Love the ball and she’ll love you back

Okay, I’m hooked now. As I write this, I’m also watching the replay of the Mexico-Uruguay game on TV. The game was played at 7 this morning, PDT, as I found out when I tried to check email on my cellphone on the way to work. The network I’m on is Verizon, which provides live broadcasts of the World Cup via its VCast mobile phone service. There was no bandwidth available even for such a simple request as email.

The thing about the Latin American game is that they love the ball. It’s their friend, and the player will keep it close until keeping it with him is no longer advantageous. Noticing that makes me understand what it is that sets soccer apart from other games. Because the ball is never handled, it has its own life. Once any object is held in the hands, it becomes a mere tool of the human holding it. A possession.

No one owns a soccer ball in that way. It’s like a beautiful woman you want to be close to, but you know the only way to score is to let her go, and in the manner that she—not you—prefers. Then maybe she’ll love you back. Perhaps that’s why futbol is loved with such a passion in Latin America—it’s the ultimate ballad about unrequited love for a beautiful woman with a mind of her own and a body you’re not even allowed to brush your hand against.

But I wax embarrassingly lyrical! There is, of course, the not-so-little matter of all those other blokes on the other team trying to score with her too. A couple of weeks ago, PBS aired a program called The Golden Age. It’s a documentary about older players living in New York, many of whom were futbol stars in their countries of origin, and who work menial jobs during the week but come to life at the weekend playing the beautiful game against each other in quasi-national teams.

The website is here http://www.thegoldenageofsoccer.com/site/ but the trailer, while evocative of the film’s themes, doesn’t really give a true sense of how hard these games are played, or how fiercely proud the players are of their national identities. The players from Paraguay, we learn, have the habit of conversing in an indigenous language rather than Spanish so their opponents can’t understand what they’re saying.

Not that that’s likely to distract the All Whites this week. But a contingent of Paraguay supporters playing their national instrument loud enough to drown out the vuvuzelas might. Then again, Paraguay’s national instrument is a harp. How cool is that! Paraguay is one of very few countries in the world that actually have a government-decreed national instrument, and one of the few landlocked countries in the world that has a navy.

And its President is known as the Red Bishop because he was formerly a Catholic bishop, well-versed in liberation theology and elected on a platform of promising to better the life of those who live in abject poverty. Fernando Lugo is quoted in this 2008 Guardian article as saying:

“Where there is a scream coming from the poor people, where there is sweat, where people are shoeless, we will be there. Because in such people there is a resurrection; if that exists there, then there is resurrection for Paraguay.”

It’s not just the odds the All Whites have stacked against them; it may be the Guy Upstairs as well.

rosalea.barker@gmail.com

Paz y amor

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