My Football

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061978051/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

Yes, the New England Patriots just won the Super Bowl. And yes, as a person coming from a long line of New England Yankee stock, I'm happy they won. My grandfather, Gerald Harrison (if you google him, he's sometimes listed as "Jerry"), whom I don't remember as he died when I was a baby, was one of the original Red Sox sports announcers a hundred years ago and would have loved the curse being reversed in my lifetime. He was also an athlete, Boston L Street Brownie (legend has it he did many a polar bear plunge), and a sailor who raced. I think I have quite a bit of his fabric in my cloth.

What I don't know, as worldly as he was with sports, is if he ever played, announced, or watched soccer matches. I've often wondered this, as it's one my interests that seemingly came out of nowhere. Just like American Football, no one in my family (and you may be getting a sense of the size and scope of it from these missives) watched or played soccer but me. None of my brothers played football or played soccer. My first stepfather watched football and I vaguely remember going to a Harvard vs Yale  game (he'd gone to Harvard's Medical School) with him. But no one but me watched or played soccer.

I remember as a girl watching Soccer Made in Germany on Saturdays. It was grainy and in black & white on PBS. The rest of the family would be out and about. I'd be glued to the television for an hour and study the highlights. If I remember correctly, it first appeared when I started High School, so '76-ish. Last I remember catching it was in '82, after I got off the boat (as I didn't live with a TV for a few years) and I believe it was how I first saw a World Cup match.

My first year of High School, I attended a large public school. I never was a part of the football culture, didn't have a clue about Friday night lights or cheerleading. Like I said, even with four brothers and three sisters, none of us had ever entered that world. To this day, we know very little about it.

The remaining three years, I attended a small private High School where they didn't have a football team. Students there looked up to the best musician, dancer, or artist. We did have a soccer team. JV and Varsity. Boys only. This was the 70's. No Title IX. However it was a liberal, progressive and student directed school. So a few of us soccer struck girls tried out for the team. Three of us were on JV and one of us on Varsity. It was heaven. We played against other prep schools all boy teams from Boston to 495. At the beginning of the first season, the boys didn't know what to make of us. By the end, we females got extra cleats to the ankles as penance for not being taken seriously, to their detriment, at the start. Since prep schools were full of international students, some of the kid were playing with screw-in metal cleats. Blood was drawn. Two of the Italian brothers on our team I now read about in the papers. Not for soccer, but for their pasta company, and how they've gone from "worst to first on gay rights". The Barilla Brothers. There were many families with international ties and famous last names. At the time, some I recognized from books or museums. Many more of us were there because it's the only place we fit. But that is another story for another time. I graduated in 1980, kept up with my running and watching matches as I could find them.

When I lived in St. Croix, I'd see great pick-up matches. Guys at work, during lunch breaks, just kicking a ball around, or weekends in the streets or outskirts of town after work. Balls would be made of cloth, found items, or a found school yard ball. Occasionally it would be a regulation ball. These men and boys were the same guys I worked with and who would turn old brake shoes from cars into musical instruments for their Reggae and Ska bands. Goal posts could be a door way, alley entrance, set of trees,  or a set of paper bags with stones in the bottom. Nothing fancy, but always fun.

While I was in college in Maine, twice I saved up money to go to Europe for a large chunk of the summer. One summer I spent a month in London and another summer 6 weeks on the Continent.
London has it's own soccer culture. And England has the Premier League. What ever neighborhood or city center you're born into seemed to be your club for life. If you dared move and declare a new allegiance, well that just wasn't done. 9th Circle of Hell for folks who did that. Again, pick up games galore. Hide Park and Notting Hill were my two favorites. I seem to remember many West Indians in Notting Hill and loved the humor and grace of their playing. Hide Park was a bit more uptight and fierce. The following summer, while my friend and I were in Italy, we spent several days in Rome. We'd walked the for hours in the city and found ourselves in a small piazza on the edge of town. All the stores where closing and the owners where dragging tables, chairs, radios, television and piles of food out into the piazza. We were invited to sit and attend this neighborhood party. Now for the life of me I can't tell you if it was a Lazio or Roma crowd, but that was the match that was being played. It is one of the oldest rivalries in Rome. That afternoon, to see an entire neighborhood close it's shops, come to the streets, eat, shout, and dance about, was heaven. These are my people, I thought. I will spend a year of my life in Rome before I die, I thought. I still do!

By the mid-80's I lived in New York City and played in a Publishing Softball league, the diamonds around the city were often near clearings or fields that were multi-use. Men from all over the world would gather, particularly in Central Park, to play pick up games. Four trash cans would become goal posts the teams would be skins vs shirts. After my game was done, I'd often linger and watch them play. African languages, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, British English, and many more languages depending on the night. I loved watching the style and grace of the Italians and West Africans, in particular. I could speak to these men about their favorite players and watch them practice their heroes favorite moves. Even if our first language wasn't a common one, our soccer language (names, numbers, clubs, dates, tournaments) bridged the gap.

1990's in San Francisco had a very lively soccer culture, too. More of an organized league culture than a pick up culture. Funny, I would have thought it'd be the opposite. I dated a Dun and Bradstreet boy who played in the adult league. I'd watch him and went to Golden Gate Park to watch other matches, too. North Beach was a good place to view international matches with passionate strangers. This is right at the cusp of cable and the internet, the radio and tv were still king.

In the mid 90's I married a Dutchman. Oranje ruled. I have the kloppen, lion, and vuvuzela to show for it. One of our first dates, after our daughter was born and we left her with my family, was a drive up to a sports bar to watch the World Cup. Again in 1998, reliable internet (dial up?!) in rural Maine was not an option. I enjoyed watching Premiere League and European football with him, and also his father. Watching Ajax, an Amsterdam club, while at the family home in a southern Holland island town, was fun and relaxing. Again, a common language that could bridge family tensions or turmoil.

In the 2000's we moved back East. Then soccer became a thing I'd hoped my kids would want to learn. However, the suburban way of teaching and learning soccer as a youth, has none of the fun, family and fantasy of the pick up games, legends or neighborhoods I'd experienced.

It was competitive, controlling and bizarre. Conversely, everyone received a trophy on every team at the end of each season. It was bipolar. A killjoy for my boy (as my girl had no, none whatsoever, interest in ball sports). By the age of 8 they felt too old to compete with their peers. Crushing on all counts. I never tried out for a team or practiced any skill drills until High School. As a family, though, we'd watch soccer matches. Oranje, USA, Man U and such. We'd go to Breakers and Revolution matches.

In the mid-2000's the above book was published and I highly recommend it. In fact, I use it as choice read for students who love soccer and don't love reading. It's complex, intricate and deeply referenced. The kids love it. It works especially well with ELL students. It's challenging, even for English as a first language readers, but the love of soccer keeps them reading. There are 64 languages under my High School's roof, and there are not many books I've found that hold the staying power of Foer's How Soccer Explains the World.

In 2010 we were in Holland for during the World Cup, as it was being played in South Africa. The whole of Holland was Orange; banners, flags, lions, oversized sunglasses, Heineken hats with drinking straws AND built in noise makers! The whole country was watching every match at all times. Many promotions were given and we succumbed to them all. Holland lost to Spain in the final.

In 2012 in Ecuador I learned about the different city teams in Quito from the bus driver and open market vendors. I bought a scarf from the driver's favorite Quito team and from the Ecuadorian National team. When they played in the World Cup last summer, as I have a few student's from there, I wore it during the match.

By 2014, driving my Oranje Honda Fit, it felt like a slap in the face. I'd bought it in 2011, as a source of one of our few remaining bonds; soccer and children. The USA progressed far in the Cup and Holland did okay. Germany won against Brazil in Brazil. Another slap in the face.

In November, 2014, I was in Paris. I wanted to attend the Paris St. Germain vs Marseilles match, biggest rivalry in France thus my desire to see in in the flesh and in famous stadium: Palace of the Princes. However I was thwarted by my instructor; he warned me off. He said the skin head faction was too tough to navigate without a knowing guide and just plain unsafe. I wrote about this in one of my first posts (Paris & Pens). In January.....well you know what happened in Paris......

Now, I'm tired. I've only touched the surface of how soccer explains a slice of me that some of you have be subjected to over the years. You see, it is like music to me. A universal language. One that works in every country I've landed. So when the Patriot players say, "We're World Champions", it makes me shake my head. It is only in America that this game is even a sport. Soccer is the real world wide sport. It's championship comes once every four years.

I didn't refer to the book much. But you should read it. This is a brief excerpt of Franklin Foer's Introduction:

" This book has three parts. The first tries to explain the failure of globalization  to erode ancient hatreds in the game's great rivalries. It is the hooligan-heavy section of the book. The second part uses soccer to address economics; the consequences of migration, the persistence of corruption and the rise of powerful new oligarchs like Silvio Berlusconi, the president of Italy and the AC Milan club. Finally, the book uses soccer to defend the virtues of old-fashioned nationalism - a way to blunt the return of tribalism."

See, my kind of guy, writing about my kind of concerns, in a language I understand deeply.

So, Good Night, Foot Ball lovers and Footballers, G'night.