Often – especially in summer when there are 30, 35 or 40 degrees outside and, preferably, more than 90 % humidity at times – I’m already entirely drenched in sweat after five minutes. From the bike ride I’m coming completely wet, but change my clothes. After the game, both sets are wet: my keeper stuff and my light biking dress. “Wet” meaning: you can probably wring one litre (or two) of sweat out of my clothes. Although on such days, and of them there are not a few a year, I drink at least three bottles of water during the game, it will take till late evening and several bottles of beer
Such wonderful teas with flowers that unfold when one adds the water, you do not get on the football pitch, but with me in my apartment.
until I have to pee again.
At the beginning of my goalkeeping career in ShenZhen, when I still was not adapted to this, it seemed quite possible that after the warming-up – when I got maybe 50 or 60 shots on goal within 30 minutes, jumping, plunging, back up, retrieve misplayed balls from the rear – I might suffer a faint. This was demonstrated by the fact that my viewing angle, otherwise extending across 180 degrees, had shrunk to only 30°. That was very irritating, but happened only sporadically and only at the beginning, obviously my metabolism has become more resilient.
Today we play once again in the evening under floodlights. I do not like that, the light is dim, rather similar to the floodlights on training courses of the German regional league teams. I can hardly anticipate the shots, high balls often come out of either the dark or directly from a light, there’s less time to react. The flood lights of the neighbouring pitches are blinding me. But I like the bats. Nowhere in the world I have ever seen bats as close as with my football games in ShenZhen under the floodlights.
We are playing against a team which is on average at least five years younger than ours (about the difference to my age I will not speak now). They are incredibly quick, to make pressure, they sometimes walk through my back line as if the defenders were but slalom poles. But they cannot overcome me. I just got extremely fast reactions.
We succeed in countering with three goals while only receive two of them, I believe I have kept two “untenable” shots about which my team-mates told me afterwards that they had seen them in the goal and did not expect that I could prevent them.
Most fun for me is the so-called “one-on-one situation”, but it is very dangerous: if our defence is overwhelmed and the opponent’s striker is alone approaching my goal, I need to get out. I must dash out even before the shot will come, I must anticipate the emergence of the situation intuitively and catch the ball as early as possible, or grab it from the striker’s foot by diving into the grass before him. Today, this happened several times, ten times at least. Only twice I was brought low, in most cases I win and have the ball, my right leg I did not withdraw.
After the end of the game, as we sit on the lawn chatting, exchanging clothes and drinking some water, about a kilometre’s away from us a fireworks display, well visible, is launched from an amusement park. They do that every Saturday evening at half past eight. I call out: “They are celebrating our victory, how nice!” Roars of relaxed laughter – after all pressure from the opponent which we withstood we do deserve those fireworks!
It is a long and very moist dinner. We sit at a side street restaurant, it is a balmy early summer evening, many people are strolling around loud and cheerful. The team celebrates me as “the best player of the day”. “We would’ve lost without you today, lost 3-6 rather than winning 3-2.” It’s true. We have some situations again to reminisce. I tell the story from the hospital, everyone knows this large central hospital, but none of the team has experienced something similar there. About midnight I take the bike (probably with more than the tolerable blood alcohol) several kilometres to my apartment, it’s a wonderful feeling to have overcome the injury.