Entry II: The Ugly Court

The day after the first session, I woke up sore in specific muscles of the legs — the hamstrings, to be precise — though nothing tragic. It didn't stop me from training normally, so a day later I went back to the court, the one that is always free for anyone to walk onto. You might wonder why it's always empty — is it expensive? No. The answer is that it's public, anyone can enter; and second, the court is in a terrible state. It has worn down through every layer of its history: you can still see the surfaces from each time it was resurfaced — carpet, then a plastic layer that must have been for basketball, then carpet again but worse, and at the bottom, plain asphalt, the same as the road outside. It's a shame the government doesn't maintain facilities for sport, and this is exactly what we have to work to change if we want the future of sport — everywhere — to change for the better. That, at least, is what I'm trying to do. But let's set that aside, because I decided to exploit this awful court.

What a bad surface can teach you

Let me explain what I mean by "exploit." The court is in ruins, so I ran with the ball — and every time it hit a bump and escaped me, I had to bring it back under control immediately. Picture it in a match: you're running with the ball, an opponent gets a foot in and succeeds, the ball breaks away from you — and you retrieve it and carry on to the next action.

Here's something I've noticed. Everyone considers Messi the best at dribbling, at beating opponents — but I don't think anyone has noticed that he is also the best at correcting when he loses the ball. Watch the videos from his prime: Messi glides past defenders, one of them manages to get a foot on the ball — and look at what he does. Instead of stopping and thinking "ah, I failed," he wins the ball back within fractions of a second, without ever breaking his run. And on he goes, toward goal. That is an essential piece for any young player — or anyone — who wants to dribble successfully.

Now look at today's players, and at a young one like Yamal. Watch what happens when their dribble fails: they stop, immediately, instead of attempting those fractions — recover it if you can, and if not, fine. Yamal evades opponents brilliantly, but the one thing still holding him back is that when he loses the ball, he treats it as already lost. Once he learns Messi's secret — pierce through, and inside the run, retrieve the ball the moment it escapes — he has time on his side to find that missing piece, and he will become the best player of his own era. And notice I don't say "the next Messi," because we owe every player respect for his own person and his own style.

Back to the ugly court: I did my drills and my shooting, and I felt the progress. Over the following days I brought cones, to raise my level in moving correctly with the ball. I worked only on feeling the ball, running with the ball, and improving shooting technique. Just the thick fundamentals of futsal — I know there is much more, the lob pass, the slice pass, the tackle, the block, and so on.

The second session

Then came the next Friday — our training day, as agreed. Everything was the same: same time, same facility employee we couldn't communicate with, same schedule changes. But this time I entered the team's way — straight into their own warm-up routine. We went on court for my second session, and I was full of enthusiasm and energy.

The coach gave us different exercises this time: push-ups and upper-body work, but after every arm exercise we went straight into legs — acceleration work, the kind you need when you've gone down and have to pick yourself up and get back into the game. I liked these. Before the friendly match we did shooting to warm into it, and there I caught the coach noticing that my shots had improved. Perfect.

Right up until a ball arrived at a thousand kilometres an hour — straight into my face. I have never taken a ball like that in my life. I nearly went down; I was so dizzy I started seeing stars. Someone came running to hold me up before I fell, so the coach wouldn't have a heart attack, and I recovered quickly — helped, supposedly, by the water he poured over my head (don't believe that water does much).

So we started the match, but my mind was elsewhere — I was playing as if I'd drunk five bottles of alcohol. I managed the court with difficulty, and my passes went astray. To tell you the truth, I don't even remember the score. All we understood was that we were conceding a lot, since there was no cooperation between us. We did manage to score some, though — and in one phase I produced an excellent goal, Messi-style (think Argentina v Austria, turning 1-0, World Cup 2026): a slice shot into the corner of the net, taken from around the second penalty spot, off to the right. At least I made one good impression with a shot in today's session.

The training wasn't wasted — no training is ever wasted; in each one you simply learn different things. That was today's session, and I couldn't give my all. But next week we have official matches, against other deaf players from other cities. So I took the opportunity to save my exploring for inside the matches themselves.

Summary & takeaways

The second week added a layer the first one couldn't: adversity. Preparation with constraints again — a bad surface is a training tool: the ruined public court turned every touch into a recovery drill — the ball escapes, you bring it back, exactly as it happens when an opponent pokes it away in a match. Ball recovery is the hidden half of dribbling: what separates Messi's dribbling is not only how he beats opponents but how he wins the ball back within fractions, mid-run, when a defender touches it — the piece most young players, even Yamal, haven't yet added, because they treat a disturbed dribble as a finished one. The body works as one system: the coach's pairing of upper-body exercises with immediate acceleration work mirrors the real demand of the game — go down, get up, rejoin play. Performance is fragile: one ball to the face was enough to scatter my concentration for an entire match, a reminder of how much of futsal is played in the head rather than the feet. And the closing principle stands: no session is ever wasted — each one just teaches something different. Next entry: official matches, and the first real test.

— G.S.