The Smashmouth Game

You arrive at the soccer pitch bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, itching to play the beautiful game.

“You’re looking lively,” Val says, giving your back a good thump. “Ready to win us this game?”

“I was feeling good,” you say. “But then I saw our visitors...”

The hulking guys and girls of the Smashmouth team are jogging around their pitch for the warm-up, the eleven of them chanting some kind of USMC Running Cadence in sync with their heavy footfalls. They look more like a pack of killers than a squad of soccer players.

“We should get on that,” Mars says, sliding up to the two of you.

She and Val both look great in their grey jerseys, and you probably spend a second too long staring at them, because Val points two fingers at her tits and then points them up at her eyes.

“Eyes here,” she says.

Mars laughs, and then her head snaps to the side at the sound of a high whistle: “Oh shit! Daphne’s calling. We’d better go before she boots us from the squad.”

The game goes hard from the kickoff. The Smashmouth players charge down the field, and you wonder for a moment if this isn’t (American) football with the way that they’re muscling past your teammates. They play with quick passes, their massive numbers on your side of the pitch ensuring that there’s always somebody open to receive the next ball. At least one of them seems to have the full time job of making crazy runs that border on offside, and you find yourself tied down by all the moving players, unable to properly mark one of them, because there goes another bigger threat to chase…

You hold on as best as you can, trying to jostle for position with the bigger players on the Smashmouth team. You manage to arrest the ball’s progress more than your fair share of times, but it inevitably slips past your guard at some point, forcing Keegan to make a save that would make Jan Oblak proud.

But only a minute later, Smashmouth have regrouped. You fail to stop a deadly cross that flies into a nest of Smashmouth players. Charlie leaps into the air, but he gets edged out by a woman taller than him, who crisply heads the ball straight into your goal.

You’re down one, which isn’t so bad, until it becomes two off a corner and a half-dozen Smashmouth players all sticking their legs out for the set-piece volley. Charlie cusses, giving you a haggard look. He’s the left back, you’re the right, and the two of you are getting absolutely run down.

The only silver lining? With so many of their players crowded around you, they have to make hard runs back whenever you clear the ball to someone else on your team. You’ve been doing your best to pass the ball to your open teammates, but with the pressure all the Smashmouth players put on you, it’s hard to find the right angles.

But something eventually goes right. As yet another Smashmouth striker comes in hot with the ball, you make a nimble tackle and pivot on your foot, making a wild pass that luckily ends at Khloe’s feet. There are two Smashmouth players on her in an instant, but she manages to place the ball in front of Jack, who kicks it and runs with it, well aware of the horde of Smashmouth players on his heels. He’s fast enough to keep his edge, just barely, all the way to the far side of the pitch, and then with one hell of a kick, he sends the ball sailing into the net.

Stonewall is down 2-1 at halftime. Daphne gives all of you hard looks, clearly not satisfied with your performance so far.

“If we let them play the game on their terms, they’re going to win,” she says, jabbing a finger at the Smashmouth team huddled at the other end of the pitch. “We can’t just roll over and die. We’ve got to fight back. That last play, how we scored that goal? That’s what we’ve got to do!” She starts pacing around you guys, looking fired up now. “They’re quick to attack, they want to get in our faces, but they never have their asses covered. We’ve got to counterattack swiftly. Alex, Charlie, you two are our last line of defense, and you’ve been doing good work with Keegan to stop us from conceding any more goals than we have. But you’ve got to play this ball up to the front if we’re going to strike back. We strike back and we’ll make our own destiny. That goes for all the rest of you, too, got it?”

The team nods, feeling confident after Daphne’s little speech.

“Good. Now here are the tactics we’re going to employ in the next half…”

Predictably, the Smashmouth team doesn’t change their strategy going into the second half. Once more they rush into your half, playing aggressively, constantly trying to find an open line into the goal. Your first attempt to make a play doesn’t go well. Your pass to Jason gets intercepted by a Smashmouth brute who charges in and picks up the ball, forcing you to tackle it off the side of the pitch.

Charlie finds the ball a couple minutes later, and he chips it high, aiming to pass it to Mars. But the ball moves slow while the Smashmouth players are fast, and when even the shortest of them have a head on Mars… the aerial duel doesn’t go your way, and it’s back to playing defense.

It takes another ten minutes to iron out the kinks in your counterattack, but when you finally put it together, it runs like clockwork. A clean slidetackle from Khloe puts the ball close to you, and you make a quick run followed by a long pass over to Katie that lets her link up with Val. The Smashmouth players descend on her like a pack of wolves, and she barely gets the ball off to Javier, who executes a quick one-two with Jason to get around a pesky defender, and the two of them are in the clear. The first shot is on target but blocked by their keeper; Daphne’s there to catch the rebound and powerful kick lands the ball into goal.

“That’s the stuff!” you yell, pumping your fist in the air.

It’s a tied game, and then it’s not. Smashmouth scores a quick goal afterwards, as your defence gets a little too spacey in an attempt to set up counterattacking chances. Their players, too, seem to have wisened up to your tactics, and play back just a little more, forcing you to reevaluate the situation. You’re still down one, and you need to make something happen. But despite your best efforts, the chances just aren’t coming to you.

As the end of the game draws near, Khloe finally gets a lucky break. She sprints the ball down the side of the pitch, expert control letting her dribble past an opposing midfielder, and then it’s a beautiful long ball that Jack plays into the box. With defenders on him and the goalie more than ready to stop his strike, he cuts it over to Mars, who finishes the goal with a low ball that spins just out of the keeper’s fingertips.

The final whistle blows not long after, and you shake hands with the Smashmouth team, having to look up to meet most of their eyes.

“We had to fight damn hard for that tie,” Javier mutters with a shake of his head as the guys head into the changing room.

“Tell me about it,” Charlie says, rubbing his pecs, which caught quite a few elbows over the course of the game.