Clean Sheet

Chapter 0

"Being a good person is like being a goalkeeper," quoted goalkeeping legend, Iker Casillas. "No matter how many goals you save..." Be it a crucial save to keep the score level. Or a penalty save that resulted from careless defending. Or a late reaction save you were forced to make to bail out your incompetent defence... "Some people will only remember the one you missed."

Or in my case, my entire team.

It was my first year in secondary school. I made it into the school team for our division and we made it to the playoffs and eventually the final. Walking out with my name 'Cheng Hao' on the back of my shirt, out of the tunnel at the Jalan Besar Stadium, I felt pride. I felt happiness. I felt euphoria.

But that didn't last very long.

We played a school that were one of the bests in school football. Physical, attacking-minded, fast. Our entire lineup was in sixes and sevens trying to keep up. Just three minutes in, I was forced to make a save when the defence let the opposition slip their attacker through.

It was exhausting and mindbreaking. Keeping the score tied at none-all was something I did not expect to be doing so early into my secondary school football career. The whole game I was trying to make sure they couldn't score. We had to win this final.

Save after save, the defence continued making the same mistakes yet I couldn't find it in myself to voice out my complaints. The midfield continued making sloppy passes and our attack was wasting chance after chance. Yet again, I could not say anything.

My senior, made a careless mistake in the penalty box. A penalty. We goalies have a hard time saving it and yet I saved it. Up came the last kick of the game. A corner. They whipped in a cross that should've been easily dealt with but nobody even tried to challenge it. It ended up falling onto an unmarked player at my far post and even when I ran across the goal, I couldn't stop it from going in.

I was disappointed. Angry. Pissed. I trudged back into the dressing room and threw my gloves at my seat. My teammates stormed in with our coach and started pointing fingers at each other. The captain, who was usually calm and composed, started to shout and blame others too. Eventually, my name was in the conversation and all eyes were at me. They blamed me for not being fast enough to save the shot. They blamed me for being too quiet. They blamed me for not saving every shot even though I was the one who kept us in the game.

When coach came in, everybody including me got a talking down. I felt angry. I hated myself for not being able to speak up and defend myself. I hated myself more for not instructing my terrible defence to wake up and play football properly. I received a Man of the Match award for my performance, and a Goalkeeper of the tournament award. But they didn't matter. I didn't win. I got blamed for doing the best I could do.

I cried on the bus back to the school. I didn't want to go the next day because I felt disappointed I couldn't win. I felt like absolute garbage. Most of my teammates have stepped down from the club due to their studies or because of graduation. But the feeling of contempt and hatred still remained. And it's something that keeps ringing in my head.

The alarm rang throughout the room. 

Cheng Hao slowly got up from his slumber and turned the alarm on his phone off. He groaned, having to wake up so early in the morning. He had a lot of things in his room. Jerseys hung on the wall, awards on his shelf next to his glove collection. Posters of his favourite footballers and team. You could clearly tell what kind of person he is. 

"Geez," Cheng Hao groaned, "I hate having that dream."

It has been two years since Cheng Hao's final. The next year, his school barely missed out on the playoffs but he played only two games, having been benched due to his supposedly bad performance in the final. Due to this, the goalkeeper from the team who placed lower than his got the callup to the Singapore U-15 national team. Every thought about it just pissed him off. How he was supposed to get the callup, how he did nothing wrong. How everything just had to mess up on the final game of his first year.

Getting up, he grabbed his uniform and headed for the showers.

Today, marks the first day of school. And soon, will mark the first day of training.