I like to keep up with the daily news, and I have not failed to notice that, in addition to the celebrations around the Fourth of July and the perennial wars and disasters all over the globe, there have been many enthusiastic media reports about the World Cup soccer games. Soccer seems to have invaded America, and indeed the whole planet.
I grew up with soccer, or rather, I grew up in spite of it. The playing fields at my school were considerably larger than the school itself, which was appropriate because propelling any kind of ball around any kind of field was considered far more important than education. We played soccer in the winter season, which practically guaranteed that our games were always wet, cold, and muddy. We were inevitably wet, cold, and muddy ourselves, and most of us played reluctantly and resentfully.
At least soccer, compared to American football, is a simple game. All you have to do is kick the ball up and down the field without even picking it up (which is a considerable advantage when the ball is covered in mud) and pop it between the goalposts if the opportunity arises. It was not so simple for me because all the players were dressed alike in mud colored shorts and shirts instead of the rainbow outfits of modern players. So, because I was very short-sighted, it was difficult for me to distinguish which team was which, and which way the ball should be encouraged to move. My strategy was to hang about somewhere in the middle of the field and, if the ball came my way, to give it a kick in what I hoped was the right direction. This naturally led to some misunderstandings, and it always amazed me how excited people could get about any tiny deviation from orthodoxy in the rules of a game.
Ever since those cold and muddy days, the joy of soccer has been a mystery to me. But, of course, everything has changed. The teams are not bedraggled schoolboys but professionals and have colorful uniforms and, I’m told, special boots, and they play in huge and expensive arenas where the ground is not an inch or two deep in mud. Played by experts who are properly paid and dressed in the right clothes, soccer is a wonderfully flowing, fast-moving game. It’s been a long step from those days on the school football field to a full-scale global capitalist extravaganza that we have been seeing over the last few weeks. But I can’t help noticing that it is essentially the same simple game.
Perhaps, as schoolboys, we just didn’t have the right stuff, or any stuff at all. The girls in the nearby school seemed to have more fun with their netball and hockey. Now, of course, they play soccer too, and their version seems more elegant and even more artistic to me, and they put such energy into it, as we boys never did. Perhaps they do have the right stuff. I remember years later reading Oscar Wilde’s remark about soccer, which struck me as profoundly true. “It is all very well as a game for rough girls, but it is hardly suitable for delicate boys.” I couldn’t agree more.
