Every Friday, school football team members and several teachers studied skills and tactics together. There was not much time left for us before the tournament to master the skills, but was enough to know our strengths and work on our weaknesses.

From April 17 to 18, the school football players went with two PE teachers to Qingdao for a football competition. At 10 a.m. on April 17, we boarded the bus and the journey took almost three hours and a half. After we arrived at the football ground, we saw a lot of players in various colours of soccer uniforms playing football. We also followed our captain (Ali) to warm up and discuss tactics for the first soccer match.

Our first opponent was the Zhongshi Korean International School (ZKIS) team – the school from Weihai. Starting with the sound of the whistle, we showed wonderful football skills that we had practised during training. However, the game was tied at 0 to 0. Although it was not a very bad outcome for the first day, it was not what we had expected.

Next day, we had the second match with Qingdao Baishan School students. The players from each team took powerful shots and tussled with one another for the ball. Thus, the tension between us increased. After we had scored our first goal, the opposing team scored several more goals. At the end, we were defeated by a narrow margin.

Finally, we played the last match against the Confucius International School Qingdao (CISQD) team. In this match, we really showed our strengths. In the beginning, nothing really exciting happened, but after a few minutes, two swift goals were bagged by our team, and another two extra goals were shot in the last few minutes. We ended the football competition with a victory in the last match.

Although we didn’t win the cup, we tried our best and there are no regrets. We vowed to reach first place next year. Lastly, I think we really developed some precious friendships with other teams.

Brian Bang, IGCSE 1A