Image from my photo album

This is a picture that was taken almost a year ago when the FIFA World Cup just started. It was the first couple days of the group stages and on this particular day, my ride or die team Mexico was playing. I have always been a huge fan of soccer and while I don't play it like I used to, I still enjoy watching it. This was their first of three games they had to play in the group stage and on top of that was one of the most important games that they had to play. This was because under no circumstances could they afford to lose against their opponent Poland, the only way they could have realistically entered the knockout stage was either by tying with them or beating them. Poland had very good players including one that is considered to be one of the best forwards/strikers in the world Robert Lewandowski. On top of all that, Mexico had a very lackluster and underwhelming world cup lead up during their qualification campaign, so their world cup performance was expected to be very bad. In this picture I was watching the game with my friends during lunch, the emotions we were all feeling were so passionate and involved a ton of yelling. All of this though came to a sudden halt when at the 58th minute of the game, Poland was given a what could be game changing penalty. For those who don't know a penalty is basically a death sentence in soccer, it's almost a guarantee to be a goal and in games like this one where a goal could make the difference in advancing to the next stage, it was devastating when it was awarded. The penalty taker was none other than Robert Lewandowski, our goalie though was world class. Guillermo Ochoa who is known for his performances in previous world cups however for penalties a goalie is basically guessing where his opponent is going to shoot so my hopes were as high as they could possibly be. As he placed the ball at the 10m mark, the entire lunchroom was silent, not to be cliche but you could hear a pin drop. When the referee blew his whistle to initiate the penalty, I remember my heart sank, I prayed that he would miss it, everything was in slow motion as soon as he made contact with the ball. I quickly realized that it was on target and that the only thing to stop him was our goalie, he guessed the right side and dove to get a hand on the ball and deflect it out of the goal. As soon as he blocked the penalty the entire lunchroom erupted into madness and absolute bliss. Cheering left right and center kids screaming and people jumping around. I was ecstatic, I swear I almost cried I was so happy. I hugged all my friends and relaxed a bit because we still weren't out of the woods since there were still another 40 minutes left. While the game ended up being a 0-0 tie, this picture was taken after the game ended, those pictured were the people I watched that game with all very good friends of mine. Being able to live such an exciting moment about something I'm so passionate about and with all of them make it one of my favorite memories. In retrospect basically all of this was backstory to set up the image, I think without it, it wouldn't convey the same emotion I have for this picture.