In England, and I’m sure all over Europe, South America and Africa, nothing comes close to the thrill and excitement of the FIFA World Cup. Hosted every 4 years, top ranked teams from around the world compete in association soccer (- it’s fucking football!) to duke it out and claim who’s the best with the balls for the next 4 years.
It should come as no surprise then, that the overly-ecstatic PE tutors in my younger secondary school years decided to make a parody event that would topple the expectations of everyone in the audience. What a wonderful way to bring the beautiful game to the kids (and live your life through them).
The game was simple. 16 teams of 5 players would represent a randomly seeded country from the available teams from World Cup, play through 4 games in their group stage, before going on to one-match knockout. Only it wasn’t randomly seeded though, the teachers named the teams based on how good they thought they were, picking their favourites and I am SURE they put the pennies into pounds stacking up a few cheeky bets.
There were some obvious ones out there, the school’s competitive league team managed to bag England, their mates were Brazil. Germany was full of those hard lads from the class next door, and Spain was the runner-up squad that never won interform sports but you couldn’t help but think ‘maybe this is their year’.
Your team will be Ecuador…
Mr Walker
The teams were seeded. Players were confirmed. PE staff were high as a kite on black coffee and everyone was ready for after school activities as they know this mattered more than their final examination scores. Would they be made a man tonight, or would they be sweeping grease from under the milkshake machine for the rest of their life?
Now I don’t fully recall the teams so there may be a side of imagination here, but this was real. We just finished maths, the week was done. Mr Bates could go fuck himself, it was time for football.
| Pos | Team | W | D | L | Pts |
| 1 |  England | ||||
| 2 |  Brazil | ||||
| 3 |  Switzerland | ||||
| 4 |  Netherlands |
| Pos | Team | W | D | L | Pts |
| 1 |  Poland | ||||
| 2 |  Germany | ||||
| 3 |  United States | ||||
| 4 |  France |
| Pos | Team | W | D | L | Pts |
| 1 |  Portugal | ||||
| 2 |  Croatia | ||||
| 3 |  Argentina | ||||
| 4 |  Italy |
| Pos | Team | W | D | L | Pts |
| 1 |  Spain | ||||
| 2 |  Sweden | ||||
| 3 |  Czech Republic | ||||
| 4 |  Ecuador |
But wait! – just before that.
Yep this is cool and all, but there’s one tiny niggling little small detail. I’m shit at sports.
I don’t know about you, but at school the LAST thing I usually wanted to do was go outside, let alone it be for physical activity. I yearned for the sweet release of CRT and flickering TVs. My PE experience was usually sit down and watch from the bench, maybe sneak that Mars bar I had kept in my bag. Look at the girls hockey game instead. It’s worth saying by Year 9 I had been moved into a primarily female sports group, so I definitely did not fit the bill to be in this actual tournament.
But what about the team? I think I’ll start this with a little character introduction.
First there was myself. Or what little there was left of me. Skinny, curly-haired, freshly acne’d, and rather frightened of the ball. I shouldn’t be here.
At this stage of my life I was probably level 95 woodcutting on Runescape, but still had my bronze football boots.
Position: Defender
Next there was the close friend. He’d picked up you were another geek right from the start of high school and the alliance blossomed from there.
He was a bit bigger and pudgier than the rest, but that only meant he was average sized in this team of skeletons.
Position: Attacking Defender? Don’t tell me what to do.
In every man’s life they meet someone who isn’t entirely human, but is too smart to really be any other living thing on the planet. His bones were made of paper, but his brain was made of steel.
My memory is starting to fade in old age, but I’m sure his name was two Greek philosophers merged together as forname and surname.
Position: Midfield
In net we had the trusty tall guy who joined because his only two other friends were playing this after school instead of Age of Empires.
Position: Goalkeeper
Lastly we had the maverick new guy. His dad definitely worked for Nintendo. He had three nipples. He scratched people when provoked. He was reserved, no one really knew anything about him.
Position: Centre Forward
So Ecuador.
For those unaware. Ecuador is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and it also includes the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific, about 1,000km west of the mainland. You know, where those turtles are on the TV show!
Ecuador had reached the World Cup after a turbulent qualifying campaign. They had only been in the tournament once before. The global audience were suddenly aware of the Republic of the Equator, they were in the colosseum of world football.
It was now our pride and soul. We were Ecuadorian by trade, drafted in by the football league system to represent our proud nation. Of course, once we saw our opposition we thought we should sign our annexation. I remember it being too late to back out now, we were already at the turf ready to start our first game. People were looking at us. These guys are going to compete? Why are they even here? This is for proper lads. The clergy of popular and athletic peers were unhappy but unopposed by our unwelcome entrance.
So you know our team and you know our expectations. Our First game of the night was against Sweden. I knew we’d lost but I knew a few faces in the opposing team and thought maybe I could talk with their striker while he was attempting to concentrate on the game.
30 seconds pass and they attempted a through ball but it bounces past the defence and the goalkeeper is not looking. The ball keeps rolling, 1-0 to the Swedes!
The Ecuadorian goalkeeper collects the ball and attempts to hoof kick it back somewhere in the middle of the pitch but it catches 60 degrees wide off the mark and results in a throw-in for the opposition. A strong arm to Unnamed Swede number two, and he passes to the Scandinavian out wide. 2-0!
It was looking sloppy now, not much time had passed at all, in fact I don’t think we’d even seen a minute and the audience, who were limited to a few friends and someone’s mum were not really sure what to chant. This was pretty embarrassing. But then something unexpected happened… after a bit of passing around the maverick new kid got hold of the ball and broke lose of his shackles. Leaving the defence in shackles, he tapped in an easy goal to bring the tally to 2-1!
Then the tiny waisted midfield managed to slip and his awkward positioning caught the other team off guard, the ball ended up back in the hands (feet) of Dwight Schrute (the child one from my memories not from the American Office). He screeched as he full on cheetah pelted towards the goal, kicking the ball as if in pain into the safe palms of the keeper. But what? The ball ricochets off his fine Swedish fingers and lands perfectly in front for another Ecuadorian to finish the job. 2-2! What is going on?!
I made my first and final contribution to the game by standing perfectly still enough to intercept an intended pass and intended to do the same to my mate. The pass meets it’s mark and I can go back to relaxing for a second. What a fucking player, David Luiz couldn’t hold a candle ball to this tough bastard! Suddenly the ball breaks physics and curls into the back of the net. 3-2!
AND IT’S A FUCKING GREAT GOAAAL!!!!!
Scenes. The underdog had toppled one of the favourites to be promoted to the knockout. It was a game that had taken everyone aback, maybe a once in a lifetime opportunity to see your mate’s team get mudded by a bunch of scrubs.
3 Points to Ecuador. We went on to our second game with a bit of bubbles and nods from the crowd. The Czech Republic, they were quite rowdy and had just been defeated by Spain 6-4. We played the same game, which would have been a 1-2-1
formation as my pal, the strong bastion of hope for our defence kept making runs at the opposition pressing high up the pitch. He actually played like the old Fifa games where you held X to tackle and they would just bomb at you like an angry poodle.
The Czech’s were much harder to break down. After ten minutes the game ended 1-1 with both teams claiming a point. Still, the undesirables kept a respectable performance and had drawn the attention of the PE staff.
The final group game was against Spain. This team was full of very good, stocky players and one who captained the men’s Rugby. Favourites for Group D, they came on strong and naturally we were with our backs against the wall. Defending for a solid 6 minutes we were only 1-0 down. They were having an absolute awful game. It might have been an intervention from God, Satan, Vishnu, Time Gal, Dr Eggman, China?
Whatever the circumstance, they just could not get it together. Suddenly dissidence emerged between the Spaniards, and they started to falter. A fairly nasty tackle conceded by the Ecuadorian goalkeeper took him out like a set of bowling pins. Perhaps akin to the rest of the game, a free kick was awarded and started before the team was even ready. Napoleon Dynamite explodes past the unaware defence and walks the ball into the net!
They were fuming. Ref! Ref! This is fucking bollocks. They gave it all the ‘this and that’, but eventually made the critical mistake of referring to the match officials lack of hair and an official disqualification was handed. Ecuador was officially the leader of Group D!
| Pos | Team | W | D | L | Pts |
| 1 | Ecuador | 2 | 1 | 0 | 7 |
| 2 | Spain | 2 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| 3 | Sweden | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| 4 | Czech Republic | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Pos | Team | W | D | L | Pts |
| 1 | England | 3 | 0 | 0 | 9 |
| 2 | Switzerland | 2 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| 3 | Netherlands | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
| 4 | Brazil | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Pos | Team | W | D | L | Pts |
| 1 | France | 3 | 0 | 0 | 9 |
| 2 | Germany | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| 3 | United States | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 |
| 4 | Poland | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Pos | Team | W | D | L | Pts |
| 1 | Italy | 2 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| 2 | Croatia | 2 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| 3 | Portugal | 2 | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| 4 | Argentina | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 |
Promotion to the knockout stages was nothing we had ever imagined in a million years. However, our goalkeeper was hurt. His mum was cooking tea, and he did not want to stick around to eat cold chilly. The man left us burned, without a goalkeeper we were ineligible to play five-a-side. And that’s when the USA came knocking.
Seth, who I will name him as to continue not naming any names… (although if one of you is reading this I’m sure you know who I’ve been talking about and I’m so sorry for the characterisations). Oh shite I didn’t think this through. Anyway, *Ahem* – The USA guns came a-knocking.
Seth was the school’s goalkeeper. He played for our year group but played for the older years too. He would have gone one to be a great prospect if he didn’t go to study Animal Biology at Uni. Against all order of the Football Association, Ecuador was allowed a last minute team change, and Seth stepped up to answer our prayers.
The Knockout Stage
Once group stages have finalised, the top two teams from each seed advance into single round knockout stages, ultimately rejecting the fodder one by one until a single claimant is crowned victor. We had gotten people pretty hyped by this point. There were many new fans who wanted Ecuador to take new heights, take down the bourgeoisie jock community and put up a good run.
By this point the PE teachers were surely 8 cans deep into their World Cup binge and started blasting music and drawing the games like it was the next coronation of the Queen. When the countries were called out their fans were in uproar. People who were behind for detention now came to watch the free show and the parents by now had turned up and brought their parents along too. It was basically the World Cup. Ecuador was in the moment.
The cards were shuffled, decisions were made. Ecuador was to play alongside the other games in the first round of the knockout.
The predicted Champions, the greatest assets from the greatest form group in School. The only victors from the last 2 years of Interform Football, Current champions of Tennis, Current champions of Basketball, Badminton and Cricket. Runners up in Rugby. We were made to play in the spotlight of the majority of onlookers. I would grasp an estimate that 60% of the audience were watching our game. We would have to put on our best boots and play like no tomorrow.
We lost 14-0
And alas, the run of the Ecuadorian Rambos came to an end. England ultimately went on to win the tournament much to everyone’s surprise, but Ecuador walked home with the real victory. What a way to make people reconsider what little they thought of you. And what a way to reconsider what you thought about yourself!
The race doesn’t always belong to the swift nor the battle to the strong. It belongs rather to those who run the race, who stay the course, who never give in and those who went home to play 13 hours of nonstop Call of Duty with pizza and monster energy.
Riveting tale chap