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While I continued playing soccer as much as I could in our backyard, however, with the weather getting colder, I shifted my attention to another soccer related activity. I became obsessed with putting together best 11’s from Europe and the Americas and then having them face each other. After determining a lineup for each, I would grab the report of a club match and simply substitute the real names in the match report and lineup with those in my lineup in the same order. 

Finding top European players wasn’t that hard as most reports and highlight shows focused on them but I had to dig deeper to find those from the Americas in order to ensure that the lineup wasn’t dominated by players from Brazil and Argentina. Going through various soccer magazines I was able to unearth well know players such as Enzo Francescoli from Uruguay, Carlos Valderrama from Colombia, Manuel Negrete from Mexico, and Roberto Cabanas from Paraguay. Trying to expand my player pool I latched on the mere mention of a player in a game report lacking lineups resulting in players such as Ruben Espinoza from Chile and Luis Reyna from Peru. As a last-gasp effort I resorted to lineups from youth World Cups, netting me Kasey Keller and Chris Henderson from the US.



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