Another World Cup: Some thoughts on the beautiful game

It’s the first Saturday in “World Cup Time” and I am watching Argentina and Nigeria play as I write this. Later today…USA v. England in one of the most anticipated soccer games of the last four years.

Soccer is, indeed, “the beautiful game,” and I love the physicality and grace of the players and the overall flow of the match. I love the beauty and the brutality of the competition. I never played organized soccer growing up, although I played with and to some extent learned the game from the Catholic kids in my north St. Louis neighborhood. In the 60s in St. Louis, just about nobody played soccer except the Catholic kids, for whom soccer was the “eighth sacrament.” So I learned to kick the ball around and watched the Sunday morning PBS games from Germany on our tiny black & white television.

But I didn’t really become a fan until we lived in England in the mid-1990s, and it was there that I was introduced to the likes of the Premiere League and Manchester United, the poet/philosopher/rowdy Eric Cantona, and the great England national team of that era. I was hooked.

My son, Jon, picked up the game as a player and went on to play select and high school soccer when we returned to the States. My daughter, Jenny, played for a few years in grade school before turning her talents to gymnastics and music. I’ve watched a lot of soccer over the years.

And I think the most beautiful thing about the game is that it can and is played just about everywhere in the world. All you need is a ball (or something resembling a ball in some poor countries), something to mark the goals, and some willing players. That’s it, and yet from some of the most remote and poverty-stricken parts of the globe come talented players who dream of representing their countries in the World Cup. The next few weeks are going to be inspiring in many ways.

It’s halftime of the Argentina game (and it is their game as Nigeria is not measuring up) but today my thoughts are on a series of games about a year ago when I was in Nicaragua on a mission trip with our church’s youth group. It was a trip that left its mark on me in so many ways – the hard work, the prayer, the community, the hike up a volcano, the relationships with the people of the village where we worked. But what I recall most vividly today are the pick-up soccer games in the evenings. After the work was done, after we were all just about as tired as we thought we had ever been, there were always the soccer games, and they always ended up being USA v. Nicaragua.

The proud, young men of Villa Catalina rejoiced in the games, a chance to regain a little pride that is perhaps sucked from them as they haltingly acknowledge that they need the help of outside groups like ours to help build their homes and schools. So they played with gusto, as did our gang of tired volunteers – tired young men of high school and college age along with a couple of very fit older guys the age of their fathers, and a handful of talented young women. I don’t think the Nicaraguans knew what to think of the women at first. Then they saw them play and watched in wonder as the women stole the ball from them and raced down the field and scored. They found out quickly that the best way to respond to the women was to compete with them or get left standing in the dust scratching their heads. A good lesson for them to learn.

So they were intense games, “friendly” only in the soccer sense of the word, meaning a game between two countries that doesn’t count in a record book. But the games mattered to those playing, and that in itself is the glory of sports. To not play hard, to not compete, is to disrespect both the game and your opponent. But, just as on the world stage, the games ended with respectful handshakes and hugs, the sharing of water and smiles.

It’s a beautiful game. A wonder. A statement of faith in each other. A blessing cup.