This all went down yesterday, but I think it's all a little too hilarious not to share.
For the first time in about a month, I was able to play soccer. My lungs & legs were burning after the first 5 minutes, but we played for almost 3 hours - but that's beside the point.
When I first showed up we only had 4 people, but that shortly doubled. Still not quite enough for 2 teams, but there was a group of selfish Chinese guys we had played with before who were also about 8 or 9 strong, so it seemed like our choices were play with those jerks, or sit and wait up to an hour before more people showed up, so we decided to play with them again.
Now, a little back story into why those guys are jerks - a few months ago, we had a solid 10 - 12 people show up for our game, easily enough to play by ourselves. But I noticed that they only had about 4 or 5, and they asked if they could play with us - I figured, why not? The more people on each team, the less I have to run! Eventually, our numbers swelled to the point where we had to play 3 teams to keep the pitch manageable - again, the more I can rest and the less I have to run, the better. Everything went down smoothly, and everyone had a good time - as far as I can recall, anyway. Well, the very next week, our roles were reversed - I showed up to find we only had about 4 or 5 players from our group, and their whole group was around - about 10 in total, so I asked if we could play with them again, to which they agreed. I went to get our goals from my car, and when I returned, they had a couple more friends show up, making about 12 - 14 people total. I thought, "great, looks like we'll be doing 3 teams again," and started to set up one of the goals. That's when one of their number approached me and said something to the effect of, "Actually, we have more people now, so we don't really want to play with you anymore - and we were here first, so if you could leave, that would be great."
Yeah, that left a pretty bad taste in my mouth, but whatever - they want to be assholes, they can be assholes, and I said we'd never play with them again.
By yesterday, however, I decided that I would extend an olive branch - after all, what's the point of holding a grudge for something as stupid and trivial as that? Nevermind the asshole Persian group that: a) never wants to let others play with them even when their numbers are too small for a decent game, b) play more rough than anything else - I've seen them hack at each other's ankles and shins and have 2 or 3 injuries within a 5 minute time span, c) have injured several of our players in the past and never apologized for, and d) I rage quit the game last time we played with them because they didn't want to get my ball after kicking it out of the field. So I suppose I kind of hold a grudge, but based on the rest of our group's feedback, it's entirely warranted.
Anyway, back to the Chinese guys.
Just like the Persians, they were playing a little too rough - intentional bad challenges, and they started shoving some of our players. The incident that brought the situation to near boiling point was when one of them straight up shoved one of our guys out of bounds, AFTER our guy had already lost the ball. There were shouts of, "What the fuck?!" and "Shut the fuck up!" and other similar intelligent banter going around. I wasn't going to stand for it any longer, and when one of their players continuously yelled, "SHUT THE FUCK UP, SHUT THE FUCK UP!" I suggested that, "Why don't you shut the fuck up? Nobody else is saying anything," he glared at me, and muttered in Chinese, "Fuck your mother." Well, I wasn't going to stand for that, because my mother is an upstanding woman - but she also raised me better than to stoop to that level, so I just said, "That's it, Chinese guys, you're off. We're playing our game with our people, and you can go play yours."
Now at this point, I'm going to start identifying their players by the jerseys they were wearing. The guy who muttered rude things about my mother was Barca '12. Because they had another guy in a Barca '11 jersey. Barca '11 seemed calm enough, though - I had been marking him for much of the game, and he had better touch and speed than me, and he seemed to just walk away when things started to get heated.
Inter then took it upon himself to be the voice of reason from the Chinese group. He came into my personal space, but not quite in my face (yay rhyming!), and practically shouted, "Hey, there's no need to shout and get angry here, we're just playing soccer! It's soccer, of course there's going to be a team that fouls more!" I then presented the facts as I knew them to him, "I don't have a problem with any of you personally, but some of our players are having some problems with some of your players, so I think it's best if we just split into our own separate games. You can play with your friends, we'll play with ours, and everyone will be happy, no?" He continued with his shouting, restating the exact same thing he'd said earlier about there being fouls in any given soccer game. I calmly asked him, "Who's the one raising their voice here?" To which he continued to shout, "We got here at the same time, so how come you can kick us off the pitch? Why don't you go somewhere else?" I simply told him, "The goals and cones are ours, you've been playing with our group, we have twice your numbers. The entire field is empty, so what's the harm in your group, which is smaller than ours, simply moving over and playing next to us?"
For some reason, that was what appeared to suddenly made things click in his head, and he instantly switched to his inside voice and said, "Oh, the goals are yours? OK, I guess we'll move over then." At that point I thought, "Well, you saw me setting up the goals, and they're clearly not yours, so whose would they be?" But I didn't want to escalate things further, especially when they seemed to be calming down, so I let it slide. At that point, Man U decided to take it upon himself to ask me, "Where are you from?" Not knowing where he was going with this, I answered honestly, "Hong Kong." He replied with, "Oh, so you're not Chinese then," turned his back to me, and walked away, head held high, chest pushed out in pride, as if he'd just put down a bratty child. I thought that was particularly funny.
About 30 - 45 minutes later, both of our games had died down, so I decided I would try to clear the air with them a bit, so I walked over to where they were sitting and said, "Look, guys, I just wanted to apologize for the way things went down. Tempers flared, things were said that may not have been, so I just wanted to apologize." Man U then glared at me and said with disdain, "Don't waste our time."
So I turned around and walked away, because they obviously didn't care to be mature about the situation, but all I could think at the time was, "This is part of why people dislike the Chinese," thinking of the attitude that the Chinese nouveau riche and tourists tend to have, and I feel like a little part of my Chinese identity died yesterday.
Then I realized how stupid that feeling was, because fuck those guys.
