And here we are, once again! Finally, after four long years the long awaited for whistle will be blown again down in South Africa to kick off a whole month of maddening euphoria around a ball and around the world, from June 11 to July 11.
Not even my humble quarters in Toronto escape from the noise. Home to over 188 different ethnic groups, our streets will be flooded by waving flags, chants and just plain marrymaking regardless who scores and who gets scored. All the chatty-chat will be on football here, and football there… football everywhere? I’m not sure.
So, let’s make this clear. The beautiful game is soccer, right? Not so fast. The world all over, or most of it, sings in unison to the beauty of football. Italians: you’re exempted; you can disagree and continue on with your calcio (let’s pronounce it: kál-shee-o). You’re the reigning world champions. Period.
How come around this neck of the woods we just hear of soccer while football as a name has gone awry? Isn’t that funny that in the NFL the foot touches the ovoid ball only once and for a fraction of a second and still the whole business is called football?
Let’s ask those who know. Here comes Gerry Archer, from the University of Texas, an Englishman himself, with a cool story about this word. Gerry claims soccer as a word for the British crown and insists that it was coined by the forefathers of the English Premier League. Soccer was taken from the first two syllables of a longer word: association. He says that some football official of yore, Charles Wreford-Brown, in 1863, used the word soccer to tell it apart from rugby. Back then, the word football was used to speak of the two sports. And soccer was born, right there, on the same lofty cradle of football. Sorry MLS, but there are aliens even on your name.
South Africans had no qualms to christen their new templeSoccerCity. However, worship will be conducted in high quality football as we follow the ups and downs of teams, players and coaches we root for or against. Just ask our very own K'naan. Check him out!
(Written for http://www.futbolwithu.com/, a portal designed, managed and maintained by a Middle School kid in Chicago)
Through the thick fog of your condition, across the deep gap that tears us apart, over the pain that enfolds us, against a hard reality out there that prevents me from being with you today, here I come, with my poverty, with my helplessness, with my joy at having you, with my pride because you're my son... here I come with this heart breaking prayer that is not even mine... it's Leonard Cohen's:
"You who questions souls, and you to whom souls must answer, do not cut off the soul of my son on my account. Let the strength of his childhood lead him to you, and the joy of his body stand him upright in your eyes. May he discern my prayer for him, and to whom it is uttered, and in what shame. I received the living waters and I held them in a stagnant pool. I was taught but I did not teach. I was loved but I did not love. I weakened the name that spoke me, and I chased the light with my own understanding. Whisper in his ear. Direct him to a place of learning. Illuminate his child's belief in mightiness. Rescue him from those who want him with no soul, who have their channels in the bedrooms of the rich and poor, to draw children into death. Let him see me coming back. Allow us to bring forth our souls together to make a place for your name. If am too late, redeem my yearning in his heart, bless him with a soul that remembers you, that he may uncover it with careful husbandry. They who wish to devour him have grown powerful on my idleness. They have a number for him, a chain. Let him see them withered in the light of your name. Let him see their dead kingdom from the mountain of your word. Stand him up upon his soul, bless him with the truth of manhood."
