In this crisis, there are moments that can strike the vein that leads to the heart.
Families world’s are being rocked with COVID-19 and we all know someone, most likely, who has the virus or that we have lost.
Yesterday, I went to my mailbox and received a package from Hector Castelltort, a former Communications Coordinator in MLS for the Houston Dynamo. Hector, who is a passionate football man wanted me to read, from the noted author Eduardo Galeano, the book Soccer in Sun and Shadow.
In the book, the author Galeano confesses “I’ve finally learned to accept myself for who I am: a beggar for good soccer. I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in stadiums I plead “A pretty move, for the love of god.”
“And when good soccer happens,” Galeano goes on to say. “I give thanks for the miracle and I don’t give a damn which team or country performs it.”
Football / soccer is such a huge part of many of our lives that, in this time of COVID-19 shutdown, we long for the emotion, the agony and the ecstasy, connection, ritual, commonality that this remarkable sport brings us.
How we miss it and normalcy.
This is a unique time whether you are a fan, coach, player, commentator or staff member at the youth, college, pro level.
Nothing replaces the actual playing of the game, the competition, the sound of voices, contact with the ball, the roar of the crowd or the ritual that we all go through. This is a great time to re-affirm what it is about the game that we love.
I long to be back in a TV booth, with microphone in hand having gone through my pre-game preparation awaiting possibility and the writing of a football match that I get to describe with words and emotion.
Thanks for the gift Hector and the reminder of the passion that this game brings to the world.
Stay safe everyone.
