After difficult times of austerity and
waiting for the date, this year's Hotelcareer Cup took place on 10 March 2013
in Stuttgart. Although the ARCOTEL Camino had trained continuously for the
entire year and were also playing the difficult role of favourites, one or two
doubtful feelings still reared their ugly heads. How would it go in 2013? Would
we meet our expectations and those of our fans?
In drizzly weather, we set out on our
way to the Soccer Olymp in Fellbach, where we had been devotedly training for
days beforehand. We had a whole host of fans with us from the director to the
interns – everyone was represented to support us in our mission to defend the
title.
In the second game we met the other team
we were afraid of even though we hadn't played them before. The Le Méridien
Stuttgart. A difficult and very tight task, but we were still able to win the
match 1-0. Six points were already a good lead.
In the meantime, our fans supported us
by doing all of the things that a real fan needs to do to increase morale.
Home-made pom-poms, Camino flags and loud cheering were just a small part of
the consistent support from our group of fans. They also gave us relaxing
massages, provided us with drinks and were simply there for us.
Next we faced the Park Inn by Radisson.
Maybe it was the good business cooperation with them that meant we didn't want
to get one over on them, but at least by that point we had decided that one
point each was also perfectly fine, and the game ended 3-3.
Our final opponent was the Holiday Inn.
The statisticians among you may have worked out that with a draw and two wins
we would definitely be in the semi-final. Wrong. We needed at least a draw to
be certain of winning the group, as Le Méridien and the Mercure Hotel Stuttgart
City Center had played really well against the Holiday Inn and beaten them by a
large number of goals. When we were 2-1 down just a short while into the game,
we had to stop and take a breath, shake ourselves off and then really throw
ourselves into it again. It was all or nothing. But then everything went well
and we beat the Holiday Inn 6-3. Ten points from four games. We felt that that
was a really good result.
The Maritim Hotel, the NH Hotel, the Mercure Hotel
and us, the ARCOTEL Camino, were in the semi-final. We had to play against the NH Hotel, and
played better than we had done at any point in the tournament. We were
concentrated and confident, and won the match 3-0. Unfortunately we also
suffered some injuries in the game, above all to our best striker, Bilal Ghazi.
In the changing rooms later, our opponent said "our colleague's job was to
mark him the whole time, but we'd completely forgotten that on the other side
of the pitch there was someone else who was also good with the ball and could
score." Yep, you can easily be deceived. But they fought bravely.
The team managed the DOUBLE! It was an all round successful day. THANKS to Sandro, Patrick, Ajet (the best player in the tournament), Youssif, Bilal (top scorer), Micha, Mohamed and Peter, the players in our team. The team would also like to thank the FANS who supported us so brilliantly. We're off to Düsseldorf! To be continued...
