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.

But you remember Daphne’s training from yesterday, and know that they can’t keep up this relentless **** forever. Eventually, they’re going to slip up, and you’re going to find an opening to counterattack.

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.

But your moment comes when yet another Smashmouth striker comes in hot with the ball. You make a nimble tackle and pivot on your foot, making a quick pass that 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.

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.

You can sense that there’s a change in the flow of the game though. Your team is really fighting for the ball now, finding ways to make deep runs off the Smashmouth overextensions.

Katie finds a quick break when she catches the ball after a throw-in. 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. Smashmouth is slow to drop back, as you knew they would be, and there’s only a lone defender on him. He scouts his options and cuts the ball over to Mars, who finishes the goal with a low ball that spins just out of the keeper’s fingertips.

You’re feeling pumped now, the game starting to turn back in your favour, and it’s almost a shame when the half-time whistle gets blown.

“Nice job on the pitch,” Daphne says, nodding at the team as you circle up around her. “We’ve finally started to get a good read on them, so let’s turn up the heat and punish them for their cockiness.”

“No reason to let those meatheads get another point over us,” Jason chimes in.

“Let’s play for deeper runs and open up the position some more,” Daphne nods. “Remember what we practiced? We had some opportunities that we failed to convert on, but that’s going to change next half. Everyone with me? Greys on three!”

Unfortunately, the Smashmouth team seems to have learned something from that first half. They’ve adopted a more standard formation—still much farther up the pitch than would be traditional, but with just enough restraint that your first attempt at a wild counterattack is easily shut down by their centerback.

Without ten players constantly jostling by your goal, the pace of the game slows down considerably. What was once solely lightning-fast attacks from the Smashmouth side turns into a more controlled passing game. They still hold the vast majority of the possession, and because they know that you intend to counterattack, they’re much more deliberate about committing too many numbers to any one play.

That doesn’t mean you’re doing any less running, however. With more space to work with, you’ve also got more space to cover now, and it’s starting to wear on your tired legs. But you stay alert, knowing fully well just how quickly the Smashmouth team can put together a deadly goal.

Your awareness pays off. When a clean slidetackle from Khloe puts the ball into open space, you’re already there to receive it. You make a quick run followed by a long pass over to Katie, who links 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. Javier whips off a kick towards the goal. The shot is on target but blocked by their keeper; Jason’s there to catch the ball and his powerful legs drive the ball home.

Up one point now, you just need to hold on until the end of the match to secure the victory. You wonder if this will provoke the Smashmouth team back into their raucous aggression, but they keep up their high possession, high pressure playstyle, not allowing you any easy chances to drive the ball back in another counterattack. You feel yourself slipping as the game drags long. Ninety minutes is a heck of a long time, and you’ve been running almost nonstop the entire time.

The fatigue ends up costing you. You see the play that the Smashmouth team is going for. Their winger passes the ball deep into your territory, and a Smashmouth striker makes a run for it. He starts on side, and it’s clear where he’s headed, so you make a dash for the ball. But then the striker sprints by you, clearly in much better condition, and then he’s facing off against Keegan for the goal. Keegan is tense on his knees. When the shot comes, he dives the right way, but it’s angled out of his reach, and just like that, Smashmouth tie up the game.

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.