Monday, February 25, 2008

Soccer as study

As a kid, sports were my life. I played organized soccer and hockey — a goalie in both — knew most NHL team rosters by heart, collected hockey cards, cried when Italy was eliminated from the 1990 and 1994 World Cups, asked for Azzurri, Juventus and/or Toronto Maples Leafs jerseys every birthday and Christmas, and spent hours imagining myself as a professional athlete competing in some glorious (and often tragic) championship game.

When I got to high school, my mind and time became preoccupied with other things — music, for the most part, but also writing, working out, drinking, drugs, and friends. By the time I reached university, sports were barely on my radar. I’d follow the Tour de France every July and watch the Leafs blow a playoff run each spring, but not much else. As for soccer, I was a fan of the most casual variety, tuning in every two years to watch the Italians compete in the big international tournaments.

I’m not sure how my obsession with the beautiful game blossomed. I know it loosely overlaps with the time I first read Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch, but I don’t remember ever thinking, “Hey, I need to become more like this guy.” My friends all seemed to start talking a lot more about the game at the time, but perhaps that was because I started talking more about it.

If I don’t know exactly why calcio caught my attention, I do know when: 2005. The Champions League round-of-16 had just begun. I watched as AC Milan, led by a young a Brazilian with the hilarious and gross name of Kaká and a good-looking Ukranian named Andriy Shevchenko, took out Manchester United. I watched as the next round ended in fiasco, with Inter fans littering the pitch with flares, ending the match prematurely and allowing their city rivals to advance. For the semis, I saw the thrilling second leg encounter between Milan-PSV Eindhoven at small bar in Rome with tourists from Holland who were heartbroken that their side had not advanced despite a 3-1 win (ah, the away goals rule). I remember being surprised by how many Italians in the bar cheered against Milan. How little I knew.

And, of course, I remember the classic final in Istanbul, as Liverpool overcame a 3-0 Milan first half lead to shock the Rossoneri in a penalty shootout. I watched the game alone in the family room of my parents house, making espresso for myself at half time, a ritual I was now practicing regularly. Though rooting for the Italian club, I felt euphoric after the match. I’d just witnessed one of the greatest soccer encounters of all time.



My approach to soccer is almost academic—soccer as study. Because I live in Toronto, I am separated from the passion and romanticism that pervades fan culture in Europe. Besides the Italian national side (and Toronto FC, by default), I support no team in particular. So instead of investing emotion into the success and failings of a particular side, I focus on learning something new about the game each time I watch it. I’m elated when I can say things like, “That’s a classic Inter goal,” when I am able to anticipate who will be substituted, or when I suddenly can see how a role player fits into a squad’s formation and judge how effective he is.

I am also intensely interested in the culture of soccer off the pitch. Fan culture, yes, but also the role of television and journalists in shaping the way we see the game, in the language we use to describe the game, in scandals, and violence, and politics, in the way a society is reflected in its soccer and vice versa. I have purchased several books on the game in recent months and plan on sharing my thoughts about them on this blog.

I’m not an expert. I probably never will be. But I’d like to get as close as possible. Watching soccer to me is like literature, like film, like music, like art. Some people can view it simply as entertainment, a way of passing the time on weekends, and be perfectly content. I have never been able to do that with literature, film, music and art. The same applies to soccer. If I’m not able to study something, to investigate it deeply, then I am bored by it. Luckily, with the beautiful game, there’s more than enough there to keep me fascinated for a long time.

No comments: