Futbol Fever!

There’s a makeshift soccer “pitch” wedged between the long grass of our wild east field and the stone wall along the driveway, soccer balls lay scattered around the yard, and my children have been allowed lately to eat their lunch – and occasionally their dinner – in front of the television, which broadcasts several soccer games each day. It’s a World Cup year, and it seems we have a serious case of Futbol Fever.

I have loved soccer for as far back into my childhood as I can remember. American football and field hockey reigned supreme in the autumns of the town where I grew up. But soccer was always my game. Sure, as a kid I shot baskets in the driveway and played touch football in the backyard on Thanksgiving, but I also scarred the garage doors (and broke at least one light) kicking a ball against them when there was snow blocking my way to the backyard backstop my dad built to feed my soccer addiction.

I don’t like watching American football and never have. Basketball bores me to tears. Baseball I can get into come October, but the six months prior to playoffs are much too long, with far too many games, to hold my interest. Hockey I love, although I don’t watch it much anymore. I don’t watch much television at all, really, in these days of fitting work and downtime around playing with and caring for three active kids. But for the past two weeks, the tube has been turned on and tuned to ESPN for much of every day. I like the noise and the color of the World Cup, even if it’s just playing in the background.

When I was a junior in college, the United States hosted the World Cup, and I landed a volunteer post in the press tent at the Foxboro venue. For one game – the quarterfinal between Italy and Spain – I was on the pitch, just behind the goal line, as a film runner. The photographers would dump a roll of finished film from the camera, toss it to one of us while reloading, and off we’d sprint to wherever it was they developed the photos.

On the field at the 1994 World Cup

It was a completely unglamorous and entirely amazing job. I got to be on the field during the pregame team warm-ups and for most of the game. I was on the field with some of the world’s best footballers. I was in heaven.

I also attended a few games as a spectator that summer. Outside the stadium before kickoff, people from different places, speaking different languages and draped in the flags of the day’s opposing countries, would gather together to smile for group photos. We were there for the competition, yes, but also to celebrate – our teams, our cultures, and the Beautiful Game.

I already loved soccer, but 1994, that summer I was briefly and wholly immersed in the world’s favorite game, was when I fell in love with the World Cup. I love the pageantry of it (and I don’t mean the dives on the field – Oy!), the singing and dancing and wild color in the stands. The sense that this sport, each single game, means something huge to people around the world.

This World Cup summer my son has been most interested in the games. He asks each morning who will be playing during the day. When we come home from wherever the day’s activities have taken us, we check the scores and game highlights together. If the U.S. is playing an evening game, the kids get to stay up late and watch until the final whistle.

They have learned, during close games, to keep a safe distance from me on the couch, lest a piercing yell be sounded too close to their little ears or a flying elbow inadvertently make contact while celebrating a spectacular goal. They have been delighted by the fans of many countries wearing face paint and funny wigs. I have explained, several times (and to no avail), the offside rule and what happens when a player gets a yellow card. We have looked at maps of Europe and Africa and South America to find the countries playing and learn a little bit about them.

The other night I came outside after cleaning up the dinner dishes to find the kids involved in an impromptu soccer game. They play barefoot in the grass, just like other kids all over the world (although probably not as incessantly). They giggle wildly through each Kids vs. Mom match. They’re learning to work together, as a team. Sometimes I don’t even let them win; they come by that result by luck or burgeoning skill or, most likely, a combination of the two.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, the U.S. has earned a spot in the Round of 16, which kicks off this weekend. Two more weeks of World Cup soccer. Hooray! Even better, though, is that my son just announced, as he ran out the screen door – barefoot, of course – “I’m going down to the soccer pitch.”

Futbol Fever burns on. May it linger long beyond the final whistle of this year’s World Cup.

Original content by Meghan McCarthyMcPhaul, posted to her Blog: Writings From a Full Life. This essay also appears as Meghan's Close to Home column in the June 26, 2014 edition of the Littleton Record.

For the love of the game

I volunteered a year ago, when my kids were still in preschool. Really, I wanted to make sure no one else got the job. Maybe I should have guessed from the recreation director’s reaction that coaching kindergarten soccer isn’t the most sought-after position around.

So, get the job I did, and last week I made it through my first kindergarten soccer practice as coach. Actually, it was a blast. I’m not sure who had more fun – me or the kids. Between the running and kicking and giggling I threw in a few tidbits about proper passing technique and important rules like no hands on the ball.

As I see it, the point of most things when you’re 5 years old is to have fun. If soccer practice is fun, they’ll keep coming, keep learning. And someday, I hope, these kids will develop a love of the game like the one I have fostered since I was a little kid. Of all the sports I have played and watched, it is soccer (and skiing, but don’t ask me to choose one) that has held my attention and my passion for most of my life.

I grew up living and breathing soccer in a field hockey and (American) football town. No matter, soccer was my game from the first kick. One summer during high school I attended three different soccer camps. For a while, after reading that Maradona or Pele or some other huge star had slept with a soccer ball as a child, I slept with a soccer ball, curling around its perfect orb every night. When other girls hung pictures of boy bands on their walls, I put up posters of soccer players.

I spent hours in the backyard working on my juggling skills, honing offensive moves, and building up my left-footed kick until it was stronger than my right. I played through high school, then in college, going from a star on a mediocre high school squad to bench warmer and understudy on a defending NCAA championship team.

I volunteered as a media intern during the 1994 World Cup and nearly died of pure, awed happiness when I was on the sidelines for the warm-up of the quarterfinal between Italy and Spain. Four years earlier, I had watched (on television) the men’s U.S. squad qualify for the 1990 World Cup, the first time they’d made the show since 1950. That summer I watched every game I could on Univision, the Spanish language channel whose football commentator was famous for his enthusiastic and long-winded scream of “Goal!!! Goooooaaaaaalllllllllllllllllllll!!!!” I don’t understand Spanish, and some of the World Cup games were also on American networks. But those channels ran commercials during the matches, regardless of what was happening in the game during scheduled advertising breaks. And the commentators were rotten.

During my post-college years in Colorado, I played with a super fun co-ed team in summer tournaments and winter kick-arounds in an old school gym. We were pretty good on the field, and we won a few tourneys. We nearly always won the Saturday night party, too. When I moved to the west of Ireland for a summer, I was thrilled to find a women’s team comprising a variety of ages and skill levels. Regardless of our footballing ability and the result of that evening’s match, we always sang on the van ride home, our good cheer inserting joy into somber Irish ballads.

Alas, in recent years I haven’t played much soccer, but I did get out to a few pick-up games this summer. And while I don’t know all the big name players like I used to, I’m always happy to stumble across a game on television, and I watch the World Cup and Olympic matches as often as I can.

My kids watch with me sometimes, asking endless questions: Which team do you want to win? Who’s in the blue shirts? Where is the goalie? Why did she do that? We’ve set up a little field in the front yard and the kids love to go out and play there. They think shin guards and soccer socks are really cool. I hope these are all signs of the beginning of their love of the game.

After our first practice last week, which was also an introduction to team sports for many of the kids, a few parents posted photos of their kindergarten footballers on Facebook. They all looked happy, with their shin guards jutting out from skinny legs, their multi-colored cleats, their proud smiles. I hope that joy stays with them through this first soccer season and many more.

After that practice, there was a meeting for all the coaches up through 6^th grade soccer. When I was introduced as the kindergarten coach, the others chuckled knowingly. They’ve moved on to refined techniques and tactics with the older kids. But they know. Most of them coached the little ones first. And they’re still coaching, moving up with their own kids, teaching them the world’s most popular game. I imagine they all do it for the same reasons that I do. For the kids. And for the love the game.

A version of this essay ran in the Sept. 14, 2012 edition of the Record-Littleton.