Sometimes football players make one hell of a pirate.

It’s been an awful long time since we last shared a real drunk story from the past. This post is about a 4 day adventure I had in the summer of 2007 when one of the Lords of the Drinks went to play an international football tournament in the Dutch city of Enschede. After losing most games on the pitch but kicking some major international ass outside the lines in the “third half” it all climaxed in Wageningen when he was thrown out of a cinema for being to drunk and turned down a threeway with 2 girls cause he thought they were witches. One for the books ladies and gentlemen, enjoy!

It was the summer of 2007 and the regular season of my football team in the Dutch city of Wageningen had just ended, when some team mates asked me to join their team in an international tournament in Enschede. Other competing teams were mostly from universities all over Europe, as there were a few German teams, some English a French team from Marseille and a Hungarian semi-pro club. Although some contestants were quite strong personally I didn’t go there to give my best in football. With everyone staying in tents on the student campus of Enschede and a disco on crawling distance this seemed like a great drinking opportunity.

As the matches were on Thursday and Friday we arrived Wednesday afternoon and set up the tent, while I continued drinking the beers I started with in the car. When the big army tent that we used for the whole team stood I noticed that while packing my lugage with all kinds of necessities like beer, vodka and whisky I forgot to pack an air matrass, a sleeping bag and a pillow. From then on I knew I had to drink hard each night in order to avoid a coat. Cause it may have been June or July, but in Holland that doesn’t say much as it was cold and rainy all the time. I don’t remember much of that night, other than we went into the formentioned disco and I drank a lot of tequila. Apparently on my “superslalom’ back to the tent I wasn’t quite the gentleman to a female German team, but that’s only normal when Dutchies and Germans meet in sports or when drinking. More on that later.

The next morning I felt cold an thirsty and started off with 2 beers. Apparently the other players were not too pleased with that and one of them asked ‘if I wanted to make a statement or something’. I’m not sure what kind of holidays or football camps these guys were used to but from then on I was treated a bit like the weirdo of the team. All through the day, in between and during the matches, I kept drinking beers as I didn’t want these party poopers to ruin a perfectly good drinking weekend, as I easily made new friends from France, England and even Germany. Highlight of the tournament was when an English goalkeeper beat me sprinting for a long ball by 3 meters or something. I kept on running and hit him in the head with my knee. Now this must have looked like the dirtiest foul of the century, but I can assure you it was not intentionally. My team mates were now really getting pissed off at me, but the English seemed to understand my condition perfectly and were quite cool about the incident. When I wanted to check on the goalie again after the game, he was faster than me for the second time that day and said: “How’s the knee?”

That night I didn’t really feel like hanging out with my own team anymore, so I roamed the campus and went from team to team to have some drinks with them. Most of the time I spent with a German team from Düsseldorf as they said Dutchmen couldn’t drink and I had to prove them otherwise, while singing all the anti-Germany songs I could think of. The next morning I didn’t remember the full night, but as I was sipping some wake up beers I was called by some of the lads from Marseille: “Hé Michel, Michel”. Feeling pretty exhausted I couldn’t remember much of the French I took in highschool and replied in English: “Sorry guys, I don’t speak French.” They looked quite surprised and one said: “But why not? Yesterday you spoke perfect French.” Well I always knew alcohol gave me a little advantage when it came to foreign languages, but apparently the more I drink the better I get at them.

After 3 productive days we finally left Enschede on Saturday and returned to good old Wageningen, where some friends of mine wanted to see the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie that was just out in cinemas. After the few days I just had I didn’t mind seeing how Captain Jack Sparrow handled things, so we bought some bottles of rum for the ultimate movie experience. Inside the cinema I was already pretty sauced and talkative during the previews. After some complains I was removed from the cinema before seeing even a second of the movie I came for. Drunk as I was I didn’t miss the irony that the same people who would be laughing their asses off seeing the shenanigans of a drunk idiot carrying the movie couldn’t appreciate the same behaviour in real life.

Anyway, not much I could doabout it and I didn’t care too much about that movie anyway. So with my friends still inside the cinema I went to the nearest bar and met 2 girls there. After the first bar we drank quite a lot of strong Belgian beers in a differnt bar and then it was time to go clubbing. On the way up there they offered me some cocaine and inside the club they didn’t let me pay for anything, but instead they kept buying drinks for me.

Meanwhile more and more male friends kept coming in and saw me drunk out of my mind getting sandwiched by 2 attractive girls on the dance floor. From time to time they tried to take one of my hands, but they were denied pretty rude, as the girls made it clear they only wanted to dance with me. Obviously I felt like the king of the world, but then I got paranoid thinking: “I know I’m not bad looking, but this is crazy. What do they want with me? Why are they giving me free coke and paying all my drinks? This is too good to be true.” Finally when both girls wanted to leave and asked if I wanted to go home with them I just had 2 theories left; either they were after my organs or they were witches. So I declined their kind offer with the solid excuse I was still thirsty and wanted to hang out with my friends. Probably one of the worst calls in my life, but at least I had a long weekend Jack Sparrow could have had, if he knew how to play football of course.

Micky Bumbar

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