Soccer or Football, It’s all the same

When I first found out that I was coming to Noyemberyan, I did a search on the internet, wouldn’t everyone.  I had never heard of this little town that I am coming to love. The pictures on the Google search showed a little town nestled in a lush green mountain valley.  I have come to find the city is on the hillsides. Everywhere to go is either up or down.  Very memorably was a picture of their new town football field.  The comments told of their stands and they hoped to expand the field.  I was excited to see this field after working so hard to repair the field in Ayntap.

When I arrived, I was glad to find out that the field is very close to the building where I work. I walked over to see the field on my second morning.  I was so disappointed when I first saw it.  The field was in a bit of disrepair because of the lack of financial support these towns for upkeep of the infrastructure.  The goal posts were in much better shape than the ones in Ayntap but were starting to need paint. There were no lines that I could see to show the boundaries.

The best part of the disrepair was the area near the goals.  The grass was worn down to dirt by the usage.  Like Ayntap, the young people of this town played on this field without care or concern about the grass, or lack thereof.  It was their field and they love football, which as hard as I try, is soccer to me.

I walked over and checked out the stands and they were covered and nice.  There were bench style seats. I was amused to see the husks of many sunflower seeds along the floor areas of the stands.  Some things are universal. I have found that early in the morning on the weekends, when fields in America are covered with competitions, there was no one there.  If my bench at the little park was occupied, I played my guitar in the soccer stands.  The cover gave the guitar a great sound.

My friends, Anushik and Narine, and I met with the mayor of Noyemberyan and his deputy who oversees athletics in the city.  We had brought several young people from our club to discuss projects the young people wanted to do to improve the city.  The mayor told us he wanted us to help clean up the football field because there was going to be a special ceremony there on September 1. I was excited about this idea and showed the mayor pictures on my phone of the work we had done in Ayntap.

I walked by the field several time and never saw anyone playing soccer.  I wondered when they did because it was evident that people played there. I have used the field as a respite for playing guitar and early morning workouts with my TRX.  I wondered when the kids played.

Then, one day last week, I went for a walk after dinner and decided to go by the field.  There was a game going on.  I saw an older gentleman in the middle with a whistle who I believed was a coach.  He was making calls like a referee, but he was not moving much but watching everything. 

The curious part of the football game I was watching was the difference in the two teams. One team was in very nice uniforms, with a goalie in a special shirt.  The other team was in whatever clothes they happened to be wearing.  Some were in slacks and undershirts. Some wore no shirts.  Their goalie was in black slacks and a t-shirt. It looked like the guys in uniforms were wearing cleats.  The other team had tennis shoes and regular shoes.

In America, everyone of the players would have had shin guards on.  I could not tell if any of them on either team were wearing them.  The goalies were not wearing those special goalie gloves. Many of the accoutrements of football (soccer) we believe are necessities for safety were missing.  They played as hard as any high school team I have watched back home.  The lack of safety equipment did slow them down.

I was greatly impressed by their sense of sportsmanship.  There were fouls and offsides calls but they all helped each other up from a fall.  I heard no foul language, not that I would have necessarily recognized Armenian profanity.  The game seemed to be played with mutual respect.  The young men in nice uniforms seemed to be the better team and perhaps the team coached by the man in the middle.  There was no evident condescension towards the team with street clothes.  Everyone seemed to cheer each other on. 

I watched for about twenty minutes.  Like in America, there were younger boys playing along the ends and the sides of the field.  Occasionally paying attention the game but mainly just playing as little boys do.  The younger boys noticed me along the fence outside the field and began staring and whispering but my novelty did not last long and they went back to playing.

I have talked to a few of the young people with whom I will be working in the fall and know at least one of them plays football (Soccer). I asked to be invited to watch their games and hope this request is not taken as my just being polite.  I miss coaching and working with young people.  I was truly reminded of this that afternoon last week when I wanted to go talk to the coach, but my language is not there, yet.

Then, Friday night, I watched the game film of my high school football team’s game on Thursday night.  I spent Friday nights in Stadium for over thirty years. It was our football and not Armenian football.  But working with kids does not matter whether its football or soccer, it’s the making of better people through sports.