It begins with large men walking into a stadium. They hold hands with small children.
Soccer was pretty foreign to me when I was growing up. I never knew anybody who played it until my sister went out with a Yugoslav guy from Hoboken (before the rich bought it) who drove a fast car that growled and hopped. Everyone called him Mike Mercury, I forget his real last name. Anyway soccer became for me something the Yugoslavs did in Hudson County Park.
Later on, when I had kids and they played it became swarms of children running about kicking a ball, then older kids trying to ignore their screaming parents. (I was told by my daughter Kim that I was not to talk to her during games.) I never thought of it as Futbol, thought it was fun to watch, if chaotic, and was put off by the fact that the best team did not win as often as was to be expected. The rare moments of TV soccer lulled me to sleep: the passing back and forth, the drone of a chanting crowd. All of which is to say, I didn't get it.
Why was all the world so mad for it? Why were we in the US largely uninterested? I had heard various arguments, explanations, but the nearest I came to understanding was a comparison to Baseball which I got, and liked. It is something of a meditative sport, long stretches of nothing, but then there are those moments of everything happening all at once so it is a challenge for the players to maintain focus to be ready for those moments when all hell breaks loose. Not enough action. But now I am watching the World Cup and for the first time see and feel why it is called "the beautiful game."
It has become beautiful to me. I see a dance with twenty-two men and a ball. Each side has its own music, each side wants to dance its own dance, and it does when it has control. And the other side must learn their steps, must find a way to enter into that dance so they might take the ball from them, so they might change the rhythm, change the dance, make it their own. They watch, they challenge, they study the other to find the chance where they can see the next movement of the dance before it happens, where they can slip their way in and coax the ball to change partners.
They do not score much. The moments of triumph are few and far between, like life. And if we live for those moments then the game will seem long and often pointless, like life. If we are living for the victories, for those moments of exhilaration then life is a tedious trudge punctuated by brief ecstasies too soon swallowed again by tedium. We too often do not dance the dance to dance, we dance to leap and leap to shake the grasp of gravity: we would always be aloft, if we could. But the beauty of the dancer is that she loves both heaven and earth and brings the two together making harmony with her body. And if sometimes she flies to heaven it is a wonder and if sometimes she falls to earth it too is a wonder for we are beings of both worlds.
Now when I watch I see men of many nations come to dance. They are large men, they hold the hands of children. Do they lead the children or are they led? I like to think the children lead, they are born with dance in them, we were born with dance in us but we forget sometimes and sometimes need a child to show the way. I like Futbol.
Soccer was pretty foreign to me when I was growing up. I never knew anybody who played it until my sister went out with a Yugoslav guy from Hoboken (before the rich bought it) who drove a fast car that growled and hopped. Everyone called him Mike Mercury, I forget his real last name. Anyway soccer became for me something the Yugoslavs did in Hudson County Park.
Later on, when I had kids and they played it became swarms of children running about kicking a ball, then older kids trying to ignore their screaming parents. (I was told by my daughter Kim that I was not to talk to her during games.) I never thought of it as Futbol, thought it was fun to watch, if chaotic, and was put off by the fact that the best team did not win as often as was to be expected. The rare moments of TV soccer lulled me to sleep: the passing back and forth, the drone of a chanting crowd. All of which is to say, I didn't get it.
Why was all the world so mad for it? Why were we in the US largely uninterested? I had heard various arguments, explanations, but the nearest I came to understanding was a comparison to Baseball which I got, and liked. It is something of a meditative sport, long stretches of nothing, but then there are those moments of everything happening all at once so it is a challenge for the players to maintain focus to be ready for those moments when all hell breaks loose. Not enough action. But now I am watching the World Cup and for the first time see and feel why it is called "the beautiful game."
It has become beautiful to me. I see a dance with twenty-two men and a ball. Each side has its own music, each side wants to dance its own dance, and it does when it has control. And the other side must learn their steps, must find a way to enter into that dance so they might take the ball from them, so they might change the rhythm, change the dance, make it their own. They watch, they challenge, they study the other to find the chance where they can see the next movement of the dance before it happens, where they can slip their way in and coax the ball to change partners.
They do not score much. The moments of triumph are few and far between, like life. And if we live for those moments then the game will seem long and often pointless, like life. If we are living for the victories, for those moments of exhilaration then life is a tedious trudge punctuated by brief ecstasies too soon swallowed again by tedium. We too often do not dance the dance to dance, we dance to leap and leap to shake the grasp of gravity: we would always be aloft, if we could. But the beauty of the dancer is that she loves both heaven and earth and brings the two together making harmony with her body. And if sometimes she flies to heaven it is a wonder and if sometimes she falls to earth it too is a wonder for we are beings of both worlds.
Now when I watch I see men of many nations come to dance. They are large men, they hold the hands of children. Do they lead the children or are they led? I like to think the children lead, they are born with dance in them, we were born with dance in us but we forget sometimes and sometimes need a child to show the way. I like Futbol.
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