Dizzy with Success: Mucche Pazze 4 – Ellepi 0

Five weeks ago, the Mucche Pazze were on a bit of a losing streak. But then I left town for some time, and while I was sweating over archival documents in Germany they all of a sudden turned into a winning side. Five matches won in a row in my absence – I obviously was concerned about this success story coming to an end because of my return to the sideline.
That these fears were completely unfounded became clear to me soon after the beginning of the match, when an Ellepi defender kicked the ball out for no obvious reason with no Mucche player anywhere near her. For this rather unmotivated action she received the cheers of their admittedly amazing goalkeeper, who shouted an enthusiastic “brava, bravissima” across the pitch. That’s when I realized that nothing, really nothing should go wrong tonight. And for once I was right.
After a slow start on both sides, the Emmepì quickly got into gear and started threatening the opposition’s goal. When the first couple of attempts to score were not successful, it took a real Dutch effort to put the Mucche ahead. Christel took a free kick from a central position and hammered it into the goal in the most beautiful Ronald Koeman kind of way. One-nil, and more was to come.
To describe the next goal, we need to move from Koeman to an even higher category. The two-nil was more like the 1986 World Cup semifinal between Argentina and England. Alessandra got the ball in midfield, approached the box from the left wing, and to describe the rest I just need to paraphrase the commentator from back then: “Alessandra, Alessandra, Alessandra, Alessandra, goooooooooooool!”
The three-nil was equally beautiful. Again it was Alessandra who entered the box on her own, this time from the right, she faced the goalie, faked a shot into the left-hand corner and then just cheekily put it the other direction. This is how the match went into half-time.
That’s when we realized that the ref was even more serious than we expected him to be. Not only did he whistle at every real or invented occasion that presented itself to him, no – he would even keep running up and down the pitch during the break. That this happened for good reason we would not understand until a bit later…
I will save you the hassle of reading a lot about the second half, as it was even more one-sided than the first one. The Mucche kept pressing, the Ellepi only kept the score on decent levels thanks to their fantastic goalkeeper who turned into the Mad Cow attackers’ nemesis. She kept saving shot after shot, and it wasn’t until a confusing scene with Alessandra’s cross coming into the box and Mi Ah doing something to the goalie that the Mucche scored the four-nil (the cronista was busy playing with the mascot dog at the time and therefore could not keep a detailed record of the scene).
The only remaining highlight of the match was the referee who went down in pain for a pulled muscle at some point and eventually got treatment from the Mucche Pazze bench in order to be able to finish the match. Not that the team needed any kind of favours to the ref in order to take another three points. And while the Communist mascot dog was running up and down the sideline and Costy’s dad was enjoying the Mister’s English skills, the Emmepi scored yet another convincing victory. Under these circumstances I might return next week, and I might not even do any harm.

Jannis

The squad: Isabell – Costy – Christel (1) – Mi Ah (0,5) – Raya – Alessandra (2,5) – Sara