Fútbol

For the last three Thursday nights, I've been playing soccer with a group of American and Argentine students in a game organized by FLACSO. I'm terrible, and possibly getting worse, but it's fun. No one really seems to care that I don't know what I'm doing.

The games are organized and paid for through FLACSO, but the group is usually about half Americans and half porteños. It's led by Martin, a tiny Argentine man (probably about 5'5'', maybe 140 pounds) with a hoop in one ear and a big black beard. He looks a little like a miniature pirate, but with incredible soccer skills. I think most of the Argentines who come play are his friends, but I'm not really sure. They just kind of show up.

We play in a huge indoor soccer complex called Open Gallo that takes up an entire city block. It has about 10 mini-fields, which are filled until at least midnight with dozens of Argentine men, and not a single woman. Fútbol is by far the most popular sport in Argentina, but like American football in the U.S., it's a guys' sport. Argentine girls just don't play. My roommate thinks I'm hilarious, and most men are just alarmed at the idea of a girl with a soccer ball.

For the most part, though, the Argentines we play with (all guys) are pretty unconcerned by the presence of girls. I think they just chalk it up to our American weirdness. The girls who are good get the ball passed to them a lot — more than the guys, sometimes. Even the terrible ones, like me, aren't totally ignored.

Last week, though, I volunteered to play goalie, and without realizing it committed a horrible faux pas. The guys on my team had been rotating in and out of the goal for the entire game, and I decided I wanted to try, since essentially the only thing I can do anyway is hurl myself in front of the ball and tackle people anyway (thanks to rugby). But when I went to stand in the goal, the Argentine guys freaked out, saying they couldn't possibly shoot on me.

Martin waved them away, and I ended up being a decent goalie — not because I actually stopped anything, but because no one wanted to kick the ball too hard at me. I haven't volunteered again. I appreciate the fact that the guys are open to girls playing at all, and I don't want to traumatize them too badly.

I'm pretty sure I'm not the first person to have come to this conclusion, but fútbol is a good way to hang out with people you don't know very well without any awkwardness. I haven't actually really talked to any of the Argentines outside calling for the ball, but that's the next step.