Losing Dutch: Mucche Pazze 2 – Mojito FC Vicchio 3

My first match report I ever wrote about a Mucche Pazze match was entitled “Winning Italian.” In most countries this would be understood as “winning without really deserving it.” “Losing Dutch” means quite the opposite: losing without really deserving it. In fact, without deserving a defeat at all. Like the Dutch usually do: play a great match and go down for no obvious reason, except bad luck. This was seriously the best performance by an Emmepì squad I have ever seen! There was good and concentrated defending (most of the time anyway), constructive and always dangerous attacking based on efficient short instead of inefficient long passes, and tremendous goalkeeping by the new goalie Isabell – and don’t anyone dare maintain that I am biased in my judgement concerning this point!
At the anthropologically highly interesting Calcetto pitch at Pontassieve, the Mucche were off to a bad start: they went down early in the match by a shock goal scored by the opposition after a moment of collective sleepiness of the defence. But unlike in the first match against the same team, when such an early goal entailed another two early goals and in the end a 1-8 defeat, this time the Emmepì fought back and soon Sara scored the deserved equalizer. From that moment onwards the two teams fought a tough battle on a high level, with none of the two being clearly superior. Eventually Mojito FC was that tiny bit more efficient and scored for a 2-1 lead before half-time.
In the second half, the Mucche continued where they had left off in the first half. Constructing the game from the back, where the new goalie organized the defence very well, the EUI girls tried their best to put the opposition’s goal under pressure, and they were successful. At some point Mi Ah got the ball in front and approached the Mojito goalie. The latter was successful in winning the one-to-one situation, but Mi Ah recovered the ball on the right hand side close to the baseline, took two steps into the field and then put the ball past a defender and the stupefied goalie into the goal for the by then more than deserved equalizer.
The match continued on the same high level after that, with both teams displaying a lot of motivation to take the victory. Unfortunately it was the Mojito girls who again proved to be more efficient. In a situation very similar to that of the equalizer, a Mojito attacker managed to recover the ball on the left hand side after a blocked shot and with an admittedly beautiful goal from an impossible angle put the home team back in front.
This result would not change until the end, despite the many attacks that the Emmepì launched against the opposition’s goal. Which means that in the end there stood an awesome performance by the whole team – but zero points. Never mind girls, the crowd (including a visitor from Germany and a dog) was happy having come all the way to Pontassieve on a Wednesday night, because they saw a spirited performance by a team that really showed what is possible if everyone plays together. With games like that the tifosi might be willing to travel to away matches even further away – does Juve have a female calcetto team by any chance?

Jannis

The team: Isabell, Amy, Costanza V, Sandra, Sara (1), Mi Ah (1).