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Princeton University Athletics
Players Mentioned
Princeton in Portugal: Day 4
March 23, 2017 | Men's Soccer
Hello from Lisbon! Yesterday was a great day. It started off with an early breakfast at the hotel, where the coffee machine is fantastic, efficient, and most definitely overused by Reiner and Romo. I'm fairly certain that it is broken in some way, however. It makes every type of coffee taste like chocolate, which is totally fine with me.
We then headed to the Benfica complex for our game vs their U-20 squad. In short, we didn't play our best game and they were very talented. On a bright note, all of the seniors got to come out of retirement for about ten minutes at the end, giving the guys who played two days in a row a bit of a break. Well, all of the seniors besides me of course. As a goalie, I had the pleasure of being the only person on the team not to play. It's ok coach, I didn't want to get all sweaty anyways.
The highlight of the trip to Benfica was most definitely the pre-game warmup. The seniors put on a show. Miguel, our videographer, took the day off so we had a substitute. I am pretty sure our tikitaka was so impressive that he forgot to film the guys who were actually getting ready for the game. It is just a coincidence that I am probably in the middle of the circle for the whole video. I blame poor editing.
We then headed to the beach, where we grabbed some lunch and went surfing. The meal was great, disregarding an awful knock knock joke told by the tag team of Henry and Nick. They legitimately cried of laughter from their own joke. It wasn't funny at all. Also, Mo chickened out when we all tried to chip in for him to eat all of the mayonnaise on the table (19 packets). He agreed at first then didn't follow through. Wasn't cool.
Speaking of chickening out, surfing definitely looked fun. I was part of the half of the team that opted to chill on the beach instead of going into the freezing water. We had a great time and I don't regret a thing. From the beach we watched Cole, a Canadian, shred the waves while Patrick, a Californian, failed miserably. He will contest this, but I was disappointed in his performance. Will was awful too (he made fun of me in the blog the other day so this had to be said). He still may have been better than Patrick though.
A bit of down time followed, in which the Settlers of Catan crew got a couple games in. I won the first, and Romo, while highly contested, won the second. Harry and David weren't even close. After dinner, a bunch of guys went out and explored the nearby coastal town of Costa De Capirica. Windsor and I went to casino and didn't not lose our money.
That's all for now. We are currently headed to the Portuguese National Team headquarters and practice facility. Maybe we will see Ronaldo!
Josh Haberman '17