For a kid whose deep brown eyes light up when asked about the game, it's no surprise that Haitian 15-year-old Wensshell Fergusson was on a pitch that early evening in January when the first wave of the devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake sent shock and chaos throughout his home of Port au Prince.
Throughout the country, already the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, villages were thrown into tumult. Houses collapsed, roads were broken.
And on the patch of grass where Fergusson played, a neighborhood soccer game was halted. The ground shook beneath their feet and the kids scattered, running to their homes as buildings collapsed around them.
Fergusson, who is with his team L'Athletique Haiti at the Schwan's USA Cup this week, breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that his house was intact. He wasn't thinking of it then, but it would be the last time he kicked around a ball for a while.
The fields where L'Athletique practice were covered in debris; the concrete wall surrounding them -- which keeps out those with less than benevolent intentions, had crumbled.
"A lot of places where there used to be houses, there aren't anymore," said teammate Jean Franceus Frackenson France through translator Stephanie Pereira, the team's general manager. "Everything was crazy; there was a lot of rubble and sometimes you just couldn't walk to get anywhere."
France's house was still standing. He had friends who weren't as lucky.
But no one talks about it, he said. The field is where they can come and be kids in a place where they have been stripped of nearly everything else.
"We just joke around when we play," France said of the games played on a small field in his neighborhood.
The field there remains nearly the same, he said, the houses around it left untouched. From the view of mid-pitch, it almost looks like it did before. From there, they can't see the bare spots where houses once were, the ruins where people, like France's uncle, who was caught in the rubble, died.
Wensshell -- who didn't play in Haiti's 2-2 tie with the Edina Sting on Wednesday because of a toe injury -- sat on a grassy mound outside the complex.
"I've almost forgotten what it looks like [to have flat roads and standing buildings everywhere]," he said.
After a month, the fields re-opened. "I enjoy everything more now," said Wensshell, who grins when he talks about his idol, Brazil's Lucimar Ferreira da Silva (Lucio). "But I take the game so much more seriously now, because I believe if I can become a professional, I can be something."
Penny Coon, who has kids of her own playing in the tournament, is hosting four Haitians.
"It's a dream come true for them," she said, tears in her eyes as she talked about the kids she says have become "her boys."
"At some point they're going to have to go back to reality, but here, they can experience life. I think it might help when they go back, to know there's another world out there."
It's a chance to live in air-conditioned houses, to eat hamburgers and pizza instead of their normal rice and beans, to go to swimming pools, and the lakes and to barbecue.
For kids living in a world of chaos and loss, one might think those things sound unimaginably good. But in Fergusson's idea of a perfect world, the food, the convenience, the entertainment fall second line.
"It would be on a soccer field," he said with a shy smile. "Here."
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