Fulbito Feats and Follies

I wrote this post a couple weeks ago, so just imagine that the date on it is October 17 or so.

I play fulbito at 7:30am every Saturday with the youth from Kilometer 13 church its surrounding neighborhood in Comas. It’s definitely one of the highlights of my week. Fulbito is miniature soccer, played on a concrete “field” that’s the same size as a basketball court. The goals are maybe 1/3 the size of regular soccer goals, and six people play on each team instead of 11. When we play at Kilometer 13, there are usually close to 20 people there, so two teams play while a 3rd team waits to play the winner of a short game to two goals. Fulbito is much more popular than regular “fútbol” here in Lima if for no other reason than the fact that there just isn’t space for full-sized grass fútbol fields. I haven’t quite been to all of them, but I would venture to guess that every neighborhood in Lima has at least one fulbito court.

I’m sure at some point someone in Hollywood has made a movie about kids in Latin America playing serious pick-up fulbito, and I just haven’t seen it. (I don’t need to see it – I already know that it’s about how the neighborhood kids are really good at fulbito, but they’re also really poor. They play a game against a group of richer kids with more resources and less social/family issues…. Blah blah blah, eventually they overcome their obstacles, the ragtag underdog team wins the big game and everyone lives happily ever after). Seriously though, there are all sorts of movies that follow this same formula as it applies to street basketball and even baseball, why not fulbito?

I really do feel like I’m in a movie sometimes when I play fulbito on Saturdays. We play with the same ragged, faded soccer ball every week. The top cross bar of one of the goals on our court is broken, and has been tied on with rope. The court doesn’t have walls or a fence, so when the ball gets kicked out of bounds, someone has to run into the street to retrieve it, dodging traffic as they go (don’t worry, whenever this is my job I’m always very careful; I’m not trying to win the “which YAV will get hit by a car first” prize). The walls of many of the nearby buildings are covered in graffiti, and trash lines the streets. Mostly the same guys show up to play every week. Some of them have nicknames. Most of them wear the same shirt and pair of shorts each week. Many wear shoes with holes in them, or with soles that are coming apart and flap in the wind like the tongue of a dog panting on a hot day. Some of them start playing at 6:30 in the morning, as soon as it’s light outside (or so I’m told – I haven’t quite gotten up that early yet to find out).

Usually I feel like I’m “Smalls,” the main character in The Sandlot. When I showed up the first week, I was the new kid in town, and an obvious gringo, clad in “fancy” running clothes. With very few exceptions, I hadn’t played soccer since I was 13. But I came with Julio, a youth from the church that plays regularly. He introduced me to everyone one by one and assigned me to a team and position. Near the very beginning of my very first game, I took a throw-in after the ball went out of bounds and accidentally threw the ball to someone on the other team. He was left with only the goalie to beat, and immediately scored an easy goal. An argument then ensued over whether the goal should count or not, since the guy wouldn’t have scored if it hadn’t been for the stupid gringo on the other team taking the throw-in. Afterwards, I offered to switch out and let someone else play for me. Of course they told me everything was okay and insisted that I keep playing.

Since that first week, I’ve made plenty of other mistakes and looked pretty silly a zillion times, but I’ve slowly been getting better, remembering some elementary fundamentals from my preteen, rec-league soccer days and figuring out some basic strategies that are unique to fulbito. Two weeks ago, I even scored my first goal. Our best player beat a defender on a breakaway, and I followed, sprinting behind him. As he prepared to take a shot, I “crashed” the goal. The goalie blocked his shot, but by sheer luck the deflection bounced right to me and I drilled it into the back of the net. (Just kidding. Do you seriously think our goals would have nets? I just had to say that for poetic effect. But yes, I scored.) The third team that was watching went nuts. I tried to pretend like it was no big deal as I casually jogged back to my side of the court and high-fived my teammates, but I’m sure they would tell you that I was grinning like an idiot.

However, my real “Sandlot” moment happened this past Saturday. We had been playing for a good hour or so when one of the players on the other team decided to take a “one-touch” shot as hard as he could off a deflection. The ball soared over the goal, over the street, and over the roof of the house on the other side. As you probably know if you’ve ever been to a city in Latin America, the houses here don’t really have “side yards” between them. Each block is basically one big concrete street front, divided between different houses of different sizes and colors. So we couldn’t just run after the ball, because there’s no space between buildings. The funny part is that I had been playing goalie, meaning I would normally have the responsibility of retrieving the ball when it goes out of bounds. I just sort of looked back at everyone and said something to the effect of “now what?” A few of the guys climbed up on the concrete bleachers that line one side of the court to try and see where the ball went. (I kept waiting for one of them to say “great, no we can’t play ball no more!”)

I was sure the ball had landed in the yard of a massive, monster guard dog, but at least the ball wasn’t signed by Pele or Ronaldino or David Beckham or anything like that. (This is a good thing, because I didn’t exactly bring an erector set to Peru…) As we all sort of stood around, scratching our heads, one of the guy finally decided to go knock on the door of the house that the ball went over. Eventually a man opened the door. I can only imagine how the conversation went from there: “yes, a soccer ball didn’t happen to crash through your roof a moment ago, did it?” He went back inside, and sure enough a couple minutes later he emerged with the ball. I guess the families in this neighborhood are probably used to soccer balls flying into their backyards during breakfast time on Saturday. We thanked the man, took the ball and kept playing.

So if a movie about fulbito hasn’t been made yet, now’s the time. And I want some royalties. But if I’m not entitled to any profits, all I ask is that you don’t include “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” in the soundtrack.

- Alex