Emyat and Football

“I am an Arsenal fan first. Football, second.”
Nick Hornby, “Fever Pitch”

As a nominal fan of football, it’s inscrutable, the amount of football I am absorbing at the moment. The devil of it, I don’t even like the Premiership. This simply means one thing: TV is so intolerably ghastly, the sports channel has become enticingly appealing or that I have so much time in my hands, 90 minutes swift by, unfelt.

Normally, I don’t watch football on TV except when I have trouble getting sleep or I am reading deep into the dark hours and I can’t play loud music (as music should be played) in noble consideration of souls at rest. The din of football as a background enables me to concentrate on readings that would normally shove me into stupor.

When my mother was alive, she would often sneak up on me, “Why are you still not in bed?” Then a follow-up question: “What are you watching?” probably suspecting porno.

“Football,” I would indulgently answer. Knowing her, I anticipate her next question: “What do you get from it?” With my mother, it’s all about the bottomline and cost-benefit. So I would turn to cliché – “It’s food for the soul.”

It always worked – “food for the soul” is something my mother considered legit probably because it’s unquantifiable, therefore, not within her realm.

Maybe I am consuming football more than what is healthy in the hope of my mother’s apparition. This time, I would change the scenario – I would put down the book I am reading and invite her to sit with me for a while as I convince her how football’s metaphors have instructed me about life in general and how this game has made me understand the horrors of capitalism and the awful truth of globalization.

Knowing my mother, she would be more amused than dazzled. Tell me, how many children can amuse their mothers with pompous talks on globalization? I truly miss her. For all our friendly disagreements, I have no doubt that she understood me, truly understood me in a way mothers rarely do. Tell me, am I lucky or am I lucky?

Yes, we are talking about football.

Soccer as we called it then was very popular in highschool. My dear friend Tox would talk about 4-1 formation and I would space out. At that time, Diego Maradona was the only player I heard about. I was not interested in soccer per se as much as watching my male friends, my homeboys play and cheering them on.

In college, I continued watching my batchmates from the field. Football on TV was unheard of and now that it has invaded all our waking hours, I can still say that I prefer watching my highschool or college batchmates play in the school grounds. Well, except for Italy or Real Madrid, as long as Cannavaro is asserting his claim to the kingdom.

Cannavaro, hay! If I had the savvy, I would create a website for him. A sports-commentator summed it up: “If ManU pays Rio Ferdinand 120,000 pounds a week, Cannavaro is worth at least a million a day.”

Football became a curiosity when a player that committed a costly error during a World Cup game was fatally shot when he got home (Colombia, I think). What is this game that fuels fanaticism and snatches out the monsters in humans?

Then a coach in one of the South American teams tried to explain: “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. It is more than that.”

Goosebumps! Shivers down my spine! It took me a while to “grasp” that cryptic remark

A sportswriter warns: “Intellectuals should embrace football for its art, not for its soul.” Not in agreement here. More than rudiments and techniques and strategies and skills, football is a mirror and a celebration of life. Besides, if one were to embrace football, one has to embrace its metaphors and mysteries, its beauty and squalor.

I don’t play football (which makes me a fake by some standards) unless you count kicking ball with Georgelablab, the uber-askal (who says uber in this day and age except the Germans?) but I have had conversations with young men whom you could categorize as football players when I was a paid employee at UPTC and we were not exactly on the same paragraph.

To them, football was about great athleticism and mental agility, in short, the art of it. On the other hand, I talked of magical moments, of gods descending to play with mortals, of my own spiritual dilemmas pacified by football. Those kids must have thought: “Our teacher is nuts.” In complete agreement here.

That sportswriter could be right. Intellectuals should stick with the art of football, not its soul. But I am no intellectual.

I am a partisan at heart. So when I rant about globalization using football references and parallelism, you know where I am coming from.

P.S. Nick Hornby has a new book out (Slam) and the right-wing claims it is pro-abortion. Hay, these right-wingers - They don’t fail to humor me on a humid day.