Will men and women ever be able to play football together?
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Ever since she started to play football professionally, Tamira Singer's dream has been to start a new football competition: the respective male and female first teams of a club form a n...
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By the time they played one on one, Tamira had thankfully reverted back into her football professional self. More often than Neymar would have liked she managed to get the ball away from him and into the goal (God damn finally!). They matched each other pretty well, even though Tamira had to begrudgingly admit that Neymar, at the end of the day, really was the better player, so it was entirely possible he let her get this or that goal on purpose.
Their laughter filled the field, and even the dwindling light and profuse sweating they had going on couldn't dampen the mood, the illusion of a carefree world banning doubts and worries from their minds and hearts; at least for the moment.
But then they finally had to conclude that they couldn't really see each other well enough anymore to play – since the training ground was empty of all staff, the tall floodlights were no help in that matter either. So they had to acknowledge that the approached nightfall couldn't hide their problems away from them anymore.
It was time to get back to reality.
Tamira wiped her sweaty hair strands out of her face, huffing and puffing. The same kind of exhaustion was visible on Neymar as well.
"Okay," she said, taking deep breaths as she looked around. "Call it even?"
Neymar laughed out loud as he started to gather the scattered footballs. "You wanna call my, what? 7,000 goals against your pitiful five or so 'even'?"
Tamira scoffed. "You highly exaggerate your performance! That was a ten to eight score, at the most."
He continued to laugh and shook his head at her reluctance to admit defeat. "No, princesa, I don't think so! Say I won!"
"Fine, I won!" She struck out her tongue at him, fighting the smile that wanted to form.
Neymar rolled his eyes. "You're so funny when you want to be." To stress his point, he threw the ball that he'd just picked up right at her.
"Oh how well you know me!" Tamira replied with a cheeky grin and jumped to the side, the ball flying right beside her. She retaliated his attack with another ball, but Neymar saw it coming and caught it with the inside of his foot, kicking it in the air to catch it with his hands.
"I guess," he said with a thoughtful expression on his face, far more serious than the banter they had started out with. Then he casually kicked the football up and up and up several times, a soft smile on his face.
Tamira bit her lip as she watched him. He had just played with her for a good hour or so and still he couldn't get enough of playing football! Here he was, playing keepie-uppie, even though they both had trouble seeing the other – never mind they weren't two meters apart. Only the ball, bright due to his white leather badges, stuck out.
After another few kick-ups Neymar kicked the ball in her direction. She caught it in a similar fashion as he'd done.
"Yeah. I guess I do know you," he said with a soft smile on his face when she kicked the ball up a few times.
