Nelito's Ball

On Thursday The New York Times published an article about a Belgian photographer named Jessica Hilltout who traveled throughout Africa examining "the continent's love for the game."  She took one picture of a boy named Nelito, in Mozambique, cradling in his arms a soccer ball he had made out of a light blue garbage bag and brown twine.  If you look at the ball, you notice the weaving of the rope, how it's looped and tied and tightened, the ball is netted, shaped and sized with striking accuracy to a real, factory-made soccer ball.  And though we can’t see his face in the picture (the frame spans from his neck to his hips), the details we can make out in this luminous photograph, the ball and the way his hands embrace it, the roughness of his fingernails, even the shiny orange lining of his rolled up sleeves, all paint Nelito as an expert craftsman.  One imagines him laboring on a bench somewhere for hours, the official World Cup Jabulani ball rotating slowly like a planet in his imagination, as he threads and tightens and weighs, so that when he finishes, the player/artist's masterpiece has just the right bounce, just the right lift, just the right glide. 

For the last month or so since the World Cup began, on days like Tuesday and Wednesday, even Monday, I've woken up with an "it's-my-birthday-and-I'm-going-to-get-presents" feeling.  As I've worked and played, but mostly worked (thanks to the fact that the Latin American television station Univisión has been streaming the games live on their website), my apartment has been filled with the drone of vuvuzelas, pounded by the incessant melodrama of broadcaster Jesus Bracamontes, my cats basking on the floors in the summer heat, ears perked at the constant presence of a hoard of Mexican bees, buzzing in formation somewhere just beyond their line of sight.  It has been sad and frustrating, a bit all-consuming, but mostly downright incredible to fall madly in love with international soccer in the last month. 

I started playing soccer three years ago, because I was having dreams about it, and then I found a pair of cheap cleats, and then I continued having dreams about it.  And I remember back then I thought a lot about how different it was from all the other sports, how ready anyone on earth was at any moment to play soccer.  You don’t need a mitt or pads or a basket or a puck or even a stick.  All you really need is about two legs in basic condition to run (I've seen amputees playing with one and a crutch), and something round and light with a diameter somewhere in the realm of eight and a half inches, and you're ready to go.

It’s going to be tough tomorrow when the game is over.  And it'll be a little bit strange to wake up on Monday morning and not have another mesmerizing 90 minutes to look forward to.  Hard to walk down my hall and not hear those African bee-horns droning urgently from the living room.  I'm even going to miss Jesus a little bit.  And then of course those moments riding down the street anywhere in this city, feeling the electricity of the game radiating from bars and restaurants and bodegas, on screens large, medium, and miniscule.

Now, though, I’m going to focus on this one last game, less than 12 hours away.  Spain versus Netherlands.  For best in the world.  I’m going to wake up tomorrow morning and open my eyes one more time, ready for the big present.  God bless the beautiful game, no?  Let us watch it at all costs, play it however we can, and wherever they are in this wide world, Mozambique, Munich, Manchester, Madrid, let the game's elegant, impeccable artists teach us how to kick some ass with just a bit more grace.