We feed off that energy of the crowd. Certainly, with a sizable swath of fans on the young side of 16, Python home crowds tend to have energy to spare. In the midst of this hard-sell frenzy, it'd be easy to miss the good stuff. The sideboards add a new dimension to the game, allowing finesse players to carom the ball to seemingly unreachable teammates. The action is claustrophobic and relentless.
Goals flash out of nowhere.
The Pythons, currently clinging to fourth place and a playoff slot with plenty of action left, are an uneven team. But there's the mercurial Lilavois, who scores dazzling goals and holds his ground in every confrontation. There's the popular, mononymic defender Adou, who once played on the Ivory Coast's national team and who abandoned jobs driving a cab in Manhattan and playing for the outdoor minor-league Brooklyn Knights to join the Pythons. In an era when most sports franchises amount to little more than color-coordinated laundry, the Pythons are nothing if not of the people and for the people. I've made my living more indoors than outdoors, that's for sure.