From: Potomac Soccer Wire June 29th 2007
FC Lionheart Palace win 2nd annual Amabassador's Cup
Howard County Maryland's FC Lionheart Palace Football team took the Ambassadors' Cup this past weekend in McLean. McLean Youth Soccer hosted the tournament for the second straight year, which is open to locally based international teams, many of which with entire rosters representing a single country. The Mexican ambassador to the U.S. even played goal keeper for the Mexican team entry.
From: Times Community.com Virgina, USA
Embassy soccer teams, MYS coaches face off By: Monty Tayloe It was the early afternoon of Saturday, June 23, and Henry Makwakwa wanted to put things into the correct historical context.
"We are getting ready to take on our former colonial power, Great Britain," he explained.
Makwakwa lives in Montgomery County, Md., and works for the Department of Homeland Security but on Saturday, his use of the word "we" referred to the Republic of Malawi, where he was born, and to the Malawi Flames, a local soccer team.
The Flames were about to play Great Britain in the second annual Ambassadors' Cup, a soccer tournament hosted by McLean Youth Soccer that pits locally based international teams against one another for bragging rights and a very large goblet. The event was created by McLean Youth Soccer's John Gunderson, a 30-year veteran of the State Department, and most of the participating teams come from the many diplomatic embassies based in Washington, D.C.
"Most of these embassies already have teams and they hear about the tournament from each other. There's been a lot of interest," Gunderson said.
There were 16 teams in this year's tournament and they included teams from the Mexican, German and Kenyan embassies; the International Monetary Fund; and a team composed entirely of McLean Youth Soccer coaches.
The players on the teams came from diverse backgrounds as well. Mexican ambassador Arturo Sarukhán Casamitjana was the goalkeeper for his team, while the winners of the entire tournament were a Washington Premier League team called FC Lionheart Palace, composed mostly of international students.
"Everyone really likes it. People in the State Department are always saying to me, 'Why haven't we done this before?'" Gunderson said.
While it might be tempting to write off the Ambassador's cup as a kind of company soccer tournament on a grand scale, the players and their cheering sections clearly don't think that way.
"There's something special about the tournament, about playing for your country," explained Uwe Kehrer, coach of the German Embassy's team.
Kehrer's sentiments were echoed by the loud cries of "Vamos!" from the Mexican team's cheering section. Most nationalities had groups of fans draped in their country's flag, shouting encouragement to their players.
Despite the informal nature of the tournament, all of the games were intense, to a degree best illustrated by an incident that occurred during the hard-fought, scoreless game between the young FC Lionheart Palace and the Kenyan Embassy Team. At one point during a play, a fan of the Kenyan team rushed onto the field and briefly physically scuffled with one of the opposing players. The man was removed from the tournament, leaving Gunderson shaking his head.
"It can get pretty emotional out there. It's international soccer, that's what it's like," Gunderson said.
Things were a little more lighthearted during the MYS Coach's game against the Brazilian team, but MYS coach and McLean local Charlie Perla clearly felt the same way.
"They say it's not only a game, it's the only game," Perla said. The coaches were cheered on by their families, arrayed on picnic blankets to watch their fathers and husbands.
'"Let's go McLean!" shouted the daughter of Coaches player Jeff McGrew, waving a green and yellow sign like the world's smallest soccer hooligan.
They might have been the home team, but the coach's team had a fairly international feel as well, involving players from Austria and France, as well as Westmoreland Street. In the end, the McLean Coaches were eliminated by Kenya. FC Lionheart Palace defeated the Afghan-American team to win the tournament.
"I've been getting all kinds of calls from people interested in the tournament. We're going to try and get bigger next year," Gunderson said.
©Times Community Newspapers 2007
