 |
| This pizza menu that has English Premiership teams as the names of the pizza made my day( please note Manchester United is the most expensive and probably the best, rightfully so) |
Anybody who knows me well , knows that I have two great
loves in my life, Dance and Soccer/Football. To avoid confusion, in this post I am choosing to call it soccer instead of football. I am a huge huge soccer fan( not to be understated), and I love the game like
it’s my job! I like to think I am too much of a “lady” to actually be a
fanatic, but when my friend retells the story of how she thought I was going to
fight this one Romanian guy at a bar, I think I am bordering on fanaticism a
bit, perhaps. The 2010 South Africa Soccer World Cup is still one of my best vacations
ever! I think my goal in life is to be rich enough that I can take a whole
month off during soccer world cup years and sit in VIPs of every game there! I
am kidding, I actually have other dreams and ambitions, like you know, saving
the world and stuff, but probably just so people can play soccer and I can
enjoy it! I had never taken the time to reflect on my whole soccer fanaticism
thing until this summer when I found myself hustling each day to watch the Brazil
Soccer World Cup, at odd hours of the night in a foreign country!
 |
| my latest Manchester United Jersey |
Soccer and I have a love affair that people I meet and none
of my friends have ever been able to comprehend, “especially” for a girl! I try
to be offended by this slightly sexist view of my soccer fanaticism, before I
realize that I happen to be the only girl amongst a bunch of guys, waiting for
my favorite sports bar in Chicago, Fado, to open at 7am, so I can catch the first English Premiership
game of the day. For my team, the red devils aka Manchester united, I have been
known to brave a lot of things including the cold, sleep deprivation and
hangovers!
 |
| Watching the World Cup in Addis, thats Ryan Giggs commenting for SuperSport on there! Who is he you say, only one of the greatest footballers the English have ever had and a proud red devil |
I was exposed to
soccer at a very young age, being it’s the most popular sport in Africa. My
family circumstances really led me down this path of no return. Being the last
of 5 children in my family, by the time I grew up everyone was gone from the
house. I only had my parents as my pseudo siblings, especially my father who I
adored and loved everything that he loved, including soccer. With a house
almost overrun by women( 5 women and 1 guy), he was only too happy for the
company and a child he could treat like a boy. I remember first falling in love
with the local team that he worshipped in our local league, Dynamos “DeMbare.” My first live soccer game
was one in which Dembare thrashed some menial team 5-0, and the euphoria in the
air from the game had me hooked. This turned out to be my one and only live
soccer game in Zimbabwe, because a few years later there was a stampede at the
local stadium when an altercation between the police and some losing fans got
out of control, and 13 people were killed. 2 of siblings were lucky to escape
with their lives, but my mother forbade any of us from ever going to a live
soccer game again.
If you count my high
school boyfriends up to now, I look like a serial dater, but that’s only having
me as a girlfriend in high school was completely useless. I cared more about
arguing out the game and placing bets on soccer games with a bunch of boys than
about holding hands and whatever people did in high school! My relationships
consequently lasted not more than 3 months each time, oh well, high school!
 |
| As you can see one of my favorite pastimes is taking pictures of myself in Manchester United jerseys |
I then moved to the US and in my first few years I felt
deathly deprived of soccer. Being an avid fan of the English Premiership, I found myself in the wrong time zone for all my games and in a country where nobody cared about my beloved sport. As the months and years went by, I felt like a piece of my world had been taken away from me. At that same time, I was also fighting being culturally changed by America. I woke up one morning and I had dreamt in English instead of my mother tongue and it terrified me! It became so important for to me to keep pieces of my old self intact, especially my love for soccer. Everybody in my
dorm remembers my first college boyfriend, as Nancy’s football player, but I
never once showed up for his games because I was determined to not be sucked
into anything American. In fact, one of our biggest fights was over him
ditching our plans for a superbowl party! Never mind that super bowl parties
are now some of my favorite parties of the year and, I actually cried when the
Bears lost to the Packers last season.
 |
| me at the 2010 Soccer World Cup |
I have acclimatized to American sports, I even call soccer football now, but my American
friends still do not get my beautiful game at all. I was so glad to be in Africa this
summer where people are as crazy about it as I am, and I do not have to explain
to them the wonder behind 20 men chasing around a ball for 90 minutes. A true
soccer fan knows it’s not just about what’s happening on the pitch(which in itself is pure magic, the skill, the intelligence in the strategies, everything), but all what is transpiring with everyone else in the stadium or bar. Soccer is more than just a game. Soccer
fans are some of the most emotionally attached sports fans out there, sometimes
getting ugly to the tune of the shooting death of the Colombian player who
scored an on-goal to get Colombia eliminated from the 1994 world cup. Outside
of the ugliness, what the world cup brings every four years is a platform for
millions of people across the world to identify with each other on a level that
they never do otherwise. Those 90 minutes, that sometimes do not produce a
goal, are a platform on which the world sets asides its differences and become
one in the name of the beautiful game. A ceasefire was brokered in the civil war in Ivory Coast after their team qualified for the 2006 World cup and the country icon Didier Drogba begged the opposing sides to lay down their arms. Soccer fans like to
call the game a religion, and indeed the stadium is our church and in Sweden,
Zlatan Ibrahimovic is their god!
 |
| King Ibrahimovic, the Swede who is one of the greatest footballers of this age! |
 |
| Vuvuzelas all day! |
Soccer is more than just a game for me too, for personal
reasons. The physical distance between my family and I over the years, has also meant a chasm between the life my
family lives and can comprehend in Zimbabwe to the one I have built for myself
across the globe. It has become especially hard since I switched my career
plans from the traditional physician track that I was on, to something that my
parents are not even sure I am going to get a job with. After they had spent
years telling everyone that I am a doctor in America, the meaning of this MPH/MBA
business, and worse working in Africa, where I am supposed to have escaped
completely eludes them. My parents used to hang onto every word I said on the
phone to them, asking me to describe everything in detail so that they could
somehow feel a part of my world but lately our conversations have been reduced
to hearing the other’s voice, an finding out if the other is alive and in 5
minutes we are done, unless I bring up soccer.
To lighten up the mood, here is John Oliver’s take on the
2014 FIFA World Cup and the issues in Brazil concerning it, but also a
reflection on why soccer matters to the world!
Lastly I am going to make a few calls regarding the World
cup. My money is on the Dutch or the Germans taking this one! Brazil does not
stand a chance! In addition a quick shoutout to my fellow red devils reading
this and if you have the bad taste in life to bleed blue (Chelsea), our
friendship is over before it even started!
 |
| All about the Dutch at the 2010 Soccer World Cup |
 |
| Bleed red, through and through! |
No comments:
Post a Comment