Diego the Tornado

by Joachim Masannek

  JOACHIM MASANNEK

  The Wild Soccer Bunch

  Translated from the German by: Helga Schier

  Editor: Michael Part

  This is a work of fiction. All names and characters are either invented or used fictitiously.

  Original title: Felix, der Wirbelwind

  ©2002 Baumhaus Verlag Gmbh, Frankfurt am Main, Germany

  Die Wilden Fussballkerle™ Joachim Masannek & Jan Birck

  © 2011 Wild Soccer USA, Inc.

  All English rights reserved to Wild Soccer USA, Inc. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  For information regarding permission, write to

  Wild Soccer USA, Inc. P.O. Box 10445, Beverly Hills, CA 90213

  Special thanks to:

  Yonatan, Yaron, and Guy Ginsberg

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data in file.

  ISBN 978-0-9844257-1-6

  Published by Sole Books

  First Edition March 2011

  Printed in the United States of America

  Layout: Lynn M. Snyder

  10987654321

  Hi Wild Soccer Bunch fans!

  Almost a year has passed since the first book in the series, Kevin the Star Striker, was introduced. I hope you had a great year, played soccer, had a lot of fun, and learned some new things along the way.

  I also had a great year. I played with the U.S. National Team in the 2010 FIFA World Cup in south Africa. It was an incredible experience!

  I know that a lot of you dream of playing in the World cup. I truly believe that your dream can come true if you work hard. Remember, every soccer star was a kid once!

  In soccer, as in life, you must be a good sport. You must respect your opponents and learn from your mistakes. Like the Wild Soccer Bunch, if you lose, you need to pick yourself up and try again. You must never lose hope and never ever give up!

  Your Friend and Teammate,

  Landon Donovan

  JOACHIM MASANNEK

  The Wild Soccer Bunch

  Book 2

  Diego, the Tornado

  Illustrations by Jan Birck

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Wild Soccer Bunch

  The Beginning of the End

  Fabio

  Fabio, the Wizard

  Diego is Right

  At Heaven’s Gate

  It’s All Over

  Scattered in the Wind

  The Applesauce Duel

  Meeting at Camelot

  Never Give Up!

  An Offer You Can’t Refuse

  All Eggs in One Basket

  The Challenge

  Grass Is Red

  The Helpful Penguin

  The Dare

  Judgment Day

  Fabio’s True Colors

  Dead End

  All’s Well as Long as You’re Wild

  The Wild Soccer Bunch

  Ahem! Excuse me? My name is Diego. Diego Hernandez. Maybe you’ve heard of me.

  Some people call me ‘Asthma,’ because I have asthma. Duh! But my friends call me ‘the tornado.’

  Speaking of my friends – we’re called the Wild Soccer Bunch. Here’s the rundown on who’s on the team:

  Danny, the world’s fastest midfielder, he rocks. He’s always in a good mood, and if you ever need advice when the chips are down, Danny is the go-to guy. He has the wildest ideas, and his smile always saves him in a pinch. Even from being grounded. Listen – Danny is wild! But his best friend Kevin is even wilder.

  Kevin, the master dribbler, star striker, and the quickest assist east of the Rockies, fears nothing and no one. He does what he wants when he wants. And all he wants is to win. Period. He’ll even pass the ball instead of scoring the goal himself if it will help the team. But he can be ruthless, too.

  Just before the last game he threw Roger and Josh off the team. He said they were not good enough. Talk about a cold shot! Tyler would never do anything like that.

  Tyler is Kevin’s older brother, and he never gives up either. But he’s not a cutthroat. He’s our number 10, the heart of our team, and he’ll do anything for us. He cuts nifty passes, plays defense and attack. He always is exactly where he needs to be, but you don’t see him. Tyler plays as if he is wearing an invisibility cloak.

  Julian is different: Julian Fort Knox, our all-in-one defender.

  If he’s playing, it’s like three more players are on the field. At least that’s what our opponents think. They complain to the referee that Julian covers them on all four sides. They swear we have ten players on the field. But guess what? When the referee checks, there are only seven. Ha! It’s just that Julian has possession of the ball most of the time and moves so fast, he’s a blur on the field.

  He’ll play to Tyler, who, like Clint Dempsey, cuts a pass forward to the right wing. That’s where Danny races along the sidelines, looking to Kevin to see who will score. And when he’s fouled, Kevin drops to the ground, moaning, writhing in pain. But, if you look closely, you can see the grin on his face.

  And that’s where Alex comes in.

  Alex the cannon Alexander has the strongest kick in the world. But Alex doesn’t say much. Actually, he doesn’t talk at all. Never has, not since I’ve known him, not even on the phone, not even to himself. But when he executes a free kick or takes a shot at the goal, he flashes his famous silent grin and hurls the ball into the net. And sometimes the goalie flies in right along with it.

  “Boom!” we all shout. And we shout “1-2-3 wild!” when he scores. The one shouting the loudest is Roger.

  Roger, the hero. Roger plays soccer the way a blind man takes photographs. That’s what Kevin says and he’s right. But that’s not what matters. Even when Kevin threw him off the team, Roger stuck up for us. He showed real loyalty.

  We had lost pretty much everything: the life-and-death match, our field, and our honor and pride. But then Roger got Larry, our coach, to come back to the team, and then he even scored the winning goal.

  You see, even a player like Roger is important. We know that now. He is a loyal and irreplaceable friend, just like Josh, our superhero. Josh is Julian’s younger brother. He just turned six. Sure, he’s the youngest, but he was the one who saved us. Him and Sox – Kevin and Tyler’s dog, the one with ears so big he looks like a bat – he showed up at the last minute and chased Mickey the bulldozer away. Dude, that was sick! Picture a 200-pound jellyfish jumping over a fence. Still makes us laugh just thinking about it! And ever since that day, we knew we belonged together.

  Actually, I don’t know that. I, Diego the left forward, the tornado … have asthma … and it gets worse every day. Especially since my dad moved out. Some day, it’ll get so bad, they’ll throw me off the team. You see, the competition never sleeps.

  We have two new guys on the team: Kyle, the invincible, and Joey. Joey’s so good it’s as if he puts a spell on the ball. And anyone who scores a goal against Kyle will end up in the Guinness Book of World Records.

  Joey plays midfield for me when I can’t play, because of the asthma. Well, that’s just how it is. Not even Larry can fix asthma.

  Larry is our coach. He’s the best coach in the world and because he is, the Wild Soccer Bunch is the best soccer team in the world. I wouldn’t want to play for any other team. ‘Cause there’s only one thing that makes the world go round: playing for the Wild Soccer Bunch.

  But unfortunately, right now, my world is not spinning. Seriously. There are dangers lurking everywhere and they smack you right in the face when you least expect it. We learned that the hard way. And it was
serious this time. So if you’re reading this book, brace yourselves. This is not a kid’s book. This is real; as real as life. Dangerous and wild.

  It all began when a new student joined our class.

  Fabio, the wizard, the son of a Brazilian soccer star, had moved to Chicago that spring. And believe me, this guy was not our friend. This guy was the enemy; he threatened our very existence.

  And then poof! Suddenly the Wild Soccer Bunch was no more. Suddenly the Wild Soccer Bunch was nothing, zilch, nada. Our opponents were none other than the Furies, and they snubbed us. Yes, you read that right. I’m talking about none other than the hugely successful youth club coached by real pros with ties to Major League Soccer!

  How could we possibly measure up against them? We couldn’t and so the Wild Soccer Bunch was about to be scattered to the seven winds and we’d never see each other again. We were alone.

  Even our coach, Larry, had turned his back on us.

  The Beginning of the End

  Everything started out just beautifully. The time after spring break was simply fantastic. Roger the hero was walking on clouds. Like a curly red balloon wearing glasses with coke bottle lenses, he floated above us and told everyone he met the story of our victory.

  “Dude, you won’t believe it,” Roger said. “We were trailing behind – zero to seven. Really. Against those morons, the Unbeatables. Not only were they bigger, heavier, and wider than us, they were meaner too. You should’ve seen them, all wearing these painted faces, like they were going into combat. They were total freaks! But I went to get Larry, and then – WHAM! We finished them off. It was me, yes, me, who sent them to the great beyond. And I did it with my weaker left foot. BAM!”

  Whenever Roger said “BAM!” we’d laugh. We let him tell the story, although anyone who is anyone knows he doesn’t have a weaker foot. Stands to reason, if you have a weaker foot, you must have a stronger foot, too, and Roger sure doesn’t. No way. But who cares; the rest was true and we felt fantastic! We had beaten the Unbeatables and protected our field from that army of jellyfish. But what was even more important: we had transformed ourselves. We were no longer just a bunch of kids kicking a soccer ball around; we were a real team. A soccer team. We had grown. We were more mature. We were inseparable. And we thought it would last forever.

  But if you were to ask me today what I thought about all this, I’d say this was the beginning of the end. We just didn’t know it yet. We were blind, dreaming like children, resting on our laurels.

  First we had to share Alex’s punishment. He had been grounded for twenty days. Twenty days, are you kidding?! Imagine what that means to a nine-year-old boy. I’ll tell you what it means. It’s a life sentence. Worse. Alex had blasted two mid-size holes into the living room windows of his fancy home at One Woodlawn Avenue, first with a soccer ball and then with a globe. It didn’t help that the globe landed on his father’s head.

  Although we all thought it was funny, Alex’s father saw things in a slightly more serious light. You know, he’s a banker and not a member of the Wild Soccer Bunch, and at a bank, blasting a hole in a window carries a life sentence. No ifs, ands, or buts. So in our minds, the only thing we could do was to stick together… and share Alex’s sentence.

  Twenty days divided by ten, that makes two days each. Two days seemed totally doable. But to Danny, who hates being grounded more than anything, two days were two days too many. And since Danny always has a plan when things are tight and desperate, he came up with a plan this time too.

  Right after school on the first day after spring break, the ten of us went to Alex’s house at fancy One Woodlawn Avenue. The ten of us marched right past Alex’s dumbstruck mother. She had rarely seen so many kids in one place, let alone anything like the Wild Soccer Bunch. The ten of us greeted her politely, looked into her stone face, hoping she’d blink first. She didn’t. So we stormed up the polished stairs, turning them dull as we clobbered them with our feet, and disappeared into the kids’ room.

  The Barbie doll house that belonged to Alex’s sister was still in there, but that didn’t bother us. Danny put the Barbie dolls into the trashcan and handed two pillows to Julia, Alex’s whining sister. Then he explained what a cheerleader does. In the meantime, we transformed the Barbie doll house into a soccer stadium, and began our tournament. It wasn’t a real tournament, though. The idea was to score as many goals as possible. Because according to Danny’s plan, Julia had to dance and cheerlead with each and every goal.

  At first she didn’t think this was fun. She cried and whined and only used the pillows to wipe her nose. But Danny was a very patient teacher. He explained over and over again what she had to do to be a cheerleader. And finally Julia got the hang of it. She tossed the pillows in the air, skipping and dancing and spinning in circles.

  She skipped and danced higher and higher, wilder and wilder, and finally didn’t just skip anymore. She leapt up onto the bed, using the bounce of the mattress to trampoline back down to the ground with a thud.

  BAM! Julia laughed and laughed, but on the floor below us, the ceiling shook. BAM! Exactly the way Danny planned it…

  BAM! The ceiling shook again. CLINK! The crystal chandelier quivered above the dining room table, where Alex’s father sat trying to read his newspaper. BAM! He was disturbed. CLINK! His tightly-wound nerves started to unravel. It was just a matter of time before he would explode. Again, Danny’s brilliant plan.

  Finally, when Alex’s father couldn’t take it anymore, he leapt to his feet and stormed up the stairs. In a nanosecond he stood in the doorway to the kids’ room, with every intention of prolonging his son’s punishment.

  “Gentlemen, I think this is …!” He was about to bite our heads off, when suddenly he lost the ability to speak. There we were, sitting quietly on the ground, innocently looking up at him. Only Julia was bouncing up and down like mad, screeching at the top of her lungs: “Wild Soccer Bunch on the roll! C’mon let’s see another goal!”

  Alex’s father just stood there like a hatchet man who’d swallowed his hatchet so he wouldn’t scare his favorite daughter. He could never be angry with Julia, and that’s exactly what Danny had counted on.

  “Isn’t she cute?” Danny grinned at Alex’s father. “Mr. Alexander, we just couldn’t make her stop, she was so into it.”

  Alex’s father narrowed his eyes and panned from his daughter to Danny. Danny remained calm.

  “Maybe you have the heart to make her stop, Mr. Alexander!” Danny said, encouragingly. “Her jumping is really starting to annoy us.” Julia heard this and froze, then began to sob.

  “Oh no! That’s mean! They are so mean, Daddy!” She wrapped her little arms around her father’s legs. He was ready to do anything. He wanted to kill Danny, but his weapon, the hatchet, was still stuck in his throat.

  Danny took a deep breath.

  “You see, Mr. Alexander!” he sighed. “We didn’t want your daughter to whine like that.”

  It was dead quiet all of the sudden. For a moment, the quiet even swallowed Julia’s whining. Then Alex’s father’s voice worked its way up past the hatchet, and we heard a gurgling: “Out!” he screamed.

  “Excuse me?” Danny asked politely.

  “Out!” this time the voice was clear.

  “But we are grounded, sir!” Danny shot back. Alex’s father didn’t want to hear any of that. He spat out his hatchet.

  “Out! All of you! You are not grounded!!” he ordered unmistakably.

  A moment later we stormed out of the house, down the street and we ran on and on until we were out of earshot. Then we burst into laughter.

  We laughed for at least half an hour. When we couldn’t laugh anymore, we continued on to our original destination – our soccer field and Larry’s food stand.

  If you remember, the Unbeatables destroyed the stand, and we were left to fix it. Well, actually the Unbeatables were supposed to fix it. But Mickey the bulldozer, Humungous, Octopus, Kong, and all those other morons didn’t even think of
keeping their end of the deal. So, because we could not turn our backs on Larry, we had to do it ourselves.

  The next few days and weeks were worry free, real fun and simply fantastic. We fixed the stand, played soccer, and during the breaks, we listened to Larry tell us about past soccer wizards, the likes of Cantona, Zinedine Zidane, Van Basten, and the Brazilian Ronaldo. We closed our eyes and dreamed of being professional soccer players in the MLS. We dreamed of playing in the World Cup! We imagined great soccer stadiums, seats packed, audiences cheering for us as we’d compete with the best teams in the world! Oh yeah! Each and every one of us dreamed that dream, and each and every one of us believed that dream would come true. We truly believed we were close. But in closing our eyes to dream, we couldn’t see what was real any more.

  Remember, I told you, it was the beginning of the end. Even Roger, who was walking on clouds above us like a red balloon, telling everyone the story of our victory, slowly lost air. The story of our victory became stale eventually, and even Larry started yawning when he heard it.

  Once he asked us if an Apache warrior without a warpath was still a warrior, and we looked at him as if he had asked us to play miniature golf on Mars. Then he wanted to know what we’d think of Luke Skywalker if he were hiding from Darth Vader, and we laughed at him, saying Luke Skywalker would never hide. And then he asked us if the Chicago Fire or Colorado Rapids would still exist if Major League Soccer had been abolished.

  We had no idea what he was talking about. They were weird questions and we just didn’t get it. We didn’t want to get it and that’s why we ran straight into our greatest danger yet. A danger that threatened our very existence, destroyed our dreams, and took from us everything we cared about.