Super Bowl … Nah, Say ‘Super Cup’!
Do you want a bowl or a cup?
Why is that?
Our Son, Luca, lettered 4 years in high school soccer, played a traveling club ball, including in England, and was recruited to play for Baldwin Wallace Yellow Jackets participating in Division III of the NCAA in the Ohio Athletic Conference, also for 4 years. After college he coached soccer, and he does so today. He knows soccer inside and out.
We, he and I, share our love of the game, not there, is not as much sharing with his three older sisters. Why is that?
If you watched any of the ‘Ted Lasso’ evolution in the last two television years you may have had a glimpse of English football. My favorıte hashtag for 2021 ıs “ #footballislife “. I particularly like the hashtag on YouTube, #footballislife, in reference to Dani Rojas, the Richmond forward striker, his antics and tribulations, a character in Ted Lasso.
Bocce is the oldest game with the use of a ball(s). Paintings on the wall can be dated back to 5200 BC showing the game. I like bocce, I grew up with it. I also grew up with football, that the American version, and that, the world version, Fútbol, or as we say in the US of A, ‘soccer’.
Any interest in American Fútbol?
The game’s beginning was Before Christian Era of 250 (BCE), known as “kicking the ball” in China. Fast forward to the year 2021, professional soccer associations around the world, enjoins over 3,000 teams. 27 professional teams in the US of A, the MLS (Major League Soccer), are the most noted for attendance at matches (games) and spectator watching on television. There are other leagues, such as the United Soccer League (USL), a whole variety of sub-leagues and academies. Then, there exists a multitude of soccer players, from three years of age to, your too old to run about the pitch. About the world, half the population plays and / or watches soccer, that is one half of 7.9 billion people. Let’s just say a cool 4 billion play, pay and watch. Start counting now … Fútbol is Life.
… beyond the framework of the goal into the net.
On December 11, 2021 the Portland Timbers played the NYC Football Club for the Major League Soccer cup. This ‘cup’ is North America’s version, in soccer, to the professional football ‘Super Bowl’, on the same continent.
The game of soccer is excruciatingly exhilarating and predictably slow. Usually games are known to end with very low scores that are advanced by scoring (making) a goal. An observer of the game has to pay attention to the pitch (field) constantly, for 90 minutes, and a few more minutes with extra time, meaning one should not be turning away from play on the pitch. A player may in a split second successfully score, with a shot on goal, passing beyond the framework of the goal into the net.
Back to preceding weeks and games leading up to this final game of the 2021 MLS season, several matches ended in a shoot out. That means they had played 120 minutes, 90 then 30 and extra times, (for championship games). Still tied, each team was allotted five shots. The one with the most, win. Attempting shots from the 12 yard dot at the box, one by one and alternating teams they shoot, with the goalie the only defender of the net.
During the 41st minute of this playoff game NYC scored a goal during a heavy rain downpour as the slippery ball struck the goalie’s hands and slid slowly from the goalie’s gloves into the inside of the net. 1-0 NYC up.
… it is appropriate to revisit some history
A Portland Timber’s fan, or two, threw beer cans onto the field as the NYC football club gathered for a celebration at the sideline. One of the cans directly hit the body of NYC footballer and he went down to the ground immediately. This violent display of fan advocacy made me reflect on a similar experience I witnessed in an Italian “Serie A” match nearly 55 years ago. It was just a regular season game between teams.
The teams, then, were both Italian, Bologna versus Inter Milan, the year, 1966. Football Club Internazionale Milano, commonly referred to simply Inter, and known as Inter Milan. Inter has been around since 1909.
The embedded video link has discrepancy in dates with other data available for Bologna International and International Milan:” Bologna vs Inter Milan (1966) “ (video).
I cannot verify that I was at this exact date as shown in April of 1966 that I was in Bologna to watch that team play Inter Milan, but I saw the two teams play. To set the when and where, it is appropriate to revisit some history.
… a home could afford
For my last three preteen years, our family lived in Europe. About a year into living in the medieval city of Loan, France, our father was transferred for my last two preteen years to Aviano Air Force Base in northeast Italy. We lived 12 miles or so, away from the airbase in Cordenons. The three eldest children attended American dependent school during the school year at the base, while the youngest two kids went to Italian preschool, in their cute uniforms.
Our landlord, Gino, was a young Italian man who had newly built this Italian suburban style gated house with marble floors and the coolest retractable wooden wind and window shutters an eleven year old had ever seen. The house appeared to have a palatial quality and essence. There was a funky lower level garage that was entered with an 180 degree turn, ramping down a level, by an extended concrete drive. The big American family 1962 blue Ford station wagon could not negotiate the approach, not that it mattered. The gorgeous clay tiled roofed house protected the clothed exterior walls built in the finest smoothest stucco, bathed by the best workmanship an experienced set of laborers that a home could afford.
… as a boy in Italy for the first time in my life.
Gino, the young Landlord, took my father, brother and myself to Bologna to watch the game in the stadium. It was a day trip, we left early, returned late. Bologna was the winner that game. It was the after game that struck me with such impact. That trip has become one of the top five influences of my 7 decade life. First of all, a stadium full of boisterous souls for an entire 90 minute was a new experience. Although my Dad took us to Cortina to watch the bobsleds on the 1956 Olympic track, and Paul and I had gone with Scouts to Switzerland for a week, staying in a Swiss chalet high up on the side of a mountain, these remembrances place after the match with the vibrancy of Bologna on one spring day in ‘66.
At the end of the match the crowd begins to exit the stadium seats into the aisleways. There are skirmishes all about and they turn violent. I believe the the weapons of choice were glass beer bottles although I have no evidence. I remember some of those bottles went flying into the air landing on opposing fans. I’m sure people were hurt. Good did come from the bad that was seen, because preceding the bad was the good, which was watching a first class soccer match as a boy in Italy for the first time in my life.
Back to the December 11th game.
I scream: “Wooooooaaaaah”
Regulation normal time finish in a 1-1 Tie, not Thai.
I text. Goooooaaaaallll.
My son responds, “Wow, on the literal last play of the game”
I say “unreal“.
He texts, “Pausing the game while we head to Brook’s to finish, no spoilers please!!!!“
There had been only 4 seconds left in stoppage (extra) time. Then 30 minutes of overtime play followed after an astonishing finish at normal time. This all led with game ending required shoot-out. NYC FC win with 4 penalty kicks.
Later Luca adds, “Happy to see Portland knows the feeling of losing the final at home.”
This remark is in reference to the the hometown (Columbus Crew) loosing the same cup playoff game at home on December 6, 2015 when the Portland Timbers defeated the Columbus Crew SC at Mapfre Stadium in Columbus, Ohio in the presence of 21,747 soccer fans.
I don’t ever recall pushing my son to play soccer, although I am very much assured his mother did. The arguments for injury and head concussions to play ‘American football’ is not a new subject. It’s been a concern of many, for many years. Luca’s mom did not want our son hurt especially in the brain, nor in the rain, therefore she guided our son toward the sport of soccer.
It has been an appropriate lifestyle choice, from a very young age, to a soccer star, to a working adult now employed in the world with a major sports business, Force Sports.1 Soccer allowed our son with a double major in college to become a productive, sought after citizen, who we recall saying to his parents, he ‘never wanted to go to college’.
His relations with high school and college teammates remains as strong as a bond of epoxy cement welding down rebar in concrete. The character building teamwork, the ability to see the field in in a moments notice of life, adjust accordingly, has proven itself a worthy endeavor for a young’s man life. Not only has he excelled as an athlete, but as an academic, and as an adult. As Danny Rojas would say ‘Fútbol is life’. We agree.
Our granddaughter Mia is also super athlete, playing soccer and softball. She could turn out to be the next ‘Mia Hamm’2, as her parents fully contend.
A zoetic message reflecting the balanced movement of humans is “Fútbol is Life”.
Force Sports: https://www.force-sports.com/
Mia Hamm: http://www.miafoundation.org/index#/about-mia
You are developing quite a compendium of personal history rich in cautionary tales, evangelizations, reminiscences, thought pieces, philosophy-based meanderings and other reflective accounts that merit a second read, in some cases. I intend to review your other pieces more closely. I enjoy portions of your writing, especially when I come upon an effervescent turn of phrase. However, this is the first one I have read all the way through.
I have a recall of the melee that broke out in the stands after the Bologna v. Inter Milan match, which you describe etched in my memory. I wish I could remember that entire day. I don’t know that it made as indelible a mark on my psyche as it did yours nor launch me on a life-long crusade of pushing for greater fan acceptance for the sport in the U.S. Nonetheless, I respect that and I appreciate the look back in time of a shared experience that you provide within your narrative.
That said, I also applaud you for your prolific writing effort and encourage you to keep with it. I am hoping to do the same.