I was 5 years ago. I can sprint up the field or down it, but not up AND down it. My team is also in last place in the over 30 third division. This is a very humbling situation. Out of all the middle aged guys in Portland who play soccer, we are currently the worst. Thankfully, things are getting better. We are gelling a bit more and trying out new formations has brought us closer to the win column.

The weird thing about these old man leagues is that the competitiveness never really dies out even if you are the worst middle aged soccer team.  When you are young, sports are a blazing sun; defining your daily and seasonal activities.  When you are old, that fire burns low.  Jobs, wives, kids, and responsibility block it all out, but it's still stoked.  One bad call by a ref and it blazes.  A part in the back of my head is rationally saying, "You work in crisis services.  You calm people down on a day to day basis.  It's your job to keep a level head."  Meanwhile, my mouth is telling the ref he is goddamn moron.  Then the yellow card comes out and I leave the field, high-fiving my sub as he runs on.

C'mon fellas!  Let's stick it to the Kaiser and do this for the Gipper!

As with most men of my generation, I think we struggle with how to define ourselves as an adult.  The symbols of the past (wife, property, kids, pension) are more or less gone or irrelevant and now we search desperately for signs to let us know we have transitioned out of the man-child stage.  Frankly, I don't think men of the past really were much more "grown up" than we are, but the signposts they had gave them a sense of progress (though they also limited the routes they could take).  This leaves modern men with this odd hazy concept of maturity; kind of an all or nothing mentality.  Ron Swanson vs Andy Dwyer if you will.  Anyhow, I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this post, but I think lately what I've been learning is that maturity doesn't have to be a universal trait.  As long as you know how to be an adult and how to yank yourself back into that mode when it's required, it's all right to act like a kid.

Suck it youngster!