In the days before the attack, the soccer players would shout "suicide, suicide!" and "jihad!" when they missed a kick or got into an argument.
No one thought anything of it until last week when more than a dozen police outposts and checkpoints in southern Thailand came under attack from bands of men armed only with machetes.
In all, 107 men were killed in Wednesday's seemingly suicidal raids, including 18 from this village of rubber tappers _ all members of the amateur soccer team.
It was by far the deadliest violence in four months of near daily attacks on policemen, teachers and officials in the predominantly Muslim south of this Buddhist kingdom.
The government blames the violence on drug traffickers operating under the cover of Islamic ideology. But top security officials suspect Muslim separatists and say the region has all the makings for such a movement _ poverty, historical slights and fundamentalist Islamic mentors.
Nowhere was that more evident than in Suso, where most of the dead _ aged 18 to 30 years _ had graduated from Islamic schools and worked as rubber tappers. Soccer was their only pastime, and by playing as a team, they came to form a deeper bond.
The night before the attack, they told their families they wanted to be buried together if something were to happen to them.
"As individuals, these boys wouldn't have done this, but as a team, they did," said Layla Kado, a store owner in a neighboring village.
It is not clear who heads the insurgency, how many members it has or how well-armed it is. A once-defunct group known as Pattani United Liberation Organization, in a Web site posting, warned of more attacks but its role remains unclear.
There is little evidence that foreigners such as the regional terror network Jemaah Islamiyah are involved.
Whoever it is, the masterminds are recruiting only people who have strong religious faith, said Jehissmail Jehmong, a Muslim lawmaker from the region who lost five relatives in Wednesday's carnage.
"They recruit only Muslim extremists, who are poor and uneducated," he said.
Until Wednesday, it wasn't even evident that the movement was entrenched enough to recruit hundreds of zealots for coordinated attacks. Yet many southern Thais have long felt anger toward the Buddhist-dominated government, in part because of their impoverishment.
The region is largely undeveloped and contributes only 1.5 percent to the gross domestic product.
While it has long stretches of beaches, tourism has never taken root here as it has in the rest of the country, known the world over in brochures as the Land of Smiles. Infrastructure is in shambles and there are virtually no industries.
There are also historical grievances. Three provinces _ Narathiwat, Yala and Pattani _ were part of the former independent Muslim kingdom of Pattani, annexed by Thailand in 1902.
The people of the south have strong ethnic and cultural ties with neighboring Malaysia. They speak Yawi, a dialect of Malay, and many identify themselves as Pattanis, not Thais.
The government imposes the Thai language in schools and colleges and gives most government jobs to Buddhist Thais, deepening local resentment.
Violence erupted in the area in January, and since then 97 policemen, teachers and government officials have been killed.
"It is very dangerous now because more than 1,000 people are ready to take up arms to fight to kill. Nobody can stop them because they are not reasonable," said Jehissamial, the legislator.
Resentment among Muslims against the United States for the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq have also heightened the religious zeal. Osama bin Laden is a hero to many and his posters are commonly found on walls.
Adul Wani, a representative of the provincial government in the Suso area, said less than 10 of the 5,000 people who live there have a college education.
Yusrun Payae, a 23-year-old university student, said families who cannot afford mainstream college education send their children to Islamic schools.
While some schools are registered with the government, others are unregistered, surviving on funds from the Middle East and employing Arabic teachers.
Although no one is openly accusing the schools of fomenting religious extremism, the government said last week it will investigate.
Last Wednesday's attacks happened during school holidays when extremists could recruit idle youth, said Ahmed Kamal, the principal of Sasnupatam, a prominent state-registered religious school in Pattani.
Ahmed said strangers hang out with students during breaks at religious schools and poison their minds.
"Even the head of the school would have not known about it," he said.