So, you sit down to dinner, and you've got this nice roasted chicken in front of you, right? You figure, all I want is a drumstick. So you reach over, grab a leg, and pull it off. You know that sound you hear? The sound of the joint breaking, the cartilege tearing, and the *pop* of the chicken's leg coming completely apart? That's my most vivid soccer memory.
IM soccer in college, we were playing a team that was about as skillful as us - that is, not very. We were just a fistful of guys who got together because we liked the game, not necessarily because we were any good at it. But we all really enjjoyed running around, kicking the ball, and we'd actually won a couple intramural games, disorganized as we were. So, it wasn't like we were overly competitive, it's not like I *meant* to destroy myself for the game, but I did anyway.
It started out so simple. Here comes the ball, sailing across the sky in a beautiful, large arc. I was defending, at the time, and so I jumped up to head the ball back downfield. Not being particularly good, though, I misjudged where the ball was, and didn't get a good hit on it. So it seemed sort of odd that, moments later, you'd hear that crunching, tearing sound.
Of course, it only *sounded* like it was coming out of my head.
There's something odd about breaking yourself, and it's something only someone else who's broken a bone or torn up a joint can relate to. Sound travels through your bones. You can hear a bone break through your own skeleton, you can hear a ligament tear without it making an audible sound.
What I heard was my foot hitting a divot in the ground, twisting my lower leg in one direction, while my momentum carried the rest of my body in another direction. The sound of the chicken leg popping? That was my anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) being obliterated, and my knee dislocating.
As I crumpled to the ground, I thought, gee, that's gonna be a nightmare to get back into place, but fate was at least marginally kind. When I hit the ground, my knee popped back into its socket, as if by magic. What wasn't magic, though, was that I couldn't move. Moving my knee felt like pressing shards of glass into my joint, and so I sat there, on the pitch, clutching my knee, and not moving.
Of course, in soccer, there are always overactors - contenders for the Oscar of sports, people who try to get advantage by faking injury. So it always takes a couple minutes to sort those that are really injured, from those that are not. After a few moments, though, the people watching the game, and the rest of the players realized something was actually pretty seriously wrong with me, and they came over to help. I don't remember much after that, except that an ambulance actually drove onto the field to pick me up.
Sure enough, my ACL was wrecked, and that was the last day I ever played a game of soccer. Sadly, I still love the game, and I even like watching it on TV. But that feeling of running down the field, kicking the ball? That was the last day I'd have that feeling.
My leg's ok, now - I had surgery to fix the ruined ligament, as well as repair the cartilege that got damaged as a result. I can walk, I can even run for short distances now, but I'll never feel particularly confident playing a game like soccer again.
Why do I want Winning Eleven 7? Because from everything I've heard, and from friends who have WE6, it's the next best thing to being there. And sadly, that's as close as I'll ever get.
seppo
I want to win because I've never played soccer because I have a bad leg the only soccer I've played is super monkey ball
