Is Anyone Else Scared Sh*tless?

Posted on July 17, 2014 by Professor Taboo

I have done a horrible job of staying on top of my blog here and following the many blogs I enjoy following. For those of you here now who haven’t forgotten about me, THANK YOU! I appreciate so much your loyalty! I will jump over to your blogs no matter how hectic my summer schedule becomes or has surprisingly become despite what I thought would be a relaxing, blog-writing and commenting summer break. Grrrrrrr!

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As my family and I approach my Dad’s 24^th anniversary of passing away to suicide, today I want to reflect back on one of his most memorable, most classically funny moments he and my grandfather made for me and my family. This is one I have never forgotten.

My Grandpa Bonnet had a wonderful simple sense of humor. It was that humor you find in small country Texas towns from farmers, ranchers, and cowboys. As long as I had known my Grandpa Bonnet, nothing ever seemed to get under his skin or ruffle his feathers because he could always find some comical interpretation to life’s curve-balls. Everyone in my family loved it, my Dad especially. Granny Bonnet, not so much. Even if Granny Bonnet was in a tirade, Grandpa would find the humor in something. Many times it egged-on Granny making us begin to chuckle under our breath hoping she would not see or hear us. It was hilarious, especially when Granny finally left the room!

One holiday weekend myself, my sister, Mom, Dad, Granny Bonnet, and Grandpa Bonnet all climbed into Grandpa’s 1963 yellow Chevy Impala. I can’t remember now where we were going – it didn’t matter then – but it couldn’t have been too far because McDade was a tiny remote town in central Texas where they had lived for several years. McDade was famous because of the twin-knob hills in the distance where a famous wild-west shoot-out took place, not too unlike what happens today in our great “free” Lone-Star-for-a-reason state (wink).

My sister, Mom, and Granny were sitting in the back seat. Dad and I sat up front with Grandpa, who was driving. I wasn’t real sure why all the women sat in the back that day, but now that I’m older, wiser, and an eighth-generation Texan, I now have a very good idea. But on this day, and hindsight being 20/20, I would have been more than happy to be in the trunk!

Blind squirrel!

It was well after 12-noon, a pleasant summer evening, and we were on one of the many two-lane-only state highways in the middle of nowhere near McDade. Grandpa loved to talk and tell his simple stories. Granny also liked to talk, non-stop, but not in story-form. Her chatter was everything that was wrong or could go wrong, remarkably and often circling back to Grandpa. Granny Bonnet was the epitome of an incessant worry-wart. As I reached my teen-years, I began to see clearly why Grandpa Bonnet had such a fantastic sense of humor and thick skin.

The first sign our “family drive” was to be exciting was when we approached something centered in the middle of the highway and unflinching. My Grandfather and Dad noticed it. It was a squirrel sitting up on its hind-legs seemingly as brave (or stupid) as squirrels-in-the-road can be. In fact, I thought it was a fake stuffed-animal it was so perfectly still. Grandpa began talking to the rodent like a Squirrel-whisperer, “Move little guy. You better move!” Nothing. The idiot squirrel just sat there like a stone statue. My sister in the back seat sat up, amazed that it wouldn’t run off. She too begged it to run. We were only seconds away now…Grandpa kept a steady 55 mph, not slowing down one bit. We approached, Grandpa centered his yellow Impala straight at it, I thought so he could pin it to the radiator or hood!? My eyes widened and the gasps began. Still that damn stupid animal would not budge! The women began screaming at Grandpa in horror “STOP! STOP Grandpa!” as we drove over it, but Grandpa only chuckled more with each closing foot! “Murderer!” I heard my sister yell. I waited to hear the thumps underneath the floorboard trickling from front, right down our shoe-soles to the back.

Total silence.

Then EVERYONE, including Grandpa, jerked our heads and gaping mouths rearward to see the carnage…

And as if to say “I won!” that squirrel sat exactly where he stood, unmoved, unscathed! It was the most astonishing death-wish-gone-wrong I’d ever seen. It was impossible for anyone to express this miracle of life because Granny was screaming undecipherable words at Grandpa even my Mom had never heard! I stared at Grandpa and he just chuckled at every sentence Granny tried to complete. I looked over at my Dad and he was doing the same thing, but face forward to escape Granny’s verbal wrath. Swept up by the moment, I let burst my laughter too. Now Granny was getting furious with anyone in the front seat!

As we continued down the two-lane-only highway, without missing a beat or miles per hour, Grandpa just HAD to share his newly discovered squirrel-stew recipe. Talk about the live definition of inciting, Grandpa had decades of experience and the war-medals to prove it (wink)! It was all my Dad could do not to multiply the soft mumbled jokes coming from Grandpa. In the front seat, one joke would lead to another simple story. In the back seat, more high-pitched cackling with each non-response from Grandpa – he was in the middle of a story! Grandpa would face my Dad and I while talking, making sure we could hear him. The more Granny bitched at Grandpa, the more Grandpa would chuckle and grin at us to make louder his point.

Right about that moment I noticed things hitting and pinging the underside of the car. I sat way up to get a better view, “now what!?” Ahead was a slow drifting right-curve, not sharp, but nonetheless going in a direction that was clearly not straight. I looked up at Grandpa and he was waist-deep in his story, trying to keep at least an equal decibel level to Granny, Mom, and my sister in back, but looking uninterrupted at my Dad. I snapped back to the highway in front, that was less in front. I looked back at Grandpa trying to impolitely interrupt him politely! I snapped my head to Dad; did he see my face at all!?

Um, is anyone else scared shitless as I am right now!? Hello!

Our fast-moving Chevy Impala was now ever-so-slightly beginning to lean left as the highway ever-so-gradually moved to the right! It had become so loud between Granny’s verbal tirade at Grandpa and Grandpa’s grand story about squirrel barbecuing, that no one could hear the gravel hitting the tires and floorboard! I glanced back to Dad – perhaps to take one last look at him in life – and as Grandpa drew a breath and Granny was exhausted, just as calm and serious as an airline pilot preparing everyone for impact, my Dad said…

“Mr. Bonnet,” and my Dad pointed forward, “Is that the McDade water-tower up ahead?”

Grandpa looked, why yes it was…and in that instance the right-side tires fell off the shoulder and gravel began shooting out everywhere! He jerked the steering wheel right and corrected our direction from bumpy doom into cedar-fence posts, to the intended path of proper motor vehicles with just a few clumps of grass packed in the front bumper; the cows would never miss! Saved!

Grandpa began laughing uncontrollably! Shocked, I couldn’t decide if he was laughing so hard at my Dad’s question, or if he was laughing more at Granny’s renewed vocabulary at him. We must have heard thirty different versions of “You’re suppose to look at the road when you drive Felix, not get us splattered with the cows!” Needless to say, there was no silence all the way home. And I’ve never seen my Grandpa grin at me so much for so long a drive. Normal? I imagine so after some of the words and phrases I learned from Granny. Insane? Hell yeah! Between stoned-up squirrel, squirrel barbecuing, shifty highways, a furious non-stop cackling old Granny, and two adult men laughing in the face of vehicular off-roading disaster and the back-seat narrative that went with it? Yeah, totally insane, but totally rad!

Miss those new moments Dad, but I keep ones like this forever. Thank you.

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Live Well — Love Much — Laugh Often — Learn Always

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Heraclitus and The Oak

Posted on June 17, 2014 by Professor Taboo

The Master and his warrior-student rested under a massive oak tree near the stream. “Look Teacher,” said the proud young warrior, “I will become as big and famous as this oak!” banging his sword against its trunk. The Master sighed and told this ancient story…

Sitting under a tree much the same as this one, understanding his place in Nature, a very wise humble man once said, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” On hearing this sage’s words the Oak and the nearby slender reeds argued. A wind blew and the great Oak stood proudly upright with its hundred arms up into the sky. The reeds however, swayed and bowed low under the wind.

“You have reason to complain,” said the Oak to the reeds. “The slightest breeze ruffles the water and makes you bow your heads, while I, the mighty Oak, stand tall and firm against the tempest.”

“Do not worry about us,” replied the reeds. “The winds do not harm us. We bend before them and so do not break. You, in all your pride and strength, have so far resisted, yes. But as the old Sage says, this is not the same river, this is not the same wind, and now you are not the same tree.”

“Pfffft” boasted the giant oak, “Non-sense! We are oak. It has always been this way! We will stand forever!”

As the proud Oak spoke, a great storm rushed in from the north. The Oak stood more proudly fighting against the storm, while the reeds yielded and swayed. The wind’s fury doubled then doubled again, and all at once the great tree fell, torn up by the roots and lying among the pitying reeds.

And looking upon the fallen Oak that wise Sage said, “Better to yield when it is folly to resist, than to resist arrogantly and be destroyed.”

The Master turned to his over-zealous student, and added “If you learn no temperance, your arrogance will be your folly. Even the unmovable is one day moved. Learn your place; embrace your place humbly.”

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This work by Professor Taboo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at https://professortaboo.wordpress.com.

Summer Time

Posted on June 3, 2014 by Professor Taboo

At last the school year has ended and once again I find myself with a bit more free time. More free to recharge batteries. More free to reflect on what has been done, what needs refining, and what needs more attention in the future. Free for more time to do things I enjoy doing for myself, like more blogging. One summer project I am very excited about and looking forward to this June is watching every single game of the FIFA World Cup in Brazil, cheering my two national teams: USA and Brazil!

It is my hope that during these short two and a half months I will be able to post much more often than once a month. With that said, I’d like to ask my followers — if they have not already and understandably forgotten about me — what they would like to know, or what subjects you would be interested in me writing about. The floor is open, the mic is open; let me hear your suggestions or questions. I shall do my best to accommodate… within reason naturally.

I will also do my best to catch-up with my many other blogging friends and their posts who I have unwillingly been absent! My sincere apologies. If anyone knows of a way to add MORE hours to a mere 24-hour day, please, I beg you tell me! I have really missed blogging and reading and commenting with all of you this past school year. Let’s reconnect!

Therefore, of my followers, is there or are there any subject(s) you would be interested in me writing about or discussing? Anything at all. If not, I should be posting with my next topic shortly.

Have a fantastic summer! I plan to!

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You’re Right

Posted on April 25, 2014 by Professor Taboo

The state of meditation is a powerful vessel. A connected state-of-mind and body to dimensional existence is about as meaningful a life as a person can reach; an altered or altering consciousness. But a person cannot reach that point solo. We also need the right surroundings.
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image Vladstudio

Growing up I loved playing my drum-set. In our downstairs playroom I had my 15-piece drum kit setup along with our band’s Peavey amps. Plugged-in to those Peavey amps was my stereo. Through my stereo I played the songs from epic rock-metal bands with more epic – so I thought – drummers. And within moments of beating the skins, high-hat, bass drum, and cymbals…I was there. Much of the sessions I would reach a heart-rate and drive that I could barely hold my sticks from the perspiration. I eventually had to place a fan on top of my bass drum to help cool my frenzied journey. I would reach such a vibrational rhythmic state of meditation that I can only describe as fluid between here and there. My sense of place and time, aside from the rhythm and beat, was lost; oblivious to anything in the house or outside it. It was there that my expression, my place in the moment and in the world, was most creative and most lucid. It was – and to this day as well – my way of belonging.

The years from 1990 to 1995 were the most devastating and most life-changing years of my life. Here’s a summary: My father committed suicide, my girlfriend-turned-fiancé abandoned me and our 2-year relationship without a single verbalized explanation, I was arrested by law-enforcement, I walked out of my wonderful psych-hospital job-career and out of my half-completed master’s program at my seminary, my daughter was born, a 5-month marriage ended, and I moved back to my hometown. Often during those years I sought the solace in the one place I knew I could find it. One song I’d play over and over and over, and behind my drums I’d play along…let go of my nagging thoughts and find my place of belonging. It was the only song, music, and lyrics that would make sense to me where I could find my father and my daughter, both of whom were no longer with me.

I have since learned that finding the place of belonging is sometimes very difficult, even tragic. But having survived it all, I have discovered just how powerful the state-of-belonging and connecting can impact not just a life, my life, but life around us. This is how I’ve equated it in my mind. As the lyrics of the song go…

If you open your mind [and soul]…You won’t rely on open eyes to see

My painful and beautiful journey would not have been possible if I had not had three critical travel-items: my parents and extended family, a creative growth-model of education taught by my father supported by my mother, and then finally love. These three integral parts must continue with us into adulthood. They must evolve and grow in order to best manage in life the inevitable change and unexpected plot-twists!

If you have those three flexing growing components in your life – each illustrated mathematically by dividing 100 into 3 parts – the number cannot be emptied but goes on and on ad infinitum. For me, Fibonacci’s Sequence, or Golden Ratio, would be the counter-part, if you comprehend my wackiness.

The three parts each need more than just the mind or cerebral cortex. They need feelings. They need the freedom of fluid creative passion! Nature and the Universe (Multiverse) already create then modify, refine, then create more and so on like the Golden Ratio. Human DNA, generation to generation, does the same thing. As highly intelligent feeling beings, we have the passions to ignite life. If fortunate enough to have loving, nurturing yet non-oppressive parents and family, then we are given the early tools to ignite a significant belonging life…not just for ourselves, but equipped to provide a general blueprint for others too!

If this parental-family environment is taught throughout the primary and secondary schooling – in other words explained via the table below – empowering the child and adolescent, then the state of belonging can be perpetuated outside of self.

Assuming you are allowed how to think rather than told what to think, then a once very successful American icon spoke these words of enormous spiritual-cerebral wisdom to take on your journey:

“Whether you think you can or you think you cannot – you’re right.” – Henry Ford

If a young mind and heart are constantly denied the means to freely express, create, and recreate, learn and relearn for an eventual greater good, passing on a new fluid blueprint, then it would seem ironically, one becomes entrapped in the past. That is most unnatural. Ford recognized the power of self-actualization learned through and from our environment. In other words, there is a connection between us and everything around us. But there is more Henry – another force that is just as fluid.

Ford’s imparted partial-truth cannot be fully owned without the sticky fuel of feelings and love-ingredients to energize it. There are some things that can’t be taught. They must be realized. Though it had a compass rose, I was given my blank map. The natural aether in the lucid state of vibrant rhythmic meditation is an individual journey…for me discovered during my youth, rediscovered in my darkest hours, and now openly shared in wisdom and passion. It is my primal home away from “home,” where I truly belong.

I swim in it regularly.

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Live Well * Love Much * Laugh Often * Learn Always

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Uniting the World

Posted on April 21, 2014 by Professor Taboo

Most coveted trophy in all of sports

There is an irrational sports mentality in America that the National Football League (NFL), or National Basketball Association (NBA), or Major League Baseball (MLB), and their televised “world championships” are the biggest spectacle in sporting events in the world. This is strictly an American invention, however. It does not exist anywhere except within the lower 48-states. The reality is this: the NFL, NBA, and MLB pale and pale greatly when put next to FIFA’s World Cup tournament and championship every four years. But certainly don’t take my word for it. Let’s look at these numbers.
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A London, UK-based media company called Initiative, Futures sport + entertainment, a firm that publishes reports and research on all and any sporting events, states “Soccer’s domination of global TV viewing is now complete.” According to Initiative, in 2009 the NFL’s Super Bowl XLIII was knocked off its most-viewed-event-in-the-world perch. This television topple has been coming since at least 2002, and immeasurably and arguably well before 2000.

Let’s start with the size of leagues or associations by the number of teams and their fans. These will strictly be men’s sports.

Number of Teams and Confederations

In the NFL there are 32 teams that play for the Super Bowl Championship. In the NBA there are 30 teams that play for the NBA Championship. In MLB there are also 30 teams that play for the World Series Championship. These three American professional sports have a total of 92 teams playing for three different championships. Now let us examine FIFA, or the Fédération Internationale de Football Association.

For just over three years, 226 national teams all over the world (as of 2014) compete for inclusion into the opening group-play in the FIFA World Cup tournament held every four years. That is over 7-times larger than the NFL and nearly 8-times larger than the NBA and MLB association and league respectively. But this comparison isn’t quite accurate; it doesn’t portray the true size of professional soccer players and their pro teams in each of those 226 FIFA nations.

FIFA is comprised of six (6) futebol, or soccer associations, represented by individual continents. The CAF (Confederation of African Football) comprises 54 national teams, each of those nations with professional leagues of teams/clubs totaling approximately 408 teams within those 54 nations; each team with an approximate roster of 22-25 players. Additionally, the 408 teams are merely the Top professional teams in the continent’s Top Leagues. There are typically lower 2^nd and 3^rd division leagues, or more, on each continent.

The next continental association, in alphabetical order, is the AFC (Asian Football Association) comprising 47 national teams. Within the 47 member nations, there are approximately 248 clubs/teams playing in AFC’s Top professional leagues; again, with approximately 22-25 players per roster. Once again, there are typically lower 2^nd and 3^rd division leagues as well.

UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) is the marquee FIFA association in the world, as well as the richest. It comprises one of the two elite Top footballing associations of the world with 54 member nations. Inside of the 54 nations consists approximately 871 Top professional teams/clubs with typically 4 to 5 lower divisions. And remember from here on out, each club’s roster consists of a minimum 22-25 players!

It is worth noting that with each of these national teams and each of these local or regional club-teams within each nation comes a passionate loyal following of fans five to fifteen times larger than the club’s roster! I dare you to try and do that math.

The next FIFA association continent is CONCACAF (Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football) with 45 member nations. The United States is a member of this association. Within these 45 nations are approximately 155 teams/clubs playing in their Top professional leagues. And from here on out remember there are typically a minimum of 2 to 3 or more lower divisions.

Next is the OFC (Oceania Football Confederation) comprising 16 member nations with approximately 30 teams/clubs competing in Top professional leagues within these 16 nations.

CONMEBOL (Confederacion Sudamericana de Futbol), or commonly the South American Football Confederation, consists of 10 member nations. This confederation is the world’s second elite association next to UEFA. It has a staggering 1,931 teams/clubs competing in each nation’s Top professional leagues.

All in all, and if you were not tracking the total number of club teams within each nation in their Top professional leagues (i.e. not including all lower divisions), the approximate total of teams/clubs fielding players who dream about an individual chance to participate in the world’s ultimate sporting spectacle in their lifetime… conservatively it is approximately 3,643 teams/clubs dwindled down to 226 national teams, over a 3-year period, to play together for just two months, every four years. If we multiply those 3,643 teams with their faithful fans, say 5-times the 25-man roster of the club (91, 075 pro players) multiplied by the average soccer stadium capacity of 40,000 spectators, that bare-bone minimum fan-base equals almost 146-million live spectators. But this is a very conservative figure. According to FIFA.com “Facts and Figures”, an estimated 715.1 million fans watched on TV the 2006 World Cup Championship final in Germany; 3.18 million attended the 64 matches of the tournament. And these figures do not include various viewing-venues across the host nation.

The real scale of this sport during the World Cup tournament – not just by persons inside the stadiums but on television, viewing-venues, and now over the internet – is near incomprehensible in size, popularity, and economic revenues. And it is taking place again this June 2014.

The Economics of World Soccer

In this day and age of sports, soccer is king of mega business: a global industry with a wide spectrum of television contracts and lucrative merchandising deals which generate hundreds of billions of dollars annually. A number of clubs around the world now rank among the highest earning wealthiest sports teams on Earth. However, as quickly as revenues roll-in, they are paid right back out to multi-million dollar player contracts, signing fees and bonuses.

ESPN Magazine recently reported (April 2014) the Top 25 highest-paid athletes in the world – their endorsements are not included. Of the Top 5, three are soccer players: Cristiano Ronaldo ($50.2M) of Real Madrid FC, Lionel Messi ($50.1M) FC Barcelona, and Zlatan Ibrahimovic ($35M) of Paris Saint-Germain. According to Sportingintelligence’s Global Sports Salaries Survey (April 2014), Manchester City FC of the English Premier League, is the world’s best paid team paying out an average salary of $172,508 per week to its first-team players. Of the world’s Top 5 highest-paying sports teams, Spanish La Liga giants Real Madrid and Barcelona round out fourth and fifth at $161,373 per week and $158,397 per week respectively. The average professional athlete contract is 5-years. In this latest edition of the Global Sports Salaries Survey (GSSS), it provides a list of 100 teams paying out the most money per average first-team player over five years:

“The eye-watering sums on offer in elite European football [i.e. Barcelona FC] and in the major sports leagues in America effectively mean that a single five-year deal should provide enough money to setup a player for life. Real Madrid have the next highest five-year total: $41M per player on average, followed by the Yankees ($39.7M), then Manchester City ($35M), and Chelsea FC ($34.3M).”

The last table-graphic shown in the GSSS article (below image) is particularly enlightening for American sports fans. It shows that of the Top 20 five-year earnings for first-team players of all major sports around the world, HALF of them (10) are soccer teams/clubs. Of the remaining 10 sports, only five are NBA teams and four are MLB teams. National Football League teams do not make the list at all until No. 93: the Dallas Cowboys.

The primary reason soccer tops most team and player-salary lists is that almost ALL POSITIONS on the playing field are important (probably critical) for the organization to be successful and profitable. Soccer is, as well as basketball and hockey, are true team sports. In the sports of MLB and the NFL, that is not the case. The pitcher or pitching staff and quarterback are the critical positions influencing or controlling most dynamics of the game. Those players earn monumentally more money than their other teammates. It is also the reason why the Chicago Blackhawks of the NHL are 20 places higher than the first NFL team, the Cowboys.

Do these numbers explain why soccer unites more of the world than any other sport on the planet? What about the emotion, the passion of its fans?

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The Fans

What does it mean when one asks the question, “What is the most popular sport in the world?” Does it mean the sport most-watched, most-played, or perhaps the wealthiest based on revenue? Yes to all three. I have done the research and spent the time answering this question, and if you choose to search for the answer as well, you will find the majority of polls and surveys will all say the same thing: soccer.

Why is soccer the king of all sports on the planet and has been for many decades? The passion of its fans is certainly one reason. If you’ve never been to a major soccer game in Europe or South America, among singing dancing fans, you are missing out on a life-time experience like no other. Want a taste?

The wonderful atmosphere of top-flight soccer matches are finally growing in the United States. When the U.S. Men’s National Team qualified for the World Cup in Brazil this summer, listen and watch how 40,000+ fans in Seattle, WA – some of the most excitable fans in the nation – celebrated the 3-year achievement:

But simply being amongst a mass of dancing singing humanity is only part of the experience. Understanding what the world’s greatest players do on the field with that ball, as an 11-man team, explains why it is called and known all around the globe as “the beautiful game.” Soccer is a worldwide language; the most popular language spoken in a multitude of dialects. As a naïve outsider and at first glance, an American might think the world’s passion for soccer is overly simple, unimpressive. One might write it off as a dull 90-minute game with an average score-line of 0-to-0 or 2-to-1 most games. But that impression would be from a grossly uninformed unimaginative closed-mind.

The Players

Yes, the world’s love of the game is indeed simple: the action is non-stop; the 22 players improvise tactics in the middle of a flowing game performing spectacular feats of athleticism and skills. But the passion goes much deeper for more complex reasons. The great Brazilian star Pelé describes the game as being so infused in many countries that over time the sport is not just a pastime, but has morphed into a reflection of national character. With the diversity of global geographies and cultures come distinctive playing-styles. These national styles have produced some of the most riveting, most brilliant moments in soccer history! Take a look at these six clips, considered by many footballing fans as the greatest World Cup moments and goals:

World Cup Final 1970 – Brazil’s Carlos Alberto’s goal

World Cup Group-play 1970 – England’s Gordon Banks’ save vs. Pelé

World Cup 1982 – The heavily favored-to-win squad of Brazil: “Ballet with the Ball – A Love Story”

World Cup Qualifier 2001 – England’s goal frenzy vs. Germany

World Cup 2006 – The Tournament’s Best

World Cup 2010 – Top 10 Goals

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One of the most exquisite skills a world-class soccer player can master is the art of dribbling. The game’s biggest stars have signature tricks and moves to beat their opponent. In real time it is a blur, gone in one or two seconds. But the amount of training and practice required to use them in the game is mind-boggling. Watch these élite players from around the world showcase their best tricks and define why this game of soccer is so worshiped around the globe.

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The Nations

In 1992 in the country of Ivory Coast in West Africa, the Ivorians were so determined to have their national team win the African Nations Cup that the government’s sports minister enlisted a battalion of fétisheurs – juju men – to place on the team a supernatural advantage against rival Ghana. When the minister later broke promises of payment to the fétisheurs, they in turn placed a hex on the Ivorian team, which then went on a ten-year spell of losing results. When the defense minister desperately sought to make amends with the witch doctors, offering cases of liquor and large money bags, the hex was lifted. Almost immediately the team did a 180 and qualified for the 2006 World Cup.

In Spain, where soccer is so dramatic it is often described as theater, a Spanish novelist writes his obsession with the beautiful game this way:

“Once you’ve fallen into the game, there is no getting out… [stats] will tell you almost nothing about the game itself. The player who actually wins the game may be the one who moves into space at the opposite side of the field, drawing a defender, forcing a new configuration upon the defense and making virtually inevitable a goal that was before impossible, but no one – not even he – may be aware of this. It’s all narrative, and thus subjective: Each game is a story, a sequence of ambivalent metaphors, a personal revelation couched in the idiom of the faith. No game I know of is so dependent upon such flowing intangibles as “pattern” and “rhythm” and “vision” and “understanding.” Which may all be illusions. And at the same time it is a very simple game: like dreams, almost childlike.”

In today’s Croatia, soccer is a form of group therapy which bore a new nation. A match between Zagreb’s Dinamo and Belgrade’s Red Star in 1990 marked the beginning of Croatia’s war for independence. After the opening whistle at kickoff, fans from both teams clashed in the stadium stands, as well as onto the field. A Serb-dominated police force began beating Croatian spectators while allowing Serbian fans to run freely. This ignited the already boiling-over tensions in what was then Yugoslavia. Upon witnessing a Serb-policeman wail on a fallen Dinamo fan, midfielder Zvonimir Boban rushed and karate-kicked the officer (image above left), and later became a Croatian national hero of their independence movement. In one of the biggest upsets in World Cup lore, Croatia beat powerhouse Germany in the 1998 World Cup Quarterfinals and then went on to win third place by beating an equally stacked Netherlands 2 – 1. After the match, Croatians flooded the town squares and streets in adulation and song. On television, many reporters interviewed grown men who couldn’t stop bawling. Courtney Angela Brkic, a Croatian author, stated that “not since the declaration of independence, had so much unified celebration been seen. Now no one could deny Croatia its place on the map.”

In Brazil, the only nation to have won the World Cup five times and the only national team to have appeared in all World Cup tournaments since its start in 1930, soccer is an ideology and state religion. Nowhere in the world does a nation try so hard to play the game so beautifully as Brazilians. And that is why Brazilian players are so loved around the world by so many fans and top leagues. The Brazilian national team has never been ranked world-wide below No. 10, a record untouched by any other soccer nations. Their fans do the Samba non-stop for ninety plus minutes as their players do indescribable tricks and feats between all ten of their team’s players. It is why Brazil, on any continent, is always the beloved overdog of every World Cup. They are the only favorite that is always a favorite.

This June 2014

If you cannot make it to games in Brazil this summer, the next best thing is to find a local pub or bar with an international flavor and history that will be televising the tournament. I guarantee the place will be raucous and rocking with national team fans. I always try to find a Brazilian restaurant-bar; the atmosphere is utterly electric, colorful, and beautiful. I will most certainly support my U.S. National Team, but unfortunately their odds of advancing out of the early group stage are minimal against the exceptional likes of Portugal, Ghana, and Germany. Nevertheless, the spectacle of the game will be phenomenal and the skills and creativity of the world’s best players on the world stage will be unparalleled. Be a part of it. Be united with the rest of the world for two memorable incredible months!

U.S. Soccer: We Are Going to Brazil