Nicolas Dawson and I -both in the starting eleven and central defenders of the team- had muscular injuries. Nevertheless, that obviously didn’t impede us from giving more of our 100% in the final. In the past game, my big toe’s nail embedded under my skin and into the flesh. In addition, I had a muscular trauma in the upper part of my left knee. Now you can sort of picture the situation of only one of the 16 players in the FDR team. However, the nerves and the desire to win the trophy appeased the pain – we were too concentrated in the game. The only option was to win. We were obviously afraid because the two past years FDR had lost the final (both against Ecuador), but we wanted to stop that continuous slump for once and for all.
Before the game, our coach, Cesar Dulanto, gave us an inspiring talk that touched everyone of us. He threw to us the ugly truth: the 17 goals in favor (in 6 games) did not matter; our imposing performance meant nothing: if we lost, everything we did was in vain. As soon as the ref announced the kickoff, we calmly played as we had done throughout the entire tournament. The game became sort of aggressive and a little choppy, but we managed to make 2 goals; until then, we were tactically spotless. All of a sudden, the Chilean team started to wake up, and through a long free kick (and with a little help of our goal keeper) they scored a goal. It was a foolish goal, one produced through our own error; however, it gave life to a courageous and fearless squad.
We entered the second half cold-minded, nervous, and totally exposed. It was incredible how, in a fraction of seconds, the story made a 360-degree twist. We had it done. They were lost and had no hope. Now they were motivated and determined to score a goal anyway. We stayed back, resisted as much as we could, started to throw long balls to the forwards and rejected to the typical, “tiki-taka” philosophy that characterized us. Our mood worsened as the opponent’s goalkeeper miraculously saved every ball: we couldn’t seal the victory. Nonetheless, our defense was tight, solid, and tactically flawless; they didn’t even have a direct shoot in the second half. In fact, the only time that our goalkeeper actively intervenes was in the opponent’s goal. After some endless minutes, the ref blew the final whistle and we celebrated as if we had won a world cup.
This SAAC has perhaps been Roosevelt’s best performance… here are the scores, in order:
FDR against Brazil: 5 – 0
FDR against Argentina: 5 – 1
FDR against Uruguay: 3 – 0
FDR against Chile: 5 – 0
FDR against Ecuador: 1 – 2
Note: we lost against Ecuador because we were already in the finals and we played very relaxed to restore energy; that game really didn’t matter.
Final
FDR against Chile: 2-1