England -2 v Germany - 0

[Long Gun]

and that was after penalties!!

 

I went along to the final afternoon of the Bangkok Master 7-a-side tournament today. Two competitions running side by side, a vets and a 'current expats' though some played in both.

 

As usual in these things there were teams from Hong Kong, Brunei, Malaysia, Phuket etc, etc but two teams in particular gave it some added quality/spice/interest and these two were not too surprisingly the ones who made it into the final.

 

One, sponsored by El Atihad, was a team put together by Paul Masefield from ESPN and including the legendary Shebby Singh (!) plus Dave Watson (the ex Everton one rather than the Mackem) Mark Walters plus ex-Gooners Gus Caesar and Michael Thomas.

 

The other was Henrik Lorenz's All-Stars. Henrik is a 62 year old goalkeeper who runs a business in Hong Kong and runs teams as a hobby when these tournaments come along. He had assembled a team of ex-Bundesliga players and footed their entire bills to come over and play, just because he can, I suppose. Can't say I knew them all but Michel Rummenigge, Brinkmann and Bein were familiar, Schlindwein and Nikolic less so though I'm sure some of you will know them!

 

The final ended up 0-0 and went to best of 3 penalties, Walters and Thomas scored, Brinkmann and Bein didn't and that was that.

 

Lovely event though, great weather, free beer, lots of laughs and I met a lot of people I have played with and against over the years here. Having hung up my boots 4 years ago I got very nostalgic, and quite sad to be honest, seeing that the Bangkok German All-Stars vets team, and supporters, contained nearly everybody I played with in an early tournament in Phnom Penh when they had a couple of late withdrawals and me and a mate jumped in for one of the best weekends of my life. It really hit home when one guy pointed out that it was 10 years ago this month. Shit I'm old.

[frogpatrol]

Long Gun said:

Thomas scored

 

would expect nothing less!