BruNotts was a blast. We didn't really consider our football team - ridiculously named the A-Team (no, not the theme song, please) - to have any chance at all going through the group stage. In four groups of six, we had Santos (two years champions) and Palmeiras (a really strong team) in the same group, Group B. There were also three other teams which all consisted of Uni people. So us consisting of entirely A Level students, we had odds stacked against us. People even said to us we were in the Group of Death.
First game in, We won with a convincing performance, scoring four goals against one. That settled a bit of nerves, but we knew we still have Santos, Palmeiras and two other teams we don't know about, all to play against. In the next match against Palmeiras, it was a pretty tense affair, and one which we lost 2-1, all three goals scored from the penalty spot, and after we took the lead in the first half.
That kinda brought us back down to Earth. We knew we had to win the next three matches to get through, because Palmeiras and Santos would almost surely win all their coming games.
And sure enough, we won the next two matches.
Our final group game was against Santos, one of the strongest teams in the tournament. Being the underdogs, we had some support from the audience. Even Palmeiras gave us some pointers before the match on how to deal with Santos's dangers and exposing their weaknesses. That was a massive help. They warned us that Santos would play rough and hard, and would try to intimidate us in an intense physical battle.
The match itself was quite tense. Santos were definitely very physical, aggressive and violent. Eric injured his hand when one of the Santos players blatantly shoved him against the wall. We were being tackled, tripped, pushed and shoved for most of the game, but we managed to play our game. When Eric got injured, I came on and subbed him. It was a good albeit short game for me, although I did also get shoved against the wall and bruised my elbow. But I just ignored it and played on. One player even elbowed me in the face. Of course, by the time I went on, we had already scored two goals courtesy of Dave and Hanif, both screamers from distance.
After the final whistle was blown, we were just elated. We managed to do something we thought was next to impossible before we even played a game. We were celebrating, jumping over each other, shaking hands, huddling, all that team stuff. We got through to the quarter-finals.
Disappointingly, we got knocked out by White Knights by conceding two soft goals after scoring the first goal. To my judgment we were better in the game. We could've got into the semi-finals, where we would've played against Senna, which were the finalists. Although Senna were technically superior to us, it would've been great to be in the semi-finals.
Anyway, we still have at least three years here, so BruNotts is still there for ours to get :P
Signing out
Over and out
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