What does our weekly soccer with Maestro FC mean to you?

What does our weekly soccer with Maestro FC mean to you?

An Honest Review by Gerald Tan

Do you love soccer? I first fell in love with soccer when I was in Pri 5. It was the World Cup 94 in the US and I learnt to play the beautiful game in a small field at my school with 5 friends. We imitated Romario's goals, laughed at Valderrama's hair style. The memory of Baggio's penalty miss will forever be etched in my mind. I remember the first thing I did after my PSLE final paper was to play soccer with my friends at the small open grass patch behind the old Marine Parade library.  That was the last I saw them as I lost contact with them. Over the next 4 years,  my passion for soccer intensified. Besides chasing girls, 4 secondary classmates (Augustine being one of them) and me always looked forward to playing soccer during recess, after school or before detention. Homework and studying took second priority. Scoring a goal was more important than getting a good test grade. Everyday when the last school bell rang, we would race to the basketball court to play soccer for at least 3 to 4 hours.  Everything was about soccer, not studying. I was in the second last class (the last class were students retained from previous batch) and each semester, I was consistently placed second or first from the bottom of the class. I remember being terrified at O levels results day because I suddenly realised I did not put in much effort in the past 4 years to study. My soccer buddies will all be going their separate ways and if I do badly, what's my future going to be like? Thankfully I managed to squeeze into a Poly but soccer with my secondary buddies soon became a past. Soccer started taking less priority in Poly because I wanted to focus on studies. I did not want to repeat my secondary school life. I was also in a relationship where my partner became more of a priority than soccer. Occasionally I still played on Sunday, with a bunch of boys from my brother's secondary school military band. That's how I met Guo Xian, Big Eric, Alan, Lil Eric, Jason, Zirong. Those were the days of playing for free on a grass patch behind Mountbatten CC. We played among ourselves, it was the same folks each week. We had no team jerseys, no team name or fancy boots, no pitch lines or goal posts but we were all happy to play together.  From the occasional game, I stopped playing soccer entirely as I placed all my priority onmy poly final year, NS and Uni. Soccer was no longer something I pursued and I didn't even watch any matches or follow any soccer news. This went on for about 5 to 6 years.  All that changed one day in 2008 when Walter asked me to play a match with the same military band players as they were regrouping for more regular games at Katong field at Jalan Tembusu. I wore my old boots (it didnt last the game) and I remember it was nice to see the familiar but older faces again. I started to become interested in the game again as the team decided to become more formal, a team jersey and team logo were made. A website was created to keep everyone updated of the matches. We got a photographer who took great shots of us in action. We got in new players like Norris, Howard, Calvin, Kartik, Alex, Augustine (who is one of my secondary school soccer buddies), Rong An ( I remember being angry at him the first time he played with us because he outpaced me and scored a long range shot), Silas, Firdaus, Jonathan, Chris, Zeng Yi through friends' recommendations and a feeling of brotherhood was slowly built up in the team. Whenever other teams made fun or tried to provoke us, we would stand united together. Not everything was smooth sailing as I remember incidents where we got into fights with china teams, was threatened by malay teams, even a malay referee! We also had our own quarrels and arguments and there were times when our own turned against us, girlfriends, players came and left but regardless, the team still stayed together and besides soccer, friendship bonded us together. It's been about 5 years since Maestro was formed. We have grown to have more new players and some of the original team members have also left. We moved on from playing friendlies on a muddy Katong field managed by a dodgy person to playing on astro turf pitches of an organised amateur league. We beat better teams on our good days, had amazing comebacks from behind, got relegated twice and third place once. Where once we had no dedicated keepers, today we know 3 good dedicated keepers. Technically we are also definitely better than when we first started in 2008. Looking back at my own history with soccer, I am grateful to my brother to have asked me to play on the day in 2008. Without him, I wouldn't have met many awesome people, talented players in the team and more importantly, I wouldn't have regained my love for soccer. Through Maestro, its not just about getting to play on Sundays after a hectic week at work but its about seeing familiar faces every week who come together to play the game. Its also the excitement of preparing for a game, discussing tactics and trying to outskill our opponents. Through Maestro, I am still learning important lessons on discipline, friendship, commitment, communication, respect, passion, time management. I think each of us have our own personal love story with soccer otherwise why are we playing the beautiful game? But what is different would be how much we love the game. There will always be changes in our lives with higher priorities, be it work, girlfriends, wives, families, money, even our physical condition but I hope our love story with playing soccer never ends, be it with Maestro or some other teams.  Maestro is not just about turning up for soccer, it's never meant to be that way. It's about the people in the team, the ones who will stand up for you when you are booed or heckled by others, the ones who will encourage you after you made a mistake, the ones who will give up personal time to arrange for weekly games, buy team jerseys, collect and account for money, organize team outings, write match reviews, manage our website and Facebook, the ones who will put other more important priorities down just so we can have enough players for the week, the ones who will offer you help when you need it outside of the Sunday games. Everyone has a part to play in Maestro, simply because the team is us and we are the team. One day, I know that my time for playing will be up and I have to hang up my boots. As one of the older players in the team, my time will be sooner than many of you. Thanks to Maestro, at least I know that for now, I still love playing soccer and have a bunch of good brothers to join me until that day comes.  PS. Sorry for the emo post. I took some time to reflect and write my thoughts down after the team's recent attendance issues, players leaving. The tipping point for me really was my disappointment at the lack of support or reaction during today's game when our Captain was made fun of by the opponents when he was taking a penalty. I apologize if I was too aggressive to the opponents by telling them off but my purpose was to let them know we are no push overs. If we cannot stand up for each other as a united team, how can we play and win together? If any one is interested, we lost the game. The score was 3-2 to the opponents. We scored from 2 penalties. Guo Xian and Kartik were the scorers. Calvin was arguably our best player as he kept out many goal bound shots. Also doing well was Kartik's cousin Aaron who possess a good first touch and is very calm on the ball. The other downside to the game was because Guo Xian's old injury flared up again due to a late tackle.