The Best Football Match I played

 

             The Day when Underdogs Outplayed Heavyweights

 A football final that I will always cherish

A beautiful game that requires enthusiasm, passion and roughness has given us some of the best memories we've ever had, either by playing it or watching it. Yes, I am talking about football. 

I will share one of the best experience I had recently when we had our Intramural finals at our university. There are four houses in our department that compete against each other in few games every Saturday. This time we, Pratap House (Blue), were up against five time defending winners of football, Subhash House (Yellow). They had 10 specialized football players whereas we had only 4 so on paper, they were favorites and we were underdogs.

They were overconfident that they will beat us easily in the finals. They kept on teasing us for a week, but we were quite. We kept on practicing and focused on the controllable. We had the hunger of beating them in the finals and shut their mouth with the results. We were extremely charged up to show our resilience.

On the day of finals, the weather was perfect for an exciting football match as it was raining. The game started, I got yellow card under 1 minute of  play. The game went on and no team was able to score under the allotted time of play. Both teams got several chances to convert but the score line remained 0-0. Our defenders and goalkeeper played exceptionally well, blocking out every chance they made. It all came down to penalties. I was selected for taking the penalty. Excited and nervous too.

Starting 3 penalties were scored by both teams to make it 3-3. We converted our 4th as well. What happened next was unexpected. Fourth player to take the penalty from Subhash house kicked the ball off the target and they missed. Now we are 4-3 up with a golden chance to win the game and Intramural as well. I was going to take the final penalty. There was a bit of pressure but the lead was with us so a bit of pressure was released. I took my time, visualised where I am going to place the ball. I also planned how I will celebrate after winning.

Luckily, I scored and ran towards our team taking off my jersey, throwing it high in the air and jumping as high as I could. That was the moment. That was when we shut all the voices. Everyone was shouting at their loudest, jumping like mad. We came into the huddle and danced on the beats of nagade. We cherished every moment of that win. We thanked our teacher who gave us the motivation to give it our all. His motivating words really pushed us beyond our limits. Being a huge Ronaldo fan, I could not miss the Siuu celebration as well. 

That was the day when we showed, if you play as a unit and give your 110%, even the better teams can be beaten. Our resilience, never give up attitude and commitment was able to beat a better team than us. We were so satisfied as group that we were able to shut many voices that sledged us.

That is Pratap House for you. Jai Pratap, Vijay Pratap.