The Run of Play is a blog about
the wonder and terror of soccer.

We left the window open during a match in October 2007 and a strange wind blew into the room.

Now we walk the forgotten byways of football with a lonely tread, searching for the beautiful, the bewildering, the haunting, and the absurd.

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Pro Belvedere – Pro Vercelli:
Video Highlights

Goal scorers:

Marco Antonelli (11)

Jorge Ibáñez (26)

Pieter Oosting (54)

Oosting came on shortly before halftime after Carlo Saba, who got the assist on Ibáñez’s goal, went down with yet another minor injury a few minutes later. Several hundred miles away, Arjen Robben looked up in surprise, lightly ruffling through the pages of his magazine.

We won our two preseason friendlies by a combined score of 9-1. (I only scheduled two because I don’t care about the Serie C Cup and would rather use the early matches as warm-ups than risk seeing a player go down injured. Our physios aren’t too good, you know.)

We had a good start to last season too, of course—remember our taking the lead against Portsmouth? But I think this is different. I don’t know yet. But I’m starting to get a good feeling about this team.