Apparently, all the other dads were in the military or prison. Those are the only plausible explanations for me coaching soccer.

Goooooooooooooooal!

By now you’ve heard the word “goal” shouted, stretched and emoted with more passion than a woman giving birth. Why? Because someone kicked a ball into a net.

Soccer Stadium under construction in Cape Town

As I write this, 32 teams are competing for the 2010 FIFA World Cup Championship. On July 11, after 64 games viewed by a total audience of 600 million, one team will emerge as kings of the soccer world….until 2014, when we’ll repeat the whole process again.

Personally, soccer has always baffled me. The mere mention of soccer caused me and all my middle school friends to groan.

Gym Coach: Listen up. Today we’re playing soccer.
Tim: Can’t we play a real sport?
Gym Coach: Fausch, you just earned yourself 25 laps.
Tim: I hate soccer.
Gym Coach: Make it 50 laps.

For the next 20 years, I managed to avoid soccer until my son Cory played in a pee wee league. I figured, how painful could it be? He’s the one playing.

This is the soccer stadium the pee wee players use.

As it turned out, watching a dozen seven year olds follow a ball around the field was hilarious. I immediately understood why people called it magnet ball.

The ball would be placed in the middle of the field for the opening kick. Players from both teams would run at the ball and miss badly, tumbling like dominoes to the earth. For the rest of the game all players from both teams would form a scrum and kick the ball in three-foot increments, rarely advancing it anywhere near the net.

It was even better when it rained and all the boys turned into little mud puppies.

A couple years later, somehow, despite my best efforts to become invisible, I was drafted as an assistant coach for Cory’s team. Apparently, all the other dads were in the military or prison. Those are the only plausible explanations for me coaching soccer.

My main duties were shagging missed shots and leading the boys in drills I had expertly learned three minutes earlier. With such a high level of coaching skill, it was no wonder the team went undefeated.

I just needed to get through one last game and my coaching career would end peacefully. That game happened to be against the only other undefeated team in the league. So even though there was no official league championship, every player and coach from both sides suddenly realized this game meant “something”.

And just to make sure we realized the game meant “something”, parents, grandparents, siblings, half cousins, and weird neighbors showed up to support each team in huge numbers. When the referee failed to appear (he probably ran away), a dad from the opposing team volunteered to referee the match.

Immediately, the parents on our sidelines began to grumble. With the score deadlocked at zero at halftime, the parents developed several conspiracy theories on how the completely biased enemy-dad-referee would cause our team to lose.

With less than a minute in the game and score still tied at zero, “soccergeddon” unfolded. It started when two boys got tangled up and fell.

The referee ruled that our player had fouled their player, which just happened to be his son and the best player on their team, and awarded him a penalty kick.

I never knew what soccer hooligans looked like until that moment. When our team’s parents realized the call, they turned ugly. Bad, bad names were shouted from the stands. Fists thrust into the air. Family heritage was called into question.

The poor referee’s son then made the penalty kick and won the game for his team. I feared the worst.

Standing on the sidelines, I turned to see a mob of parents leaving the stands with blood vessels popping. It was eerily similar to the climax scene in the original Frankenstein movie when the villagers gather with torches, sticks and pitchforks in order to kill the monster.

They marched en masse to the middle of the field, where they confronted the referee-dad, who fearfully defended his call and possibly his life. In the nick of time, our head coach intervened and convinced the parents we could survive this travesty of justice.

Bloodshed was narrowly averted…and then we went and ate pizza.