Back in April 1997 there was a meeting of European country managers in Bournemouth. After the meeting, we were all transported to a nearby athletic complex where we changed into shorts and sneakers, were divided into two teams and herded out onto the field to play a game of soccer (sorry – football).

Since I grew up in the USA and thus never played soccer, I volunteered to be the goalie for our team. (I hate to admit it, but our team lost, but I assure you it was due to the poor play of the rest of my team and not because of my inexperience!). You can’t imagine how hilarious it was to watch mostly middle-aged men running around in shorts trying not to embarrass themselves in front of their peers (it’s a guy thing).

My two fullbacks were from Chase Italy, and one of their colleagues who was not playing  positioned himself behind my goal. For most of the game there was a constant stream of ‘enthusiastic Italian’ being exchanged among these three, with me in the middle. I could not understand a word, but could get the gist. Since then I have always felt that one of the disappointments in my life was that I never learned how to cuss in Italian.

After we had thoroughly embarrassed ourselves, we were rewarded with the medal, shown here.