5th Division Amateur Side Carquefou’s Dream is Over, and I Blame Myself

By: Laurie | April 17th, 2008

I swear, I am never, ever again watching another game. Every team I have rooted for in the last two weeks has lost. Every one.

In Champions League, I rooted for Arsenal, Roma, Fenerbahce and Schalke. In MLS games last weekend I rooted for San Jose and LA.

And the Laurie jinx continues.

Yesterday my support doomed French 5th division amateur side Carquefou in their amazing French Cup run. They were knocked out by PSG, 0-1.

Sad thing is? They were doing just fine until I came along. When I finally tracked down a SopCast stream in about the 70th minute, the score was still 0-0. Then Pauleta came in for PSG, and not five minutes after I started watching he’d scored the winning goal.

Merde.

What was funny was that the crowd and even the announcers were completely behind Carquefou. Immediately after the goal, when Carquefou got the ball back, the announcers started saying, “It’s not over yet.” And they kept saying it, over and over, right up into the 94th minute. When it was, in fact, over.

I am so sorry, Carquefou. If I could go back and do it over again, I’d root for PSG. Kind of like in those chick flicks, where the servant’s daughter marries the lord of the manor because otherwise he’ll kill the man she loves? It would be just like that.

Alas, we can’t do this one over, but we can look at Carquefou’s dream run. (Remember as I’m telling you this: 5th division amateurs! These guys have day jobs.)

They made it through the early stages of the Cup, then made a big name for themselves by eliminating AS Nancy (currently 4th in Ligue 1 and looking at a UEFA Cup spot next year), 2-1 in extra time.

They drew big boys Olympique de Marseille (OM) in the Round of 16 and went in with the goal of not being humiliated. Instead, they won, 1-0.

(How small is this team? More than a day after the OM win, their website was still trumpeting the Nancy win. My guess would be that 5th division sides don’t have a paid website person.)

In the end, they may have been knocked out in the quarterfinals, but they acquitted themselves well. Like I said, they held PSG scoreless for more than 70 minutes.

Not bad for a bunch of amateurs.

I don’t think I want to remember this run by yesterday’s game. Instead, let’s watch their post-Marseille celebration again:

Carquefou OM
Uploaded by valentin63