Addicted to footvolley - by Gavin — Gavin English Teacher

What is footvolley?

About 9 years ago, I went on holiday to Brazil. One day, walking down the beach, I saw some guys playing a sport I had never seen before – ‘footvolley’. Footvolley is a cross between beach volleyball and football. The rules are basically the same as volleyball, although you can’t use your arms or hands, so you must use other parts of your body, for example, feet, chest, head, thighs etc.

The Brazilian guys

Watching these guys playing, I was mesmerised. These Brazilians were so good at this sport that it looked like they were born to play it. Their rallies lasted forever, they could use their chests like catapults to fling the ball high up into the air. Dripping with sweat, wearing nothing but tiny swimming shorts, furiously swearing at each other in Portuguese, they lived an amphibious lifestyle – playing footvolley under the sun, occasionally cooling off with a dip in the sea. Standing there as a mere sunburnt spectator, my mind was a battleground between the armies of admiration and jealousy.

Shoreditch Park, East London

Since that day many years ago, I have played a lot of footvolley. I have trained in different footvolley schools and played many matches casually with friends. Now I play with a small group of footvolley enthusiasts on the sand courts in Shoreditch Park, in East London.

Come rain or shine

We play every Saturday morning, come rain or shine, from 7am-9am. I live in West London, so I have to set off on my bike at 5:30am. My wife thinks I have lost the plot, but she just doesn’t get it. I’m addicted to footvolley. Even if the only way to get to Shoreditch Park was by crawling there on my belly, I would do it gladly. The addiction stems, I believe, from the thrill of a good rally – and the chemical release it generates in the body. I crave it like any other addict craves his fix.

Wife vs Socks

Kicking the ball barefoot in the cold London weather can be painful, so to avoid this pain, we wear diving socks to protect our feet on cold days. After a couple of hours of playing, the diving socks become soaked in sweat and covered in wet sand, and, according to my wife, don’t smell particularly nice when they are left in the house. My wife hates my diving socks with a passion, she looks at them with the eyes of the devil, and treats them as if they were carriers of the plague – banishing them to the garden, or the garden shed when she’s feeling charitable, screaming at me if I take them inside the house even for a second. Recently, my diving socks developed big holes in them and so I gave my wife the honour of being the one to put them in the bin. The act of putting these socks in the bin and closing the lid appeared to be of immense spiritual and emotional importance for her, much like the moment she placed the wedding ring on my finger – the only difference being that on this day her smile seemed slightly wider.

This is a list of key vocabulary and expressions from the article in order of how useful they are. The student must choose 6 items from the list to study in the lesson.

To be addicted (to something)

To be soaked

Sunburnt

A shed

I had never seen before

To crave (something)