What do you think when someone says “Spain”? Maybe clear blue skies, sun and a constant 25 degrees (77F), as you watch soccer on beautiful untouched beaches. That’s exactly what we thought when, at the beginning of the season; Mr. Bulloch said that Varsity soccer team would go to a tournament in Madrid. All of us were dreaming to get into this team.

Finally after a hard season, on the 5th of November the Boys Varsity Soccer Team left Heathrow to go to Madrid for the 3-day tournament. After a long time spent in the airport, finally, around 5 o’clock we arrived at the American School of Madrid where our host families were already waiting for us to take us home. This was fun to see how peoples’ lifestyles are in Spain compared to ours as we chatted with them, learnt about their culture, ate late dinner around 9pm and then exhausted went to bed.

Next day was the first day of ISSA tournament. We played the inaugural match against a Portuguese team from St Dominic’s International School, but after a good game we unfortunately lost 2-1. Our second match looked like it would be easy however it appeared much worse than we expected. The referee made some curious decisions. He, as the earlier referee, didn’t speak English at all, moreover he didn’t recognise a seemingly obvious penalty after handball in their penalty area. Due to this decision and some mistakes from our team, we lost our match against the American School of London. Even the opposite team said that he was the worst referee they had ever seen, but we understood what a difficult job this is and realised our team was responsible for the defeats and we would need to put maximum effort to improve. Our next match was against the undefeated home team on the International School of Madrid. After the last two defeats this game appeared to be impossible to win. After one red card and another brutal tackle, which injured our player we persevered and our team spirit and organisation led us to win this exciting match 3-2. As it appeared later we were the only team that beat the home side of Madrid.

We were very tired this evening, however each of us found enough energy to go out and see of Madrid. Some of us saw the huge Estadio Santiago Bernabeu, and then ate a typical Spanish tapas dinner. Unfortunately Real Madrid played Olympiacos away and so we could not watch a match live, but we were able to watch it on the television.

The last day we played two matches, this time we played on a man-made, artificial pitch. We received new kits from our coach Mr. Tate Johnston that unfortunately appeared to be…for the Middle School boys. And so dressed like a “German team from the 70’s” after two hard matches we managed to finish in a creditable 5th place.

So tired we showered and returned to see the American School of Madrid win the final match and achieve 1st place. There was a short ceremony at the end of tournament where Adam Cook and Kristian Lewis were awarded the best players in our team. Congratulations to them. After that we went wearily back to the airport to come back to a cold, windy England.

This trip was great fun; we had a great time with our host families and also during the games. After two matches lost we came back with pride and persistence to remain undefeated in our last three matches and achieve 5th place. We would all like to thank our coach Mr. Tate Johnston for his hard work, Mr. Bob Bulloch for organising the trip and Dr. Tech for chaperoning us and we will be back next year hopefully finishing first.