The Beautiful Game

The beautiful game is a world game with 11 players to a team, 17 simple laws, and scores from zero to miraculous single-digit ones that engulf nations with pride or humiliation.

Its real star is a nondescript ball, usually made in Pakistan as outsourced by big-name sports makers, and is butted and kicked on grass fields by players more popular than rock stars.

When the ball escapes the goalkeeper (goalie to the US) who guards the goal like Cerberus, the mortals of a massive cauldron called a football (soccer to the US) stadium erupt.  And so do nations that have fielded those players.

The goalkeeper is an anomaly as he alone uses his hands and gets most of the blame when opponents score.  It’s said that the late Pope John Paul II had a soft spot for goalkeepers.  He used to be one.

In its exquisite moments when man is seen in all his imperfections and greatness, football seems like an unpredictable apolitical war, strangely more unifying than divisive.  It has attackers, midfielders and defenders on the field, fans on the stands and in front of TV sets, hooligans on the streets, and the song We Are the Champions by Queen.

These days until July 9, one out of every five, or one-fifth of the world, watches the games from different time zones, with some setting their alarm clocks for 3 a.m.

I first saw football in Tagbilaran’s sports stadium in the ‘70s.  The then DWC chaplain, Fr. Norbert Hessling, SVD, had trained some college guys.  One of them was Jimmy Torrefranca (I understand he’s Sagbayan’s mayor now) who invited Bobbsey Manding Buma-at and me to their game.

In this place and in a game that isn’t basketball, we knew there won’t be much of an audience, so we watched for friendship’s sake.  What I saw was a memorable sinewy ballet on the field.

Then came the movie Escape to Victory featuring a young Sylvester Stallone and, good gracious, Pelé, whose awesome ‘bicycle kick’ was the movie’s best excuse.  I was hooked.

I’ve followed World Cups, those quadrennial inter-country games, since, and read football’s history and legends.  Mastering the game some other way is good enough.  Playing it is impossible anyway.

Football loyalties are more of characteristics than politics.  As I’m from a country that unfortunately doesn’t field players, I then chose another country to root for Germany.  Its team’s history, vaunted defense strategy, penalty shots, and disciplined teamwork instead of individual shining stars, fit me to an F.  (It’s football and not tootball, okay?

In Germany football is king presumptive.  Being there is to get infected with the fever of a place that stands still when its team plays.  Workers and employers alike become tsunamis.  Big TV screens are installed in parks that are filled to the rafters.  A win means pandemonium on the streets and rainbows in the skies.  Where traffic is no problem and fireworks are regulated, the rules change.

The husband took time off to be in such a park while I shouted by my lonesome in front of the TV at home.  In football, we become different tribes out to scalp each other.

I post World Cup scoreboards and pencil entries; he draws stars with a felt pen beside his team’s name.  I display a big poster of my team; he covers it with an even bigger poster of his team.

Brazil?  Hah, there’s no more Pelè.  Ronaldo was a 1998 disaster and Brazilian lady cheerers have mouths bigger than their bikinis, I scoffed.

In that World Cup championship when Germany and Brazil faced off, I wore a German football t-shirt; he wore a Brazilian t-shirt and a smug smile.  When Ronaldo pierced twice the defense of German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn that was as impenetrable as a bomb shelter, the ground swallowed me.  It was samba over sauerkraut, 2-0.

Now our scalpels are out again.  ‘Germany won the first game,’ I said menacingly.

‘Its opponent is so-so.  Watch out for Brazil…’

Personal logic comes in.  While it seems Brazil invented football with Pelè (one writer asked if it’s not Pelè who invented Brazil), I shot back, ‘Brazil now has Ronaldinho as its brightest star, and he looks like your peeve of a colleague!’

‘Just hope all his teeth fall off because they won’t,’ he  answered.

-(2006)