Eduardo Galeano’s Soccer in Sun and Shadow is widely viewed as one of the most lauded books written about soccer to this day. Rather than providing a standard ‘nuts and bolts’ account of the game, forcing the reader to sift through countless names, dates and statistics, Galeano instead provides his readers with 150 short sketches about the game. With topics as broad as “the Ball” and as specific as the “Goal by Atilio,” these sketches lay out a sweeping account of soccer’s history. But at as the “Author’s Confession” makes clear, these fragmentary sketches are also a biographical account of the history of the game seen through Galeano’s own eyes, focusing on the important events that shaped his understanding of the game.
Andi Thomas, a sportswriter for sbnation.com, providing an excellent reflection on the importance of Soccer in Sun and Shadow last year after Galeano passed away at the age of 74.
http://www.sbnation.com/soccer/2015/4/13/8403253/eduardo-galeano-soccer-in-sun-and-shadow-review
This week the Duke “Soccer Politics” class is reading Galeano’s book and we are asking the students to write in the spirit of Galeano in one of two ways:
- Write your own Author’s Confession. Galeano confesses how he was never a great player, so bad that as he puts it he was: “the worst wooden leg ever to set foot on the little soccer fields of his country,” but yet could still be a great player in his dreams (2013: 1). Following Galeano, write a short sketch explaining how you came to be influenced by the game – how soccer became a part of your life. Did you play soccer? Was it through the lecture on the first day? Or even through Galeano’s book? And secondly, how does biographical detail color the way you feel about the game.
- Write a short sketch about a particular soccer-related event or object that you know well or find interesting. Is there a particular player that captivates your imagination? Or perhaps an engrossing penalty/save that you can remember particularly well? Maybe it’s a particular object that Galeano doesn’t include like soccer cleats or team jersey. Whatever the event/object, layout the steps, the background context, and/or why you think it’s important or important to you.
Students are also encouraged to incorporate other material aids –photos, videos, audio – related to their posts. Here’s a clip that influenced my early relationship with soccer from the 1994 World Cup to get the ball rolling:
And if don’t have particular events or objects that you can draw on from your own life, you can find inspiration from these earlier blog posts that provide videos of some of the goals described by Galeano himself. You can also use the wide range of materials produced by earlier students and available on the site as a source for inspiration, by looking at the Tournament Guides or searching blog posts by topic.
Soccer has been my number one sports since I was six years old. It was the sports all my friends played. I grew up in Korea, where the culture and system of youth sports or school sports have not been established firmly yet. In Korea, for children and students, studying should be the number one priority. So when I say I “played soccer” when I was young, I do not mean that I was enrolled in a varsity team since elementary school and had scheduled practices and matches. What I mean by I “played soccer” is I played soccer everywhere I can; nearby parks, school field, my neighborhood alleys and so on. Even without any kind of organizational support, my passion in playing soccer never died.
I know I used an expression “lack of organizational support” in my first paragraph but it was not until high school I finally started to feel that in my soccer life. Ever since I felt that, soccer became an eternal thirst in my life. I am always thirsty of playing more soccer. Both my middle school and high school, not to mention my elementary school, did not have an official varsity soccer team. Of course there were soccer clubs that did not have a coach or any kind of supporting staff. I, as a captain, was in charge of everything. I had to beg to the players on our team to please come out to practice so that we could at least have a 7 vs 7 scrimmage. I had to create an organization by myself from nothing to start a high school soccer league in our area. My friends and I cleared up the soccer field covered in several inches of snow to play soccer. We also escaped from our high school dorm to watch Champions League Finals. Just like that, soccer has always been the thirst of my life. I guess that thirst is still on-going.
Growing up in Indiana the biggest sports were basketball, cycling, and farming. So needless to say I never paid to much attention to soccer, In fact, I disliked it. “Who wants to see people kick a ball and not score for 90 minutes?” However, I was a competitive kid. I wanted to do as many sports as I could do. so my brother and I, who were 10 and 11, signed up for a local team. Speck, my brother, played striker while I played goalie. We had a good time playing but we never thought it was to spectacular, so we shifted to other sports. Years go by, I pick up boxing and Speck picks up video games. One day I come home to find Speck and our friends gathered around playing FIFA. I start with my normal “soccer? Looks boring… lets play a real game.” But they are getting really into this video game so naturally I need a turn and all of the sudden I’m a FIFA guy. Played for days, couldn’t stop. Wake up, box, school, FIFA, day after day. I was a full on FIFA nerd, and that was really the peek of my soccer interest. That is until Monday, June 16, 2014 at 6 PM, thought Id tune into the world cup, maybe catch the first half. Game starts, announcers still talking about how hard it was to pick what spikes to wear and it happened. 30 seconds into the first game Dempsey sinks one and I was hooked.
For many years, soccer was never my “choice” sport. Although I was a perennial titan of the FIFA video game series, my skills on the “box” didn’t translate to skills on the pitch. Up until my senior year of high school, I was known as the man with “2 left feet”. Despite not being very talented, I decided to play in a summer league. Over the summer I fell in love with the exhilaration of skilling past defenders and scoring goals. The rush I obtained from beating a defender and scoring an “absolute firecracker” was unparalleled. My experiences have thus molded the lenses through which I view the game today. I enjoy the small controlled touches and flicks, the placement of corner kicks and shots, and the cheeky and daring moves. Quite simply, I enjoy the beauty of the game.
My love for the beauty of the game is embodied in my love for my favorite player, Andrea Pirlo. “L’architetto” as he is known in Italian, Andrea Pirlo plays the game with a unique style. By many standards he is nowhere near the most physically gifted players of all time, however he plays the game gracefully and with precision. One of the most memorable moments for me came when he scored a chip penalty against Joe Hart in UEFA 2012. Down 2-1 in penalties, the audacity and skill to pull off a chip penalty is remarkable. However, this audacity is why Pirlo is simply brilliant in so many aspects of the game. Because he is so daring in his approach, his free kick and passing abilities are among the all time best. However, possibly his greatest attribute is his ability to lead the Azzurri and Juventus. His legacy will be remembered not only by Italians but also by fans of the sport for generations to come. Semplicemente il migliore!
As the youngest of six brothers, my childhood often meant following in my brothers’ footsteps. That was especially true in sports. I played the sports my older brothers did, or missed out on others after one of them screwed up (as was the case with baseball after my brother got concussed in the outfield by a fly ball). Soccer was the sport we played earliest on, with AYSO beginning in early elementary school. And I was quite good. I was fairly undersized, but I was quick, relentless, and read my opponents well, and thus wowed my coaches with my backfield skill. There was one play in particular I will always remember. The other team was attacking with full force, and since soccer tactics were essentially non-existent at that young of an age, our defense was just man-to-man. As the sweeper, I’d gotten stuck with their fastest kid, who, as their team attack progressed, drifted out to the side of the box and virtually out of the play. While marking him, I watched as one of my teammates completely left his man wide open right in front of goal. I took off as fast as I could along the goal line, watching as this open man received the pass. He wound up for the shot and blasted it at the goal, and just past my goalie (who had come off his line). But I was there. I made it in time, and stopped the shot with my knee. What made this save particularly memorable was not how close it came to a goal, but that when I stopped it, the ball deflected off my leg and into the face of my goalie, who had turned after his miss to watch the ball. Time had to be called as my goalie began to loudly weep from the pain. I had never been so conflicted in my athletic career – here I had just made a great a play, but in doing so brought my friend significant pain. Was the emotional stress worth it just to block one goal in a youth soccer match? I still don’t know.
Sadly, my soccer career came to a close at the end of elementary school, after my mother declined an offer for me to join the local club since its games sometimes conflicted with church service. It wasn’t until I got to Duke and started watching the World Cup and Premier League that my interest in soccer revived.
Soccer is considered the “King” sport in my country. I did not know why it was the case but almost every man talk and watch and play soccer, from my dad, my grandpa to my classmates. Following them, I started watching professional soccer in 2005. I did not really understand why but it seemed to me that everyone had their favorite team to support. By that time, the Premier League was really popular in my country and Chelsea was the best team in the league. Thus, I chose to support Chelsea. Barely did I know that it would be one of the best decisions that I have ever made in my life.
It was pretty challenging at the beginning since the time on TV of Premier League matches was really late, usually around midnight. For a primary school student, it was a big problem. However, I did not feel discouraged, rather excited instead. Somehow, I managed to follow almost all Chelsea’s matches ever since. And soon I realized that, unlike my dad or my grandpa who just watched soccer for entertainment, I felt in love with it. I could remember all the names of our players. The team we had from 2005-2009 could be our golden generation and I doubted that we could ever be at this top class again.
But even with best players around the world like Drogba, Lampard, Terry, Cech etc., we could not win the Champion League just once during this period. We came really close in 2008 when we got into the final to face Manchester United. But Terry’s penalty miss cost us our first ever highest trophy at club level. It was a cold rainy night in Moscow. After the end of a 1-1 draw in a 120-minute playing time, the match went on to the penalty shot-out. The captain took what could have been the decisive penalty, but slipped on the run-up and hit the post to send the shoot-out into sudden death. And we eventually lost to Manchester United. It was my saddest moment ever watching soccer. Terry cried like a baby while the other players collapsed in tears.
Four years later, in a season with a lot of problems, somehow, we got into the Champion League final again, facing the strongest club in Europe at that time, Bayern Munich, on their home field. Nobody thought we stood a chance with an incomplete team due to by cards suspension and injuries. The main players were no matched to themselves in the past. Drogba was 34 years old, Lampard 32 years old while Terry could not attend the game due to the red card from the semi-final. Indeed, Bayern Munich was dominating for the entire match. They created infinitely many clear chances and even got the lead 1-0. As the match proceeded into death time, when everyone, including me, thought of an easy victory for Bayern, we received a corner kick and the ball was passed into Bayern’s penalty aread. Something magical happened. Didier Drogba sprinted up towards the ball’s path, jumped higher than all everyone, and levelled things up with a bullet header at the death. The game went on to penalty shot-out one more time. And after Bastian Schweinsteiger’s penalty, it was Drogba moment of destiny. He calmly took the decisive penalty and defeated Neuer to spark wild scenes of elation among Chelsea’s players, staff and supporters. It was one of the best moments of my life ever.
Reflecting back, now I realize it was those moments of sadness and happiness in the game that drew me in and made me fall in love with soccer so bad. Currently, the season is not going really well, could be the worst season of Chelsea ever since I supported the club. But I am still really optimistic. “The Blues”- our nick name- means hope. We never lose hope until the last minute and it is our tradition to come back season after season no matter how bad it was.
Fun fact: I was watching Chelsea vs Watford while writing this blog post 🙂
I played a season of soccer when I was seven years old, and I remember hating it. I lacked any talent for the game, being generally uncoordinated and unable to do any of the drills we learned, and this turned me away from the game. Many of my friends would play soccer during recess in elementary school, but I told myself that there was no way I would repeat my mistakes again.
Right around the middle of 2010, my friend showed me some YouTube videos of a certain goalkeeper named Iker Casillas. I was amazed at the acrobatic saves he made, and I would spend a lot of time watching soccer highlights online. I spent a large part of that summer at a program at the University of Pennsylvania, where quite a few of my friends were soccer fans. As it so happened, the World Cup was taking place during this time, so I found myself following the sport much more than I had any other sport ever in my life. I remember watching the US climb back from being 2-0 down against Slovenia and Donovan’s last-minute goal against Algeria to secure a place in the next round. When the US got eliminated, I began following Spain and got to see the extreme emotion when they won their first World Cup.
My interest in soccer waned somewhat after that summer, and it wasn’t until I came to Duke that I began regularly following league soccer. My cousin has been an Arsenal fan his entire life, so I decided to follow them as well. I enjoyed watching their teamwork and passing (Wilshere’s goal against Norwich in 2013 remains one of my favorite goals ever). I also bought FIFA 13 and started playing it religiously; I was never quite good at skill moves or dribbling in-game, but I found that I could emulate the passing I saw in the real-life Arsenal and score some wonderful team goals. Since then, I have gotten much more interested in the Premier League as a whole, and while I am still rooting for Arsenal to win the title this season, I have been thoroughly entertained by the twists and turns, especially with Leicester still sitting at the top of the table and Chelsea in the bottom half.
My first experience with soccer came when I was 5 years old and joined my first soccer team. I was terrible at the sport and got no enjoyment out of it, so it wasn’t long before I quit. I hardly thought about soccer again after that until I started dating my recent ex-boyfriend almost 3 years ago. He played soccer in college and is a diehard Spurs fan. The fact that he spends a considerable amount of his free time on online forums to chat with fellow soccer fans and wakes up at ungodly hours to attend Spurs watch parties highlights the role that soccer plays in his life. He often sent me videos of Spurs fans chanting, and I’ve even accompanied him to Spurs sports bars. Seeing the raw emotions that soccer ignites in him as well as his deep love and appreciation for all aspects of the game made me realize that to him, soccer is not only a sport, but a reflection of the human experience at large. The Bromberger article I recently read detailing this idea did not seem far-fetched to me after years of witnessing my ex’s experiences with soccer. With regard to biographical details, I believe such details are crucial to conveying soccer’s significance and impact in a way that numbers and statistics cannot. I thoroughly enjoyed Galeano’s book and found that the biographical sketches he provided made me feel deeply connected to his humanity and gave me an authentic glimpse of his love of the game. As someone whose personal experiences with soccer are much more limited than those of many of my classmates, I highly value the personal approach that Galeano takes to his work.
Started off from watching the elegance of Robert Baggio and agility of Del Piero, I quickly indulged myself into the game of soccer. However, growing up in China, it wasn’t an easy thing for me to play soccer even at a recreational level. Although there has always been a huge fan base as well as massive TV programming on air for the Primer League and Italian Series A League, soccer is just not a sport that Chinese parents would like their kids to participate in, as it is always related with fights and rude behaviors. Actually, most Chinese parents just want their kids to always focus on academic. And things like soccer were definitely treated as distractions for kids. What is more, that was a period when China wasn’t really developed yet. There wasn’t anything close to a soccer court in my primary school and also middle school. There wasn’t any local youth club or even school teams. If we wanted to play soccer, the first thing we needed to do is to find a empty, safe space.
However, all of these obstacles couldn’t stop a kid to pursue things that make him happy. It’s probably due to these deterrents, I’ve became to cherish every single moment that I got the chance to play soccer. I still remember that in primary school, everyday after school we would rush to a non-vehicle road nearby, put down four backpacks to locate the “gate”, and started playing until dark. In middle school, soccer was banned on campus as the school officials thought it was too dangerous for us to play. At ass result, we started to use empty plastic water bottles or even bottle caps as substitute of balls, and played soccer-ish game on cement ground. Ridiculous as all these might sound to you, it was definitely one of the happiest memories for me.
When I was five, I tried every sport. Basketball, softball, tennis, dance, lacrosse, field hockey, golf. I was on a rec team for each of these sports at one point in my life. The one that I kept telling my parents I was excited for, the one that I played in my backyard after preschool and before bed time, the one that I kept crawling back to was soccer. Also, what 5 year old wouldn’t enjoy an activity where halfway through you’re fed fresh orange slices and juicy grapes by your mommy? I definitely didn’t look past that…
I have two older brothers who played baseball and football, so my parents never had exposure soccer until I chose it as “my sport.” There came a time when my brothers practiced baseball at the same time and park as I practiced soccer. My parents spent countless hours driving us to and from practices, games, and tournaments. I think they realized pretty quickly that my siblings and I released all of our pent up emotions and stress through our respective sports… instead of out on them.
I played club soccer for 10 years, until I was 16. I was also on my high school soccer team, and senior year we won the State Championship. I couldn’t escape my addiction for the sport in college, so I joined the club soccer team.
I think the biographical details that I read throughout the first half of Galeano’s book helped me realize how many moments throughout my soccer career I’ve forgotten about. He records events that might only exist in the memory of a few supporters and brings them back to life in his book. So I decided to think back through some of the games that I could remember to reincarnate one of these dead and forgotten moments.
I think the memory I’ve hidden within the deepest depths of my soul was back in 2007 when I blew the U10 State Championship for my team.
PK’s.
3rd in line to shoot.
Both teams have made both their shots so far.
My turn.
I walk up to the ball. Take a glance at the goal then focus my gaze back onto the part of the ball I’m going to make contact with.
Take my steps back. Approach.
*boing
Off the post.
The other team makes their next three shots and win the trophy.
This moment, although scaring me from taking PK’s for basically the rest of my career, made me mindful at an early age of the unpredictable and crazy dynamic that the course of each game can take. One moment, one split decision can be the difference between gold and silver.
Usually when I remember this moment, I remember is as worse than it was. The PK attempt wasn’t a terrible fail, but it still makes me think of the attempts in this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jG1TRFIj6c
Why do I keep coming back for more of the game if it can be so frustrating and unpredictable?
Maybe it’s the grapes I now always pack myself for halftime.
-CJM #GoSpurs
I began playing soccer in kindergarten on our local recreation league team. Our games were 5 on 5 and consisted of the mob of children on each team chasing the ball around the field until someone miraculously managed to kick it into the goal. There was no strategy or finesse in this game, we had not yet developed an appreciation for the skills of spacing the field or passing to move the defense and find an opening. As I grew and developed so too did my skill set and the complexity of the game. In 4th grade we were introduced to full goals with nets and the goalie position. Suddenly the field had expanded to a much larger size and we realized that massing around the ball was not the most effective way to score goals. We gained positions: midfielder, winger, defender, striker. We began to utilize crosses and the space of the field to exploit holes in the opposition and score goals. My growth with soccer in many ways mirrored the historical development of the sport itself.
Once I moved onto middle school I was introduced American football and had to make a decision about which sport I would play. I ended up choosing football and from there my experience with organized soccer ended. However, soccer remains the first sport I ever played, my introduction to the realm of sports which I continue to enjoy to this day. Whether it is a pickup soccer game with some my friends or a game of FIFA, I continue to leave space for soccer in my life.
Like many girls in their elementary school years in Suburban America, I had my first brush with soccer around the age of 6. I was never really any good, and actually felt bad for playing against my friends and classmates on the other teams in the league (only further emphasizing how competitive team sports were not for me). The straw that broke the camel’s back came when one of my teammates was kicked right in the face during a game and her nose started bleeding like crazy; my own extremely low pain tolerance made even witnessing this event unbearable, and I just knew that this game would be my last.
Ever since, I have not really followed soccer outside of the celebrities it has produced. I love David Beckham and appreciated the movie Bend It Like Beckham just as much as the next tween. I vaguely know about Hope Solo and Mia Hamm, and I pretend like I know what team Christian Ronaldo plays for. Despite how much I acknowledge that soccer has produced some of the most well known celebrities in the world, I still haven’t been able to grasp why soccer is such a big deal to so many countries when it takes such a backseat in the United States. Even further, it is interesting how even those Americans who do care a lot about soccer (my older brother being one of them) and who wake up at the crack of dawn to watch their favorite European teams play are sometimes made to feel ridiculous and out of place.
Admittedly, my view of soccer is incredibly cliché “American”; I am sure that my perception largely has to do with the fact that Americans historically have never been that good at it, nor have they made it one of their priorities as fans (especially in relation to sports like baseball, football, and basketball). In a strange way, I am almost glad that a sport like this exists to put a dent, however slight it may be, in the frequently held notion that Americans are the pioneers of everything. In other words, the idea that a phenomenon as massive and influential as soccer exists mostly outside of the United States highlights that the rest of the world still is capable of shaping global culture. I think that this is an important reminder for many Americans, especially in an age where the US’s cultural imperialist mindset still very much thrives.
The Armband
It’s uncomfortable, always sliding down your arm, and clumsy to put on with short sleeve jerseys. Oh, also it hinders your blood flow on your arm for 90 minutes. It wastes time during substitutions if you are the captain (which may actually be what you want) and puts a spotlight on you on the field.
Regardless, next to the referee’s whistle, it may be the strongest symbol of authority on the soccer field. You have the permission to yell at the referee, other players, and best of all, your own teammates without fear. All because of an accessory that normally would be a fashion faux pas.
Sometimes it’s the oldest player or the best player. Other times it’s the smartest player or the central midfielder, or both (think Gerrard). Or perhaps the goalie because they can see the entire field, yell louder than anyone else on the team, and has the biggest hands.
But sometimes, even if you bear all of the above, that dang manager just won’t give you the armband. In many cases, it is rather the composed, collected player that makes the best wearer of the neon band. Some are just great players that do not need to lead through their voice but through their feet.
My first soccer equipment I ever owned was curiously a South Korea captain’s armband replica. My dad and I were walking through the 100,000 that crowded in downtown Seoul for the 2002 quarter-final against Spain, and it was the only thing my allowance could afford from the soccer street vendors. I’ve kept that dirty band for 13 years. It’s a memoir not only to the 2002 WC and start of my love of soccer, but also the physical manifestation of my Korean patriotism. The armband demands absolute devotion. Only with proven loyalty are you allowed to wear the most uncomfortable equipment on the field.
#COYS
#3-0 Spurs v Norwich
When I was 9 I left New York for school in England. The decision was never mine to make. Despite holding dual citizenship between the US and the UK I have always considered myself fully American and as a result rejected many things that are British. Sports was one of those fields in which I preferred the American side. I grew up an avid Baseball fan but have since became more into football, basketball and ice hockey. Therefore in England I held no love for rugby and soccer, I would only care at the national level and again I would always support America and never England. As such, during my time in England I always hated both the World and Euro cups because of how obnoxious the support for soccer was there when England was in the cups (same with rugby but that’s not prudent to this class). I was always more jubilant whenever England was knocked out of the tournaments while I was there (2002-2011) and I remember distinctly every time their tournament runs came to an end. The exception was the 2008 Euro Cup because England failed to qualify for it much to the embarrassment of the nation (and joy to me). I will always remember the indignation of the country for the national teams loses, especially the 4-1 loss to Germany in the 2010 World Cup quarter finals where the ref completely missed a clear goal by Frank Lampard that would have tied the game at 2-2. However of all these moments the one I will always remember most clearly would be the 2004 Euro Cup quarterfinals loss to Portugal.
The 2004 Euro Cup will always be remembered in Europe for the sheer fact that it was not won by one of the European powerhouses of that period (France, Germany, Portugal, Spain Czech Republic or England) but by Greece. As with all international tournaments the 2004 Euro Cup united the nation behind the team. The English national team is always expected to advance to the knockout stages of international competition (which made their failures in 2014 even better) and Euro 2004 was no different. That year England had come second in their group, due to an embarrassing loss to France in which they conceded two goals to the French in stoppage time (both to Zidane). Therefore England would face the hosts Portugal (the winners of their group) in the Quarterfinals. The game itself was good. After 90 minutes they were tied 1-1 and then after extra time it was 2-2. This would mean penalties, something the English team can’t seem to win on. It was this penalty shootout that eliminated England that I will always remember for two reason, two particular penalties, England’s first penalty and Portugal’s winning penalty.
The very first English penalty will always be remembered in infamy by all English fans who can remember it and even those who don’t because of the internet and youtube (link to the penalty will be at the end of the post). The star of the English national team, the captain, one of the most skilled and accurate free kick takers in history, the symbol of English soccer abroad who was so famous that most Americans knew who he was even if they didn’t follow soccer (made more so when he joined LA Galaxy towards the end of his career) and a sex symbol of soccer, David Beckham, was the first to take a penalty for England. This penalty will forever be etched into the minds of those who have seen it, like myself, or will have at least heard of it if you ever as an English soccer fan about Beckham. Beckham claims that the ball moved slightly before he kicked it, that the turf was churned up a bit, etc. but whatever excuses he gives it does not excuse the fact that it was one of the worst penalties in English soccer history, if not in the history of all soccer at the highest of levels. To me it was glorious, hilarious, fitting, but to an English fan it was an embarrassment, humiliating, in a sense crushing in its horror. Number 7. an artist of the free kick, blasted the ball not just over the crossbar but at least into the middle, if not the upper, tier of the stands above the goal. How this happened and how it was done by someone of Beckham’s skill is hard to explain but it did. While it was just the first penalty of the shootout some English fans will claim it was the decisive penalty that lost the game for them. However it was the winning penalty for Portugal that was the most embarrassing for the team.
After 5 penalties the teams were tied at 4 apiece, this starting the sudden death shootout. Both teams made their next penalty to tie it at 5. England was the first in the next pair and finally they were stopped by the Portuguese goalkeeper, Ricardo, after converting the previous 5 penalties. It was sudden death so Portugal had the chance to win if they scored the next penalty and Ricardo himself decided to take it. In my mind the ultimate humiliation at the end of a penalty shootout is to lose to a penalty scored by the opposing goalkeeper and that is what Ricardo did to English team in 2004 with his game winning penalty to end the shootout 6-5 and advance Portugal to the semi finals (they would lose to Greece in the final). England was out again and Beckham’s penalty will be remembered for an eternity to English fans.
Two years later in the 2006 World Cup quarterfinals in Germany England was in a position to avenge themselves from 2004 when again they went to penalties against Portugal. Another game that will go down in English soccer history for Ronaldo’s actions in getting Wayne Rooney sent off during the game, England again lost in penalties. Again the hero was Ricardo who cleanly saved 3 of the 4 English penalties including 2 from2 of the stars of England at the time, Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXvGgb-P_7Y
Forgot to post this with my response
Soccer was probably the first sport I ever played. It was part of my childhood and my first step as an athlete. Where I lived, soccer was all about the community and being active. Almost every kid I knew played in a Saturday soccer league. It was the first sport for many of my friends and it became a launch pad for other athletic interests later in childhood. The game as I learned it, didn’t have much structure and not many rules. It was a scrum most of the time and maybe you got lucky enough to touch the ball a few times and score. The quality of play was very poor and stayed that way for at least a couple years until we learned how the sport was played the right way. Professional Soccer wasn’t a sport that my community watched so no one had an image of how the sport should be played or had professionals to look up to their styles of play. I think I played for 2 or 3 years and then switched my attention to little league baseball.
The reason why soccer didn’t become a major staple in my athletic career was the lack of easy access to leagues when I was in late grade school and in middle school. By that time, soccer was organized in expensive and exclusive travel teams. There was an uncertainty in how it all worked and there was a large barrier to entry when you didn’t have great soccer skills or the knowledge of how the leagues were organized. I switched my attention to baseball at that time and it was a much easier sport to navigate and participate in.
While I wouldn’t say that soccer was a big part of my athletic career, it was the first step of being formally active and engaged in formal “play”. It definitely helped me build up strength as an athlete and was the platform on which I learned my first lessons of teamwork. I think my path to and from soccer is common for many American boys as it was small part of children’s’ athletic careers. For why soccer was never a dominant sport, I attribute that to American sport culture and the popularity of baseball, basketball and football.
My core group of friends back in elementary school was composed of little ten-year-olds who loved soccer. As the years went on, they were the ones who spent hours keeping up with the Premier League and the Copa America every four years. They knew all the players names when the World Cup rolled around, and they knew the personalities of the different national teams. I was not like my friends. While they ranged from reasonably athletic to fully athletic, I would have described myself as having as much control over my limbs as I need with the occasional mistake of walking into walls. I joined them at recess for all those years, and we played soccer and had a good time. My first experience playing a little more seriously was a fun, casual soccer camp I went to for a month sometime in middle school. I had never done any kind of summer camp before, so the whole experience was somewhat traumatizing in that respect. But the most vivid memory that stuck with me was when I tried to play keeper one day. We were playing on smaller goals for our sizes, and I had seen the older kids playing keeper do it really well. I thought I was up for it, but then proceeded to flinch away from every shot that was taken and catch some heat from my team. The Cameron Crazies chant “You let the whole team down!” once in a while, and it very much felt like that. After resolving to forever exile myself from the position of goalie, I started to appreciate more the special needs of each position. While we were working on the basic bits of soccer like dribbling, passing, and shooting, I started to work out how each position fit into the big picture of the team.
After that summer, I wasn’t really significantly more athletic, but I started to enjoy our lunchtime soccer games a lot more out on the fields at my school. We never played positions at recess. You’d have those of us who tend towards defending and attacking, but they were pickup games that were largely freeform (looking a lot like minnows swarming about in a shallow pool) and entirely for fun. I only really developed my interest in soccer with the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Bandwagoning with Spain for lack of any knowledge of other teams, I really enjoyed watching their passing heavy play style and started to learn and look for the personalities of the different national teams with Germany team being my second favorite to watch during that tournament. The fun of watching the game being played day in and day out of that tournament carried into the following summer when I got really into the Women’s World Cup. I found myself very invested in the US National Team and following Japan, Sweden, and Brazil closely for the challenges they presented to us going into elimination matches.
To this day, I don’t follow the Premier League or other leagues because I don’t think I have the time to get to know their teams and follow their games religiously as some do. To that point, I know I’m missing out on the vast majority of soccer action that goes on, but I really like watching entire country’s get behind their national teams. For the most part, this is how soccer has come to fit into my life, and with respect to my friends, not much has changed. We still go back for winter and summer breaks and get together small and large pickup games that we play at our high school for old times’ sake.
I have always considered soccer to be a family sport. My dad played for the national team in Vietnam back in the day (but to be fair Vietnam has never been a truly amazing team) and both my brother and sister were high school all-stars and junior Olympic soccer players. Naturally, I attempted to follow suit but I, like Galeano, found myself too uncoordinated for the game. I remember growing up and watching all the stars – Ronaldinho, Zidane, Beckham, etc – on TV and wishing to be like them one day. Sadly, I was never the best dribbler, shooter, or passer but in my dreams I was all these things and more. My ineptness at soccer has never deterred me from loving the game and I found other ways to succeed to compensate for my lack of physical ability. Using my skills and footwork as a basketball player, I learned how to map out routes before my opponents took them and prevent them from scoring. While in no means am I arguing that defenders are less skilled, I simply found a niche that I could love and play without being a complete liability to my team. In the end, I knew I would soccer would only be a hobby, albeit a competitive one, for me, but I still love to strap on a pair of cleats and run up and down the pitch in the pickup soccer games at home and go kick the ball around with friends. The effect that soccer has had on my life goes way beyond playing the game. Soccer has been a way of bringing our family together, as we all huddle together and bond over watching the World Cup and other tournaments on the television. We even love playing the FIFA games, as we can live our dreams of being world-class players on the virtual pitch. Nowadays, I play soccer on an IM team and in a soccer class where I am free to experiment with new positions and develop my skills with very little stakes. In this way, the thrill of soccer has become deeply ingrained in my life and is a true passion of mine despite my inability to play, much in the same way as Galeano.
Biographical details are vital to understanding why and how soccer can affect a fans life no matter their skill level. A great example can be seen in Galeano’s book, where he writes about his personal experiences with the game and how it has become a part of his life in the same way it is part of mine. Each individual story from all the football fans around the world creates a diverse tapestry that continues to add to the universality of the sport. Because of how unique the game is in terms of its constant evolution, soccer is a spectacle that has attracted the attention of myself and billions of others around the world.
My love for soccer is because of my love for my sister.
Like any suburban child, I played park district soccer from a young age, and then travel soccer, and eventually soccer for my high school team. For a time, I was pretty good. Playing on an elite team, going to the best tournaments, etc. But then playing became “playing”, and as I began my bench-warming career at the ripe age of 14, my love for the game waned. I turned to a sport I was ‘better’ at – mind you I still sat on the bench. But soccer never disappeared from my life. For that, I’ll blame my younger sister.
I’d like to claim that she’s the best athlete because she had two older siblings to compete with, two older siblings who would never just let her win, two older siblings who weren’t afraid to make her cry or push her down. At age 5 she tried out for a club soccer team of 7-year-olds on a whim. As my mom drove her to the tryout she was changing out of her little pink, plastic high-heeled shoes and into cleats – she’s a diva. And as she played, she wore her pink gloves with feathers on them, the ones from her figure-skating lessons. My mom never checked the club website, figuring there was no way my sister could have made a team with girls a year older than her. Then my mom got congratulatory emails. Low and behold my younger sister had made the top team.
Fast forward 11 years and she was playing in college-scouted tournaments. Sometimes I was dragged along, other times I volunteered to attend. For example a Disney Soccer Showcase held at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando. Her team made it to the championship game, which was broadcast on ESPN3, her name appearing on screens across the country as the starting lineups were revealed. They won.
A year and a half later all of her playing caught up with her. She sprained her right ankle for the fifth time. Surgery and lots of rehab followed and currently continue. As she eases back into the game, attempting to play for a varsity high school team and contend for her third state championship in a row, her dreams of playing college soccer have gone. But her love for the game that has both taken and given her so much remains. And as her biggest fan, so does mine.
Like most American elementary school kids, I played a lot of different sports in my town’s rec league. I can distinctly remember eating orange slices every Saturday morning on the sidelines before kickoff for about two years from 2nd to 3rd grade. Like most of the sports I tried out, I dropped soccer early on. I never quite appreciated or understood the beauty of the game and figured that if I was going to just run back and forth I might as well have ran track instead. I ended up deciding on Tennis where I was one of two players on the court and was therefore guaranteed a 50% share of the ball. In retrospect, I guess I was never really good at sharing.
Growing up in India, my parents’ biggest exposure to sports was through international sporting events that were televised to everyone. So while we never really watched baseball, basketball or American football in my house growing up, we always had the TV on for the Olympics, international Cricket, and the World Cup. I remember the summer of the 2006 World Cup. I had some family friends and relatives over from England and wherever we went we looked for a TV playing the games. I remember their sadness when Wayne Rooney was sent off and Portugal advanced to the semifinals. I remember watching the United States finish last in their group, thinking there was no hope for American soccer. And like everyone else I was shocked when Zinedine Zidane was sent off for his head-butt in his last game ever as a player. Where the best player in the tournament could become the biggest loser in the end.
I the 2010 World Cup was the next soccer event I watched, not having got into league soccer. The United States advanced past the group stages and I watched the legendary Landon Donovan carry the offense and Tim Howard defend our nation fiercely. I remember Suarez’s “hand of god”, saving his team, but sacrificing himself, unknowing that four years later he would once again be vilified. The Spanish capitalized on their dominance, capturing a World Cup between two Euros.
After watching these two events with attention and passion, I finally played FIFA 10 and FIFA 11, where I quickly fell in love with Tottenham Hotspurs and their star player Gareth Bale. After playing these games, I quickly snowballed into a love of English League soccer and became an avid fan of the game and the players and finally found a beauty in the game I had given up on early on.
Growing up, sport was one of the pillars of my life. I grew up in a house with a father who was exceptionally passionate about a few particular sports teams, and, thanks to him, I too fell equally in love with them: the Washington Redskins of the NFL, the Baltimore Orioles of the MLB, and the Duke Blue Devils in college basketball. Throughout my youth, I almost never missed a game—and I grew obsessed with these sports. I played basketball and baseball all the way through high school. Soccer, on the other hand, was never a sport that interested my family. My older brother was a decent soccer player, but didn’t care much for the sport, and he quit in middle school. I played one sole year of rec soccer before it was clear I had no future in the game (I think that much was clear after the first five minutes of the season), and I did not come back for a second year.
In 2009, as a video game addict, my mother bought me the new FIFA video game, and I grew attached. It became my favorite video game, and I played it often. I took great comfort in hearing Martin Tyler and Andy Gray announcing the games. I still remember that Valencia, with David Villa and David Silva, were the first team that I loved to play with. They still have a special place in my heart. The following year, there was a huge transfer in the January transfer window that changed my viewing of the sport of soccer forever. Liverpool sold their best player, Fernando Torres, to Chelsea, ostensibly depleting what was an above average Liverpool squad. However, they replaced him with two players, Luis Suarez and Andy Carroll, of whom I thought of very fondly (although it is ironic that Andy Carroll came in as the big signing and Luis Suarez was the relatively unknown one of the two). I decided to start watching Liverpool’s games on TV.
Since then, my love for soccer has blossomed. When NBC signed a deal with the Barclays Premiere League to broadcast all of their games, my newfound passion for soccer had a phenomenal outlet. Over the past three years, I have watched every minute of Liverpool soccer, and countless other matches. I have been through the heartbreak, even, of losing a Premiere League title on the last day of the year! The Gerrard slip still haunts me to this day. Speaking of Steven Gerrard, despite his slip—what a legend. Despite the fact that I only became a fan of Liverpool in 2010, two moments in Liverpool’s history make the hair stand on the back of my neck every time I watch them. Both include Gerrard. The first is the remarkable 3-3 comeback to win the Champions League final against AC Milan in 2005. The scenes of that game make it perhaps my favorite thing to watch on the Internet to this day. But no one moment encapsulates my love of soccer like Steven Gerrard’s goal vs. Olympiacos to put Liverpool into the knockout stages of the Champions League in that very same year. The call by Martin Tyler and Andy Gray, the same two voices that I played with on FIFA all of those years, is quite simply my favorite announcing job ever, in any sport. The video is attached below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kh_RcahHHoc
My love for soccer has been one of my favorite recent developments in my life. Despite the fact that my family laughs at me when I wake up at 7:45 on a Saturday morning to watch Liverpool lose (and the way things are going right now, they usually do lose), soccer has brought me closer to others. Most of my best friends in high school played soccer. My junior year of high school, our team made a Cinderella run to win the state championship in extra time on a golden goal by one of my friends. With hundreds of students cheering from the stands, me being one of them, and my best friends going berserk on the field, it was truly a moment that brought everyone closer together. Talking to my friends, before, during and after their amazing season, has made me appreciate the passion of the game and shows me how the game can truly affect your life. To this day, they still visit their old high school coach to take a trip down memory lane. These moments are a true testament to the fact that, even in America, where soccer is not the main sport, soccer is more than just a game.
Both my parents played soccer in college and were fans of the game, so its always been a part of my life. One of my earliest memories is sitting on the couch with my mom at the age of 5, watching Brandi Chastain win the 1999 Women’s World Cup. That was the same year that I first played an organized game, on a tiny field with popup goals. I’ve played pretty much constantly since then. My high school years revolved around soccer: the season was during the fall, we played indoors during the winter, and ran and practiced during the summer. Even though I was never the most skilled player, I was good at carving out a niche for myself, and contributing in some small way. I still play IM soccer at Duke, and those games are definitely something I look forward to throughout the week.
When I was 14, I got more involved in soccer from a different perspective by becoming a referee. I took a month long course through a local club and was certified as a Grade 8 referee, which allowed me to officiate youth games. Everyone always says officiating is hard, but I don’t think you really appreciate it until you’ve done it. For a high school kid, it pays extremely well, but it really makes you hate soccer moms and dads. I had 10 times the number of problems with parents than I ever did with players.
However, I never really watched soccer religiously , other than US National Team games, until I was 16 because I didn’t have a team to really root for. I watched all of the World Cups, Olympics, Gold Cups, Copa Americas, but I rarely watched MLS , because the two closest teams were D.C. United and New York Red Bulls. Being from the Philadelphia area, there was no way I was going to root for New York or D.C. In 2010, when Philadelphia finally got an MLS team, I finally had the opportunity to root for a team, and see games in person. For Christmas one year, I received a membership to the Philadelphia supporters club, the Sons of Ben. When NBC started showing premier league games my Dad bought the premium sports cable package, and I started watching premier league games and discovered Men in Blazers. I don’t really have a rooting affiliation for the Premier League, usually I pick a team to root for each season, based on their story or how entertaining they are, and then go from there.
The universe, in its purest form, is no more than a vessel for total entropy. A shell for chaos and disorder. And in this absence of order, comes beauty. We crave this feeling — this moment of bliss — and subconsciously pray for it in all that we do. It’s why people gravitate towards sport, and in particular, soccer. For one decisive push up a flank, or a feint on the edge of the box searching for space. We need creativity in a field of rigid structure that mirrors life itself. As a child, my father and I spent our days on the edge of the couch, hunched over, with our eyes locked on the television. We sat and watched as modern gladiators created something out of nothing. I wanted to be like them — the giants. Players like Zidane, Ballack, Henry, and Roberto Carlos were frequent guests in my day dreams. I threw on my knockoff Deco jersey and kicked the ball through two trees in the back yard, celebrating each time as if I’d just brought home the World Cup trophy.
Alas, like Galeano, I was born with wooden legs, and cinderblock feet. I had no finesse, and lacked the physical prowess to cover my flaws. I too was only a football hero in my dreams. I was teased as a kid for being a nerd. I loved sports, but I showed no skill on the field. And so I learned to love the sport in other ways. I obsessed over dominant midfielders — they, like me, looked at the game analytically, mapping out plays before they even began. I started watching old tape, and reading older books. I parsed through highlights of legends like Johan Cryuff, and Michel Platini, trying to fill an insatiable hunger for beautiful plays.
Because of this, soccer became a part of me. I view myself, and the world through the game.
“Hello, hello! Here we go! Steven Gerrard puts a grain of doubt in the back of Milan’s minds and gives hope to the many thousands of Liverpool fans inside the stadium… Captain’s goal!”
More than a decade since the match was played, the 2005 Liverpool AC Milan UEFA Champions League Final is widely recognized as one of the greatest games of football ever. Fondly labelled “The Miracle of Istanbul” by those faithful Reds on Merseyside, Liverpool overcame a 3-0 deficit at halftime through a fury of three stunning second half goals in quick succession to deadlock AC Milan at 3-3. Eventually, Liverpool would reign supreme in the “Russian Roulette” of a penalty shootout after extra time. Whether it be through sheer determination, resiliency, or even an act of divine intervention, Liverpool’s unprecedented comeback will be shown and talked about for as long as the game is played.
Lucky for me, this was my first football match I had ever seen!
Thus started my love affair with Liverpool and the game of football (how couldn’t it after seeing an emotional game like that?!). Since then, I have been obsessed and captivated by the sport, particularly the English Premier League. You would be hard-pressed to see me miss a Liverpool game nowadays. Since becoming a devoted fan of Liverpool, I have experienced the (few) highs and the (many) lows.
The 2006 FA Cup Final, now proclaimed the “Gerrard Final” similar to the famous “Matthews Final” in the 1953 FA Cup. Steven Gerrard, Captain Fantastic and Mr. Liverpool, produces a stunning assist and two world-class volleys to catapult the Reds to victory in penalties.
The Liverpool Chelsea clash at Anfield from the 2013-2014 English Premier League season was the lowest I have ever been as a fan; to see Liverpool nearly climb the Premier League summit for the first time, only to see this still-elusive title “slip” away from the Reds in the waning moments of the season. These are the gut-wrenching emotions that Liverpool fans may never fully recover from.
Biographical details are absolutely critical towards understanding the beautiful game and the individual identity the sport can help shape in a football fan. What I love about Galeano’s book is that it reads like a story with a personal narrative rather than a collection of facts and past records. Writing from a personal perspective ensures that football becomes a lesson in story-telling and weaves into our collective humanity around the world. Personal experiences, beliefs, and emotions color the game for all to embrace and love. I believe that it is incredibly fitting that we dive into Galeano’s story immediately after digesting Newsham’s historical record “In a League of Their Own!” due to the fact that the two books feel, at least to me, like polar opposites. These two books sit on contrasting sides of the “story” spectrum; Newsham’s book reads like a collection of statistics while “Soccer in Sun and Shadow” feels like those bedtime stories your grandfather would speak of.
Like most young soccer players I started out playing in a rec league and eventually moved up to more competitive travelling teams. Over time, the teams I played on got more and more intense and the leagues we played in were more and more competitive. This progression culminated in high school. Our high school team would practice nearly every day and the teams that we played against were bigger and rougher than any I had played against before. Going into college, however, I decided to give up on this level of competitive play and focus on my schoolwork. I still wanted to keep playing though, so I joined my friends’ intramural team my freshman fall. Oddly, this took me full circle back to a rec league like the ones I started in (with slightly larger players this time around).
A lot of the guys I was playing with and against had never played at the same level that I had, and honestly they weren’t as good as the people I was used to playing with. It was kind of hard to adjust at first, but eventually I learned how freeing that was. Playing soccer didn’t have to be about winning or losing anymore (and we lost a lot that fall), it could just be about playing. In his book, Galeano often derides the strict structure of modern soccer, and in some ways I agree. Playing in a league where the stakes are low allows the structures to loosen a bit. It allows players a lot more freedom to experiment with how they move and play, and although I don’t have the same level of personal investment in the game as I did in high school, I enjoy it just as much. I can start out at defender, but because the field and teams are so small, I can instantly join the attack, then immediately join back in the defense if we lose the ball. It took a while to learn to not treat the game as seriously as I had in the past, but once I did, I began to enjoy it so much more.
I can’t remember when I first started playing soccer. My best guess is that it was sometime around kindergarten or 1st grade, when parents put their kids in as many sports as possible in an effort to see which ones stuck. My earliest memories playing the game are sparse, but I definitely must have enjoyed it to the point where I started to prefer playing it instead of baseball. I remember crying in the arms of my mother when I found out that I didn’t make the travel team in 3rd grade and celebrating with her when I made it onto the B team in 4th grade. I can recall the harsh tutelage of our team’s trainer from Liverpool, and the quirky kids on my team who ended up becoming some of my closest friends in middle school. I can remember the long road trips to towns I’ve never heard of, the different parks and fields we played on, the different types of people we played against. I remember finding out, that due to the fact that my legs were so long, that I was the fastest player on the field. I remember scoring 6 goals in 8th grade and playing for a bit my freshman year of high school. Lastly; however, I remember making the decision to let soccer go and focus on basketball instead.
Even though I was tall, fast, and strong, I was never particularly a great soccer player. I couldn’t kick the ball very far, nor was I capable of even the most basic dribbling maneuvers. Nonetheless, I loved the game. I loved being out on the field in the open air, feeling the wind on my face. I loved hearing the parents cheer from the sidelines, hearing their praise as I chased down a breaking striker. Soccer was always fun for me. It never felt like a job, or like I was being forced to do something. It epitomized the wonder, excitement, and freedom of childhood. Therefore, I always viewed giving up soccer as growing up. The simple fact of the matter was that basketball came much easier to me. I had high school coaches writing letters and coming to talk to me about playing basketball—not soccer. My parents pushed me to pursue off-season training in basketball—not soccer. I chose to do what seemed logical, a 6’3” 15 year-old has a much brighter future in basketball, where height and strength is lauded. So I chose basketball. I grew up. Looking back, choosing basketball over soccer made me love basketball less, made it harder for me to truly give myself to the game. To make a long story short, neither sport worked out. I ended up being a mediocre basketball player who was good enough to secure a spot on a top team, but not great enough to play.
However, whenever I get the chance, I still lace up my 5 year old cleats and kick the ball around with my friends. It’s soccer in the form that most I loved it: just for fun. No pressure. No expectations of greatness. Feeling the wind on my face, the satisfaction of making a good pass or play. Hearing the jests that we make to each other. It’s like getting a time machine and going back to being a kid again. I don’t regret my choice to choose basketball over soccer because I can still play soccer for the reason that I loved it. My parents, and myself, will insist to this day that even though I gave it up, soccer was always the sport I loved the most.
I was introduced to the game of soccer as a sticky faced seven-year-old. Clad in a neon green jersey, I played on a co-ed team called the Sharks. Every once in a while, my tiny black-and-white striped cleats kicked the size 4 soccer ball that came my way entirely serendipitously. Looking back now, it really must have looked quite comical: a bunch of goggle-eyed seven-year-olds all chasing an erratically bouncing ball while a few overly ambitious parents shouted from the sidelines. But if there’s anything that I remember most accurately, it was the half. We would gather next to the sidelines and munch on the snacks that one or two parents provided for the whole team while our coach rattled on about positioning and communication, brandishing his mini white board as if it were a gilded sword. All the while, we sucked on fleshy oranges until all that was left were bright peels that we shoved in our mouths to showcase our orange-peel smiles.
Sure, by the end of second grade, I knew the game of American soccer as well as any seven-year-old could be expected to. But I credit my understanding of the international fervor surrounding fútbol to a different kind of game: piłka nożna, the game of my immigrant parents. In the summer after first grade, I visited my parents’ homeland of Poland and the family we still had living there. It was there that I first developed an appreciation for the game.
It went like this: kids rushed out of tenement houses following the single proud ball bearer. And once the ball touched the ground, all bets were off. We played on the sidewalks, in the gardens, sometimes on the street edges. Sometimes a little girl would pick up the ball with her hands and bolt, provoking the wrath of her older siblings. There were no outs, no shiny cleats, no screaming parents. And best of all: there was no one to blow the whistle to tell us it was time to suck on our slippery orange peels, or worse yet, to go home. For me, the beauty of the game came through that lack of structure, where no perfectly groomed turf field was needed to unleash the creative ambition of my seven-year-old self.
Growing up I was the typical prima ballerina kind of girl. The kind of girl who’s extracurriculars were tennis and piano playing. Soccer never crossed my mind; in fact, I was desperate to stay away from the sport due to a traumatic incident in elementary school involving a kick to the head.
It all changed during the summer of 2008. We were in the Netherlands for our biennial visit to my dad’s family, and we arrived in Amsterdam during the European cup. The city was completely orange! Everything, from the decorations in the streets to the cars to the people, was showing its national spirit. (For background, orange is the color of the Dutch royal family and the color that represents the Netherlands). Holland had just made it into the quarter finals of the tournament and the excitement was contagious. All of my dad’s side of the family had reunited to watch the game. One of my most distinct memories of the entire visit is of my uncle’s unique game day shirt. It was bright orange, of course, with a lion head on the front and a huge flap. When the Dutch scored, he lifted up the flap to reveal a ginormous lion mouth and ROARED. How could I not get swept up in the passion? Unfortunately, the Netherlands was eliminated from the cup by Russia with a score of 1-3.
Two years later and we were traveling through Barcelona during the 2010 World Cup finals: Spain vs. the Netherlands. This city was painted red and gold and the atmosphere was positively buzzing with national pride and enthusiasm. Obviously I was still rooting for the Dutch, but they ended up losing 0-1. However it was an experience beyond words to be in Barcelona to witness the festivities after they won the World Cup. Walking into an FC Barcelona store through the throngs of celebrating fans was insane. Despite any reservations I had about the sport, I was intrigued by the immense amounts of passion people have for it.
I was inspired to try soccer for myself for one season after that first summer, but it was not meant to be. I returned to the life I led before, full of tutus, volleys, and minuets. I may not be a player but I had undergone the transformation from ambivalence to a casual spectator. These experiences have affected the way I respect the game and its fans now. Every time the summer Olympics or the Euro/World Cup comes around, I find myself drawn into the excitement once again and despite being fully American and only half Dutch, I root for two teams. Go USA and Hup Holland!
By attending a small middle school with no tryouts for the athletic teams, I had the opportunity to play many sports during those years. I participated in basketball, tennis, swimming, and cross-country. It was not until 8th grade when I first put on a soccer uniform. In that league, the goals came relatively easy. In my first game, I actually scored twice; all you really had to do was run fast enough to penetrate the disorganized formation of the defense. I continued to play competitively for three more years, but in that relatively short amount of time, I witnessed a tremendous change in my playing style and appreciation for the sport. I began growing more concerned about formations, communication, and technical ability. It became less about being the fastest player and more about being the smartest. After all, the players who had to use the least amount of energy throughout the game were always far more effective in the crucial final stretches.
Interestingly enough, playing the game was not the only event that shaped my perspective of the sport. During the middle of my first year of high school, I became a licensed soccer referee. From the start of the entire process, I was able to appreciate the game through an entirely different lens. In the classes I attended to attain my licensing, I learned about all the technical rules and nuances in the game, as well as the general guidelines that one should use when making more subjective decisions. From the first game I refereed to my most recent, I always had to deal with dissenters and unruly fans and players. Normally, it was something that could be ignored. Other times, it required a stern warning or perhaps something more serious. Ultimately, I came out of the experience with a newfound respect for the laws of the game, as well as a bit of disdain for fans and players who would spit in the face of the referee if they could. Although I do not play competitively anymore and haven’t refereed a game in quite some time, my experiences have certainly shaped the way I watch soccer today and the emotions and feelings I draw from the experience.
Soccer did not really come into my life until a year ago when I started playing FIFA, the soccer video game. Of course, I have watched and hear my friends talked about the World Cup, but when I was watching soccer before I didn’t know what to look for. I knew the basic rules, like how to score and what’s a red card, but I didn’t know enough about soccer to really appreciate watching the tournament. After I bought the video game FIFA, I kept on losing to my friends, so if I told myself if I want to stop embarrassing myself, I need to study the formation, the players, and the tactics of the game. Beside golf, basketball was my favorite sport to play, but now I really want to try to play real soccer on the field.
Even until today I’m still not a die-hard soccer fun, or it’s fair to say I’m not a die-hard fan at any professional sport team, possibly because I don’t follow any team very closely. Just recently, I started to follow Arsenal, mainly because I want to start following the Premier League and gain more knowledge about the game. Watching an Arsenal’s game has been a lot more fun than before because I have something in stake and I want my team to win.
Lastly, I’m not sure what biographical detail mean in the last question.
When I was 6, my family moved to Turin, Italy from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Even though my father could speak both English and Italian, my knowledge in Italian was limited to “grazie” and “hello” in English. It was hard to study in an international school without knowing both languages. Nevertheless, I spent all of my time playing soccer with my international friends. All of us had different cultural backgrounds and most of us did not even understand each other, but soccer was a language we all knew how to speak.
Italy was also a place where I started following professional soccer. To be more specific, I started supporting Juventus, and Stadio delle Alpi (Juventus’ home stadium between 1990 and 2006) became a mecca for my family. It is not surprising, as in 2000 Juventus had Zidane’s power, Inzaghi’s flair, Del Piero’s grace, and Davids’ pertinacity. Although the 2000/01 season was one of the worst seasons in the club’s history, players truly created magic with every touch and move, watching them play was akin to a miracle for me. We went to every single home game, and analyzed team’s strategy and what could be improved during post-game dinner.
We moved back to Kazakhstan after two short years, but my father and I are still visiting Juventus Stadium (Juventus’ new home stadium) at least once a year. I have played soccer on various levels, both in a high school team and in a youth team of a Champions League participant, FC Astana, in Kazakhstan. However, my passion and love for soccer definitely evolved in the capital of the Piedmont region.
P.S I was thinking about writing about an event instead of how soccer became a part of my life. I decided to write about how my relationships with soccer began, but would still like to share links to two photos. One is with The King of Football, Pele. Soccer is religion, and meeting Pele was akin to meeting a prophet of soccer. Another photo is with a legendary ex-captain of AC Milan, Massimo Ambrosini.
1)Pele
2)Ambrosini
What do all parents sign up their darling four year olds 4 year olds for? If you are hailing from the sunny state of Arizona, alas, soccer. It is the showcased at every public public and elementary school recess across the Valley. The soccer stratification of levels of play, the murky politics behind various clubs, showcase travel tournaments, ECNL league games, training camps, speed and conditioning trainers and team bonding activities are just some of the many ways soccer is the tremendous force that propels the sun’s rising and setting the West and is regulated by carpool schedules.
There was no premeditated decision, it was what every kid was doing: signing up for every sport possible. I thrived at recreation soccer, whose short season duration allowed me to grow in softball, golf, track, basketball, swimming during the off season. I attribute the cross-training approach to my athleticism on the pitch. Next was club soccer at the ripe old age of 8 years old. Thus began the competitive “club” and “premier” league chapters to my soccer career book. I was a rare breed on my competitive soccer teams because I still played golf and softball throughout middle school. Soccer tends to lend itself to imbalance of a soccer centric world. My parents feed my passion, collecting jerseys during international travel, connecting me with contacts who are executives with the MLS, USA Soccer and FIFA organizations. I continued with four years of high school varsity soccer, being fortunate enough to merit three state championships and one state-runner up. The caliber of coaching (former University of Notre Dame and UConn coaches) and players (6 pals in my grade going on to play D1 soccer) was incredible. Looking toward the future, I committed to play golf at Dartmouth, but ended up revoking and landing at Duke. Today, I play on the women’s club soccer team and it is truly a place where I feel tremendously comfortable with gals that are particularly similar to me.
Soccer lifestyle physically permeated throughout my life in the forms of soccer shorts, shin guard leg tans, ever present pony-tails, pre-wrap head bands and emotionally by fostering values of camaraderie, work ethic, servant leadership and loyalty. Globally, soccer is a core thread to the human experience, and it as allowed me to relate to others. Let it be in a orphanage in Guatemala or a tapas bar in Madrid, the mention of football, global icons and various famous moments of the game are a uniting force that trumps fissures of geography, citizenship and socio-economic class. Soccer has impacted how I eat, drink, relate to people, study, work out and view the world. Unfortunately, I lack a data base for famous players and more nuanced infamous moments for the game.
Soccer is an incredible game and it has truly shaped my life’s trajectory and personal composition.
Soccer did not catch my attention until around the middle of my teenage years. Growing up, I played American football and basketball; in my mind, I simply had no time for another sport. Honestly, I considered soccer a rather boring sport, convinced that the low-scoring games contained little action and suspense. I never participated in organized soccer and focused on American football as well as track and field. On rare occasions, I would play soccer with friends when we had nothing else to do. I would watch soccer on TV in either of two situations: During the World Cup or if there was nothing else on TV. I couldn’t tolerate watching an entire match and preferred watching highlights of the goals scored. My indifference to soccer could have been primarily attributed to both my lack of understanding of the game and the poor TV coverage of quality soccer leagues and tournaments.
I’ll admit it: Playing the FIFA videogames greatly increased my interest in the sport. I consider myself a ‘gamer’ and the FIFA videogames intrigued me because they gave me the opportunity to control the action of a sport that I knew little about. The videogames helped me to become familiar with the players, formations, leagues, rules, competitions and tournaments. Most of my current knowledge about soccer can be traced back to my time playing the videogames. Ultimate Team, a game mode in the videogames, exposed me to the more sophisticated concepts of soccer and increased my knowledge of players in various leagues around the world. I was tasked with acquiring players primarily through a transfer market and choosing formations that maximized their talents, monitoring players’ fitness levels, and competing against other squads. In-game, I became familiar with various styles of play and tactics. All in all, the FIFA videogames opened my eyes regarding how exciting soccer can be and made me appreciate the sport even more as a spectator.
In my opinion, including biographical details when talking about soccer adds a new element to the recollection of a soccer match. It gives perspective and allows the individual to consider the match in the context of the larger events that were occurring at the same time. In addition, biographical detail enhances the feelings and emotions that are evoked during the match and when you are remembering it. Everyone has a story about where they were exactly when their team won a competition or their favorite player scored the goal that secured their team the victory or a similar situation. I don’t have any such memories mostly because I’ve only been interested in soccer for a few years and TV coverage of soccer matches has improved but is still not sufficient for me to continuously follow my favorite teams. Hopefully those types of moments will come as I continue following the sport.
My mother claims that I started playing soccer before I was born, when I often kicked her stomach from inside the womb. I actually started playing organized soccer at the age of 5. I was fascinated with all sports when I was a little kid, but soccer was by far my favorite. I played in an AYSO league in my town, and then went on to join a club team at the age of 10. Playing club soccer stood as the first time in my sports career that I encountered fierce competition and hardship. I was talented enough to make the “A squad” for my local club, but it was a very tight and heated competition to make the team. I loved traveling all over California to play soccer, but hated the training sessions three times a week.
As I got older, my soccer skills developed. My natural position became center midfielder, and my favorite player became Zidane. I loved Zidane’s game and even tried to emulate my play after him. I was never the fastest player on the field or had the best shot, but I “saw the game” better than most kids. I was able to find the spaces and runs on the pitch that others could not pick out. I also was pretty physical and stout like Zidane. One season, my coach surprised all of us with customized practice jerseys. My practice jersey said “Zizu” after Zidane on the back; and my nickname for the rest of my club soccer career was “Zizu”.
In high school, I had to make a hard decision about my soccer career. I had played club soccer my entire life, but entering my junior year, I could not continue to play club soccer as well as varsity sports at school. The decision was whether or not to sacrifice high school sports to pursue my collegiate and professional soccer career. I ended up choosing to play high school sports; these included football, soccer, and lacrosse. This was one of the hardest decisions I made during my high school years because I was so passionate about soccer. However, my decision turned out to be very wise, as some of my favorite memories and life-changing experiences happened during high school sports. Soccer will forever be my favorite sport, but my last hope for playing professional soccer ended in high school.
Similar to Eduardo Galeano, I too aspired to become a professional football player, not necessarily because I appreciated the game of football but, rather, because I appreciated its prevalence and significance and, above all, its capacity to inspire millions.
I remember, as a seven-year-old child, returning home from school to find my father observing the 2002 UEFA Champions League final in an uncharacteristic manner—his pupils accurately tracing the movements of Zidane and his mouth ritualistically uttering prayers in Arabic. Real Madrid had secured a 1-0 lead over Bayer Leverkusen following an early opener by Raúl, yet my father had remained apprehensive.
“Dad, you’re winning,” I reassured him, rather naively. He neither responded nor diverted his attention from the television screen. Five minutes later, when Lúcio equalized the score, he silently stood up, held his arms behind his back, dropped his head and walked around the living room, eventually returning to his seat and redirecting his attention toward the television screen.
The tension within the room would eventually fade, as Solari completed a pass to Carlos, whose cross to Zidane resulted in a perfectly executed, match-winning volley still cited as one of the greatest goals in Champions League History. My father knew then that Real Madrid had secured its ninth European Cup. He spoke his first words. “You see him?” he asked, pointing to Zidane, as he celebrated his accomplishment. “This man has done more for us than any political leader ever has.”
https://youtu.be/E3BLrgvgHnE
Those words inspired my young aspiration to become a professional football player. Soccer, I learned then, was a part of my identity as a Muslim. I aspired, like Zidane, to invite the relentless focus of millions and, through my acts, to inspire them, unlike any other figure ever could. I would participate in recreational league soccer during my elementary school years, often making sure to express my frustration upon being assigned to the positions of goalkeeper or defender. I was a midfielder, I would tell my coach, who would smile and tussle my hair. When I was assigned the position of midfielder prior to a match, I would pace back and forth across the pitch, imagining that—like Zidane—I would score the match-winning goal, inspiring all ten of the parents and family members in attendance to chant my name. I knew no better.
Indeed, after practice one night, I assembled my teammates, singled out the defenders and the midfielders and requested that they practice a play with me, the exact same play run by Carlos, Solari and Zidane in the 2002 UEFA Champions League final. The defenders were to run down the left wing, await a pass from the midfielders and cross the ball to me. At my young age, I was unable to adequately execute a volley, just as Zidane had, but I was able to chip to the ball into the goal using my left foot. My teammates seemed disinterested and disengaged, questioning—through their body language—why I had requested for them to remain on the pitch after the conclusion of practice. “We’re running this tomorrow,” I yelled at them, rather emphatically. The next day, prior to the match, I paced back and forth across the pitch, imagining, once more, that I would score the match-winning goal. Today, I thought, would be the day my imaginations would become reality. My father was in attendance, and I wanted nothing more than to make him proud, just as Zidane had.
The whistle sounded and, within seconds, the ball was in the air. I could hear my father yelling my name. I tuned him out, focusing only on the sounds of my breath, heartbeat and the ball moving across the pitch. Between the commencement of the match and the end of the first half, the score was even 0-0, just as I had anticipated. My father embraced me and commended me for my performance, but I remained focused on the second half, anticipating that I would score the match-winning goal by perfectly executing the exact same play run by Carlos, Solari and Zidane. “This is it,” I whispered to my teammates, as we returned to the pitch for the commencement of the second half.
Again, I tuned out my father, being fully aware of the significance of the moment. My breath and heartbeat became louder and more frequent. Time appeared to decelerate. “Now,” I whispered to the midfielder to my left as I reclaimed my position upon the pitch. I nodded my head to indicate that we were ready to execute the play. The defender ran down the left wing, awaiting a pass from the midfielder. Time had decelerated even more. I could barely distinguish the voices yelling my name, as my breath and heartbeat increased in both volume and frequency. The defender completed the pass to the midfielder. I immediately crossed the pitch, awaiting the pass from the midfielder. “Pass!” yelled the coach, completely unaware of the fact that we had previously run the play. The midfielder crossed the ball in my direction. My pupils traced the movement of the ball, my body moving in sync. I successfully secured the pass and, immediately sensing the goalkeeper’s movement to the left, chipped the ball into the right corner using my left foot. We had executed the play perfectly. My imaginations had become reality. I had just scored the match-winning goal and, despite the loud cheers on the sidelines, I could only hear the voice of my father. “That’s my son,” he proclaimed.
“That’s my son.”
Growing up in the early 2000’s, I followed the trend of children playing recreational soccer every Sunday in my local league. At the age of 5 I started to play soccer without ever having watched any soccer on television at home with my parents who were by no means interested in watching soccer. In that sense, I was somewhat forced into the sport at a very young age. However, I soon learned that I was pretty good (for a 5 year old) and asked my parents to sign me up for the league for the upcoming spring. This started my love affair with soccer, and it all started with a little push from my parents’ blind push into an unknown sport.
My recreational soccer career continued up until the age of 9 where I determined to play the game I love at a higher level. This is where my soccer story differs from a typical American child’s interaction with soccer. While I was trying out to be selected to be a member of a travel soccer team in my area, the highest level of soccer the rest of my friends wanted to continue to play was on the recreational level. For me, soccer became a lifestyle and it was basically my identity throughout high school. Whether it was for my club or high school team, I was always carrying my soccer bag with me thinking about my next game or practice. Looking back, soccer embodied both my childhood and adolescence.
My passion for the soccer was something that many of my friends found strange, as soccer isn’t seen as a typically ‘American’ sport. However, that was only the tip of the iceberg. What really surprised my friends was that I took interest in an English club, Chelsea, and that I would get up early on weekends to watch them play. They jokingly made fun of me and called me a foreigner because I took more interest in a sports league outside of America than I did for Major League Baseball. Yet, I think that’s what drove me to like soccer even more: soccer differentiated me from the rest of the pack. Soccer allowed me to be a blue dot in a sea of red. However, that blue dot started to rub off on the large sea of red by 2010.
The end of my middle school career coincided with the 2010 FIFA World Cup. That world cup was the first time that I can recall being a young soccer fan and player in the United States was something that actually became something noticeable and somewhat special. Instead of being shrugged off as someone who was involved in an obscure sport, all of my friends would come up to me and ask me who I thought was going to win every game. In a sense, I became their source of all knowledge for all things soccer. I’m not going to lie; I loved every second of it. However, I think I actually enjoyed being the ‘hipster’ soccer fan and player even more, as it truly made me stand out in a crowd of ‘typical’ American high school students.
Soccer has dominated my life ever since the age of 4. My brother, who was eight at the time, had just started playing a year ago. Naturally, I followed him into the sport. Once I turned 9, I joined an academy team and started dedicating more of my time towards soccer. If you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I would’ve said a professional soccer player up until about high school.
In Jacksonville, FL, soccer is certainly not the dominant sport but still very, very popular. I grew up playing it with some of my closest friends but at the time I decided I was playing for myself and not anyone else. When I was age 13/14 was the most enjoyable year. The club team I was on was excelling in the state and the southeast, and I had performed well in the first two rounds of the ODP tryouts along with my teammates. However, my perspective on soccer changed a lot after two main events. First, the tearing of my brothers ACL and second, my first concussion. While I was very interested in watching soccer and keeping up with current news, my brothers sole focus was playing and he was aspiring to be a professional athlete. Tearing his ACL when he was rising to his peak crushed him. About 10 months later he tried to comeback but ended up re tearing the muscle. Seeing him go through that realization he would never play a competitive sport again changed my views a lot. As I went into high school I started to realize the time commitment it would take to pursue soccer as a career and decided it wasn’t worth the sacrifices and risks that would have to be made. My level of play was also declining and I wasn’t improving at the same pace as before. I stopped playing club soccer but continued with school. In the next year and a half I suffered my second and third major concussions and came to accept that it just wasn’t worth it. I couldn’t quite part from playing though, as I retained my spot on the team but only as a practice player. Sitting out and watching the games was one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve had. I didn’t realize how much of a privilege playing competitively was until it was gone, even after seeing my brother lose the ability to play months before.
Since then, I’ve passed a lot of time learning about the history of soccer, players, coaches, etc. I still set aside the time to watch as as much soccer as I can. I have also become more interested in the cultural elements of the game and started thinking about the sport in a different way. When I first found out about this class, I knew I had to take it. It seemed to good to be true.
I played soccer for the first time in my life in the 7th grade and to be truthful I disliked playing the sport with a passion. The constant running back and forth when you rarely ever touch the ball was the worst thing ever. Basketball was my passion most of my life. My father put a basketball in my hand when I was about 5 years old and I began to love the game. Started up with football in middle school as well and began to grow very fond of football as well. With growing up having dreams to someday be in the NBA, to attending Duke on a football scholarship its safe to say that I’m happy with my decision on playing football.
Soccer was jus the sport that never clicked with me. I dreaded going to practice all the time and all the running we had to do. What I can say is that soccer is one of the sports that I have so much respect for today. Playing for fun when I was a little kid taught me how hard soccer really is and how skilled you have to be to play, especially on an elite level. Biographical detail has changed the way I feel about the game because since I play a sport and know the art that comes with each sport I see the beauty that comes with it. The players movements, their emotions, the work they put in, its an art. All of this causes soccer to gain my full respect.
As a child, I remember my friends coming up to me in grade school, asking me to play soccer while we were at recess. I told them no. As a boy, I never wanted to play soccer. Growing up in Texas, American football players were glorified and put on a pedestal—even at just the high school level. Because of that, I wanted to be the other type of football player. But my parents wouldn’t let me. There were scared of injury in a full contact sport, and could not fathom watching me get hit. So instead they put me into what they later told me was the “safest sport that they thought I would enjoy.” I didn’t enjoy it.
To me, soccer was just a stopgap that my parents put me in because they did not want me to play American football. Because of that, I had a terrible attitude that led to me not giving it my all on the pitch. My parents realized this, and after just one season, took me out of the sport. I then focused my athletic ability onto baseball and basketball, and soccer didn’t even have a thought in my head, until middle school.
My school had a soccer team, and my father was the coach. He said that he would not make me play, but I felt obligated to him and also felt that it would break his heart if I didn’t. So we went out, bought a pair of cleats, and I started going to soccer practice. Needless to say, I wasn’t very good. I had trouble dribbling, shooting, passing, and more. I didn’t know anything about the different types of formations. I even remember raising my hand to ask what it meant to be “offside,” and was laughed at by the entire team. But I stuck with it. During a blowout, my father decided to put me in at goalie. My perception of soccer changed that day. I had more fun stopping the ball from going in the net than I ever did trying to score a goal for my team. Apparently, I wasn’t too bad, because my father let me be the backup goalie and play more and more as time went on.
I ended up playing for three years, before focusing all my efforts on tennis in my high school career. However, I left with a deep appreciation of the sport. There was a sense of beauty to it, and I enjoyed it. It was very different from the time I wouldn’t play soccer with my friends at recess back in grade school. As I grew older, I realized the cultural impact that the sport of soccer has, and it makes me enjoy the game anymore. Soccer unites fans from all over the world, wealthy or poor, weak or strong. It is a common denominator for the world to use. Sure, I wasn’t the best soccer player. Heck, I didn’t even enjoy soccer until middle school. But soccer has played an important part in my life, along with the lives of many other people around the world. Its importance cannot be understated, and I’m glad that I realize it now.
I was never a player. Growing up in the rural South, the only kind of football being played was with an oblong ball—and let’s be honest, you rarely used your feet. I grew up on basketball instead, but it wasn’t for lack of trying to understand what soccer was. The most difficult part is that a cultural barrier separated me from the sport. The Hispanic students in my grade school tried to explain it to me, but I did not grasp their love for the game. The European students—the few that we had—attempted teach me to pass, dribble and shoot, but these weren’t the same skills that I knew in my sports—the American ones. The game was slow, and I wanted more action. I admired sports with a fervor that I gained from my uncle, and soccer wasn’t even a blip on his radar. My high school didn’t even have a soccer pitch on campus—the team had to travel across town to play, even though we had two football fields within one hundred yards of one another for the more beloved team that played beneath the Friday night lights. I lacked access to the beautiful game. In essence, I felt the furthest from it that I could possibly be.
But that all changed when I came to college. By random chance I was assigned an American roommate who had lived in England for the past several years of his life. Slowly but surely I was introduced to the intricacies of this foreign game. I learned about the English Premier League. Terms like relegation, loan and confederation were drawn out of the haze that had once shrouded them in obscurity. Why is Cristiano Ronaldo arguably the greatest athlete in the world? How does Messi make his foes look so foolish? Who is THE Zlatan and did you see his most recent impossible goal? Things that I had never discussed about sports came to the fore because I came to Duke and made a connection that was willing to share his love for the game with me. I came to campus enthralled by the basketball culture, but I developed a new love for professional soccer that I had never known. That’s why I am in Soccer Politics today. It’s why I no longer view the game as a slow, boring affair between cultures divorced from my conception of athletics. It’s why I now watch in awe at the monumental feats of athleticism that soccer affords. It’s why I now love the game.
My soccer awakening occurred way back in 6th grade. Up until then, I had played the sport like most Americans do; in between baseball and basketball seasons, as simply a third sport to fill the time. But my eyes were opened when I moved to England when I was 12. I thought I was good before that: I could dribble, I could score. But I couldn’t play, not like my new classmates at an International school. I saw every play style, European to African to South American on the playground, and was left in the dust every single time. I’d receive a ball on the sideline, and then it was gone, going the other direction. It didn’t put me off the game though; it did the opposite. These were kids my age playing an entirely different game from the one I knew. While I wasn’t up to speed yet, I knew I wanted to be, to understand this game of intricacy, skill, and joy that I just didn’t understand.
Through the tutelage of my patient European friends, I learned about the difference in a 4-4-2 and a 4-3-3, I learned why Chelsea were the Yankees of England, and I learned about what made the game so beautiful. For years I learned about the game, and soaked it in vicariously. I never played competitively again in England, but I think in some ways that made me appreciate the game more. I understood that what I played as a kid wasn’t soccer, not really. It was a great introduction into the game, but there was no feeling behind it. But the way my friends gathered around the TV for every big game, how they’d discuss every goal, how they’d live the game? That’s what soccer is about. Now, even though I live in the USA, I still talk to my European friends frequently about the sport: the narratives are simply too good to put down. How is Leicester City still in the top 4 of the Premiership? When will Mourinho be employed again, and by who? Who’s being relegated? The US simply doesn’t have this drama in sport, not the same way, not on the same scale. And for me, that’s what made my soccer awakening in England so worthwhile. It showed me a wider world of sports drama that is always riveting, always exciting, and every so often, gives you moments that take your breath away unlike any other sport.
Like almost every kid in the suburbs, I played soccer for a few years of my childhood. I got by on the little athleticism I had, and scored a few goals from time to time. Since quitting soccer around the 5th grade, my foot-eye coordination has deteriorated drastically. In recent years I’ve found myself stumbling around on soccer fields, playing when my friends need me for pickup soccer, or more recently, in intramural games. I can’t seem to maintain a dribble, attempting to shoot usually results in a weak grounder off target, and I literally have no idea where to be at any point in time. There’s a picture of me on Facebook completely whiffing what looks to be an attempt to kick the ball (although I wouldn’t even call it that). I’m a horrible soccer player. I’ll be the first to tell you that. But since I first started playing FIFA, I’ve grown to appreciate the sport. There’s something to be said for playing a video game and growing to admire the players you’re controlling. There’s a certain elegance to the game, an ebb and flow of pace, a rise and fall of action. One minute the ball is being passed among the defenders in the backfield, and the next it’s shooting up the sideline, the crowd is roaring at a potential goal in the making. I haven’t actually begun to watch professional soccer, but FIFA immerses me in its realm. With the MyPlayer mode, which allows you to create a player and grow into a star on the pitch, I’ve “experienced” the game as a mini Zidane documentary. I make dribble moves on the screen that I cannot even think about performing in real life. I have several friends who are talented soccer players, and after playing FIFA I’ve grown to be in awe of them. FIFA does for soccer what no other sports video game does – it creates soccer fans. Its massive popularity has gotten even people like me – deadweights on a soccer field – to foster a growing interest in the sport. Before playing the game, I had found soccer boring. Like other Americans, I preferred basketball and football, where everything was fast-paced and plays were being made rather frequently. FIFA showed me that the lulls in soccer are not boring at all. Passes are beautiful now because I know how hard it is to find the right person to pass to. Even small things like touches and clean dribbling are exciting to watch. I’ve come to realize that soccer is about the buildup and the flow of the game, and it was a video game that opened my eyes to the subtleties of this elegant sport.
As a child soccer was the first sport I ever played. As a player, I wasn’t particularly skilled with the ball, but I was athletic, a vocal leader and could jump high so I played center back. Though I did enjoy the sport, I dropped the sport eventually in favor of playing basketball year round. Despite this the sport stayed in and around my life through my siblings. Both my siblings (ages 15 and 12) play soccer at very high levels and it is through them that soccer has truly become part of my life.
In my home soccer games, practices and scrimmages dominate our weekend calendar and though I don’t directly participate in any of them I am included in the process on many levels. Whether its driving my siblings to practice, helping them find their cleats around the house, or simply cheering them on, I am in some way A part of the game. And as my siblings improved soccer became the king sport of my house. Soon we were watching CONACAF qualifiers and recording early morning games to be watching that night. Soccer had become such a part of my household that as a family we keep 7 or 8 size one balls around the house that we all leisurely kick around, as we went about our business. And though I no longer played the sport I had become to grown fond of it. Having soccer literally in and around my house daily combined with my purchase and subsequent addiction to the FIFA14 video game, affirmed the sports presence in my life and taught me a lot about it as a whole.
Soccer’s impact and immersion in my life has drastically transformed how I feel and see the game. I know see the game as almost a metaphor for life as whole. The qualities that make a good soccer player are often the qualities that make a good person and vice versa. The way that a soccer player combines mental toughness, creativity and intensity with physical strength and skill are goals that we all as people strive towards. So in a sense the soccer players actions on the pitch speak to their perceived character and through their play, even through a video game we feel connected to them, on a personal note. This lens that I now see the game through is directly due to talking with and being around my siblings as they play soccer. Through them I now feel in tune to soccer as a sport and better understand its cultural and personal significance.
I moved on from soccer just as quickly as I’d tried it. A short park district season in my pre-k years sealed my fate as I moved on to other sports. For 15 years I never looked back.
Then a small spark was lit as I watched The Tale of Two Escobar’s, an ESPN 30 for 30. I felt enraged. How could the star of a nation become the scapegoat of a game, and pay with his life? I was disgusted. Yet my passion fell dormant as I yet again moved on almost as quickly as I’d picked it up.
The summer of 2014 awoke my dormant passion for soccer, in the most unusual of ways. Spending time in Durham over the summer meant a lack of activity. Thus I began playing FIFA. I hated it. I knew no strategy and could not score a goal. And then I stumbled upon Bayern Munich, a team that would cultivate my love for the game. I used Robben like a superhero – running down the pitch with not a defender in reach. Faked to the outside, and dribbled right into the box for a powerful shot with his golden left foot. Score! With little effort, I found a strategy to convert my inexperience into goals.
There was also the World Cup. I thought nothing of it as I had never watched one before. After having developed a small addiction to FIFA, watching the World Cup became fun. Cheering on USA connected me to our country, and to our soccer. I paused my day of work and watched our games. I could not believe we were about to beat Portugal before Ronaldo beautifully crossed the ball assisting a tying goal. And when USA lost to Germany, my Bayern Munich support extended to the men of Germany. I had scored so many goals with Muller and Goetze. Similar to the game winning goal, I too would sub in Goetze late in the game and watch him freshly deliver a late goal to win the game.
I became a soccer fan in the summer of 2014. I can watch it, play it (virtually), and enjoy it more now than any other sport.
-JS
Soccer was always the game the other kids played. It was the game that my grandfather would watch while on the phone to my mom. Soccer and I were separated, distinct. We ran in parallel like two cars, never meeting, never touching. My lack of soccer knowledge and experience became what defined me in middle school. I was the kid that didn’t play, the one with free Saturdays to waste at the barn. I fell in love with the smell of dirt on warm horsehair and the feel of muscles shifting under me instead of the elation of a goal or the smell of fresh grass. Eventually my companions joined me as soccer became more of a commitment and required skill.
Soccer and I collided on the first day of this class. Watching the way Zidane commanded the game, his movement and placement, I was reminded of the feeling before a jump. The muscles tensing, the position changing, that sense of breathlessness as you take off was mimicked in the way Zidane played. The world I knew and the world I didn’t crashed into each other. As I continue to develop my knowledge of soccer, my perspective is changed by my lack of knowledge and experience. I see soccer as an outsider. I see the movements for their beauty without experience to understand the skill or time behind them. All my life I have run parallel to soccer but now I have changed lanes.