Sorry I haven’t posted in a week. In honor of a certain soccer tournament underway on another continent, I am writing a post in the voice of my husband, a soccer fanatic.
I couldn’t wait for the World Cup 2010 to start, and if I could afford a ticket to South Africa, I’d make that trip in an instant.
I’m a soccer geek. From the time I was little, I’ve had a closet full of soccer attire. My dad was a professional player in Italy before I was born, and you could say I have soccer in my blood and that it was instilled in me from a young age. I played rec, high school and Division III college ball and even tried out for a pro circuit, though I didn’t make it. Former teammates served as groomsmen at my wedding, a ref performed the ceremony, and I even wore soccer shoes. My wife was miffed about the shoes, but I maintain that they go well with a tuxedo.
Soccer rules my waking moments and sometimes overtakes my sleeping ones as well. I regularly have dreams where I’m playing in highstakes games before South American gangsters, with thousands of pesos in bets riding on the outcome. I don’t know why I’m playing in front of gangsters or why they’re from South America, but I’ve had this dream since childhood, and my wife knows each time it occurs since I talk aloud and sometimes cuss (Editor’s note: He does. Loudly.) One time I dreamed I was in a brawl with some soccer hooligans. Man, that was lots of fun, even if I destroyed some pillows in my sleep, and my wife made me sleep on the couch for a month after.
I get crazy following professional soccer. I’ve probably watched that YouTube lego soccer match between the U.S. and England about 10,000 times in the past week. And in general, I often stay up late to watch live satellite feeds from overseas leagues, occasionally waking the neighbors with shouts of joy when my favorite Estonian team wins a local tournament at 3 a.m. our time. My wife keeps threatening to put me in treatment for soccer addiction, which I didn’t even know existed, but I suppose there are recovery programs for everything these days.
Come to think of it, it’s probably a good thing that I’m not at the World Cup– a good thing for me and a good thing for South Africa.
