Soccer-Batter

A Story by Abishai100

Amlan Satan narrates this 'move' from New Jersey to Northern Ireland involving soccer-coaching, social-media, and standing(s).

A cool world-media fable about sportsmanship and politics, inspired loosely by Bend It Like Beckham (Keira Knightley). Enjoy (and thanks for reading),

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My name's Amlan Satan and I've been a soccer-coach in Pettigo (Northern Ireland) after moving to the United Kingdom from New Jersey (United States), North America, and using social-media and Facebook-chess to engage youngsters in the new age of cyber-network driven fanzine-diaries.

While I was in Egg Harbor (New Jersey), I worked as a part-time juniors travel-team PSA soccer-club/team in the United States, the Fury, which saw great successes in youth-tourneys on the East Coast and helped me erect my special diagrams of 4-4-2 offense/defense balances for the elegant 'chess' of teamwork-soccer. This would inspire my current/future coaching position in Pettigo (Northern Ireland)!

When I got to Northern Ireland, I learned that the team I was to coach, a young co-ed team called the Blast, was hoping to reach high-heights in the upcoming junior-league season against a host of newly-assembled community kids-teams (soccer) for the purposes of post-9/11 era society-based media-optimism, since we'd cast the successes of the Blast on social-media of course.

Northern Ireland (Pettigo) is quite lovely and quaint and quiet but with the certain undercurrent of the real 'darkness' of modern sectarian woes (Catholics-Protestant) driven-home by unemployment/poverty concerns fueling angst between the IRA-UVF and raising talks about economics-improvements between Sinn Fein and Parliament. However, I considered my move to Pettigo one of teaching/soccer greatness, with a good salary and modest living amenities, and the opportunity to write about the tribulation(s) of Northern Ireland (UK) and how to use the 'positive' community bridge to socialized distance(s)!

I met a beautiful Irish-Catholic elementary school teacher in Pettigo named Shelbye and we got married. She gave me courage and the will to understand how to integrate my coaching/teaching job-work with community/culture aura inhalation(s) for the 'real' intimations of that complex contour between romance/spirits and darkness/worry in this part of the modern-day UK.

SHELBYE: He's got a great job; the Blast think he's great; he hypes my fashion-community work(s) on social-media now.

While I'd been coaching the Blast in Northern Ireland and raising them with the amazing 4-4-2 offense/defense balance diagrams for choreography of intuitive teamwork orientations, I thought about the more dark/serious form(s) of social-traffic angst between the IRA-UVF fueling modern chat(s) in Parliament with Sinn Fein as I casted ideations of democracy-labors on social-media and talked about 'terrorism in storytelling' with my Facebook-chess pupils (wow).

STUDENT: Mr. Satan loves to use our 'shared' Soccer-Chess game-board/set to teach us about team-strategy for inspiration.

Living in Northern Ireland is simply no small joke! It's a thing of glassy endurance and intelligence, and I'd been infusing forms of imagination with games and social-media while working on my 'searing' UK-novel about 'negotiated' life in modern times, arguably/appropriately titled Dartmouth: Soccer & Sentinels.

The terrific if modest apartment I live in (Pettigo) is comfortable, and Shelbye likes it too, but she also stays with her mother outside Pettigo and visits/commutes when she comes to school to teach her language-arts classes. Living in Northern Ireland gave me the special view(s) of 'attainable' glory.

The modest but brilliant successes of the Keanes in Irish soccer in the modern media-broadcast era gave people 'fantastic' spirit(s) regarding the scope of sportsmanship in the dominion of journalism-driven inter-religious coexistence, in this post-9/11 era of commerce-bridges to profitable markets (and stories).

When I thought back to my days with the Fury in Egg-Harbor (USA), I thought about the securities-tranquility of safe-distance(s) from real terrorism dailies, and why my current work/research/writings in Northern Ireland never cease to inspiringly remind me why life on Earth is something a Martian would both envy...and pity!