The Beautiful Game – or – My Fútbol Journey

Actually, it’s not called fútbol in Italy. Or in many places, really; that’s just an affectation I picked up to distinguish it from American football, but I suppose it’s time to drop my pretension. I’ve learned that in Italian, it’s calcio. As I said in my last post, my goal is assistere ad una partita di calcio (to attend a soccer match) a Firenze.

I decided to become a soccer fan after visiting Spain in 2016 with my friend. She and most of her family members are originally from South America where people are known, among other things, for being passionate about soccer. Under her influence as well as that of the Spanish people, I vowed to ‘become one’ with the beautiful game.

Upon returning home, I quickly became overwhelmed—so many leagues, so many teams, so many tournaments. It’s not like following the NBA where there are 30 teams to keep track of. In soccer, there are around 30 teams per league. Multiply that across only the top five leagues in Europe and that’s already 150 teams. And that’s just at the highest levels; there are scores of ‘minor league’ teams. Of course, there are also the national teams which vie for The World Cup, among other competitions.

I wisely realized that in order to learn the game, I needed to focus on just one team in one league, and since I had just been to Spain, I chose Barcelona FC and La Liga. In retrospect, I realize this was an excellent and lucky choice since this was when Lionel Messi was their star striker alongside Neymar and Luis Suarez. Ronaldo was playing for Real Madrid, and these La Liga rivals were at a high point.

Inevitably, favorite players move to other teams and so the teams and leagues a fan has to follow spider-web out. That’s how I ended up following the French league (Ligue 1) after Neymar moved there and then, later, Messi. As my fan-web grew wider, my friend tipped me off that I could be following UEFA’s Champion’s League, which is an intra-season tournament among the top European teams. It’s a way to follow the best/most popular teams without delving down into each league.

So now I do mostly that, and in the meantime, Messi and Suarez moved to Inter Miami, while Ronaldo and Neymar are playing in Saudi Arabia. I haven’t glommed on to a new batch of European league players in recent years, and my viewership has lagged. 

I think that means it’s time for me to embrace Serie A—in a big way!

 

        The story goes that at a Ballon d'Or ceremony some years ago, Ronaldo's young son said he wanted to meet one of his idols, Lionel Messi.  So, despite their rivalry, Ronaldo graciously brought his son over to meet Messi who responded with equal grace. That's one reason the game is beautiful!

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For those who complain that the beautiful game is boring, well, ok, I’m not going to say it never is. But c’mon, golf?  baseball?  and I know I’ll get flack for this, but American football? Consider this: the broadcast time for an NFL game is several hours. The game itself runs for 60 minutes, but according to this article  and others like it, “it delivers a total of only 18 minutes of football action.”  Eighteen minutes! Each play lasts, what, 10-20 seconds and then everyone gets a break to huddle and suck oxygen on the sideline. Really? You can’t run for 15 seconds without needing oxygen? Huh . . . I’ll take soccer, thank you.