Football: Bring on the World Cup!

Football is a game that I have always loved. As a child, in the days before cable TV and overly-competitive primary schooling, I grew up in what was then the idyllic suburb of Bandra in Mumbai (Bombay). As kids, there were two ways of proving your worth to your peers (and kids can be an extremely critical and occasionally cruel peer group). The first was to excel academically. However, academic excellence was not considered cool. Playing football and hockey and dribbling your way past a maze of defenders who were bent on doing you physical harm was considered cool.

So, I grew up idolizing older kids who excelled at either hockey or football (though we played cricket as well, it was considered an elitist game that cost a lot of money, at least when played with a cricket "season" ball).

Luckily for me, I turned out to be a good field hockey player, who some said could have tried out for the Bombay team. One coach said that if I was really devoted to the game, I could (maybe) have tried out for the India team. But then hockey was a profession that paid badly, and there was no point pursuing that particular dream.

Unluckily for me, I was never a good football player. This was largely due to the fact that I could not head the ball, since I wore glasses. So I sat on the sidelines and watched some truly gifted players during school and university games. The more I watched the game, the more it fascinated me. Many years later, as a student in the U.S, I became friends with a guy who had played for the Sikkim state football team (Sikkim is one of India’s North-eastern Himalayan states). He took me under his wing and trained me.

I never became a very good player and my enthusiasm clearly exceeded my ability. My sole claim to fame was that during a university game where I came on pretty early in the first half as a substitute, I restricted the opposition’s centre-forward to only two goals , which I thought was an excellent performance. This guy had tried out for Zambia’s national team, was about six feet four inches tall, two hundred pounds and would have given a fleet-footed cheetah pretty stiff competition in a race.

Since I was a child, I have followed football closely. I watched old videos of Pele, Garrincha, Beckenbauer and the other greats. I was heartbroken when France (led by the great Michel Platini) lost to Germany in penalty shoot-outs in the 1986 World Cup. I watched with amazement as Diego Maradona scored what was possibly the goal of the century against England, when he dribbled past five or six England defenders and put the ball past Peter Shilton, that great England goalkeeper. I also watched the infamous “Hand of God” goal that Maradona scored in that match. I was overjoyed when France under the great Zinedine Zidane won the World Cup and the European Cup. What a great player he was, and what a treat to watch!

This year, we will have the privilege of watching a man who is probably the best player the world has seen since Diego Maradona – another Argentinean, the 22 year old Lionel Messi. Like Maradona, he is short in stature and has a low center of gravity, which means he rarely falls when tackled. Like Maradona, he has extremely quick reflexes and great peripheral vision. And like Maradona, he can accelerate and change direction so quickly that he leaves defenders struggling and gasping in his wake. I watched Lionel Messi single-handedly demolish my favorite football club Arsenal in the Champions League quarter-finals this year. He scored all the four goals for his club Barcelona in that match, and was simply unstoppable. Whether Messi can live up to his (justified) billing remains to be seen.

There will be many other great players to watch as well. Didier Drogba for the Ivory Coast (though he has broken his arm), Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard, Cesc Fabregas (probably the best midfielder in the world) and so many others.

Who will win? There will be upsets, and new stars will be born. Some established stars will disappoint and fall by the wayside. All of us have our favorite teams, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we will get a chance to watch some of the most gifted and graceful sportspersons in the world, in what is undoubtedly the most popular, unifying and democratic sport in the world. If there is one activity that can unite all of humanity for a little while, irrespective of religion, political leanings, nationality, gender or anything else, it is this – soccer, the “beautiful game” as Pele once called it.