In our Summer 2008 issue, Precedent wrote about Toronto’s Mundiavocat team, who travelled to Alicante, Spain to play soccer against teams of lawyers from all over the world. We promised to update readers with the results; In the end, the Toronto team placed 33rd overall, improving on last year’s ranking and coming first in their bracket. Here’s Rick Lamanna’s account of the game:
It is fair to say that “shock and awe” is an accurate way to describe the performance of Team Toronto at the 14th edition of the Mundiavocat. After being drawn in one of the “Groups of Death” with teams from Potenza of Italy, Tel Aviv of Israel (2006 Quarter-finalist) and Budapest of Hungary (Three-time finalists), there were likely many at the tournament who saw Toronto as incapable of competing against such talented squads, if they were thinking about us at all. Out of the 54 teams and 14 groups, many likely considered the team as an also-ran waiting to be beaten by the more experienced teams.
In our first match, Toronto was able to gain the most important victory in its young history with a hard-fought win over Potenza, 1-0. “Shock” is a nice way of describing the reactions of the Italians after the match. The next two games were evenly battled with Toronto finishing on the lesser side of 2-0 losses, both matches featuring somewhat dubious penalty shot calls against the team.
This meant Toronto was placed in a consolation round and would play teams from Osaka and Tokyo, Japan, respectively, Rosario of Argentina and Haifa of Israel. This is where all the training and good old Canadian grit came into play as Team Toronto earned wins in each of these games to win the aforementioned consolation round, gaining newfound respect and admiration from our colleagues around the world with our “sexy football” and fantastic work ethic. Indeed, shock and awe was in full gear when it came to conversations concerning Team Toronto, which easily finished as Canada´s best team at the tournament (Vancouver placing 40th and Quebec 54th of 54 teams, respectively) and is very much looking forward to 2010 when the Mundiavocat goes to Italy for the first time.