When most of you hear the word ‘football’ you’re probably thinking of the sport where the ball is brown, shaped like an almond, and nobody except a few players on the team are allowed to kick the ball with their feet. Yes…this is American Football and only God knows why it’s called football. We Americans can be ridiculous. I wish we’d just call this game something else…like tackleball or something. 

But in this post I want to talk about real football…the game where there is a round ball and everyone on the field uses their…you guessed it…feet! 

I grew up playing football…even got to play a year in college (one of the benefits of going to a small school!). But when we moved to Europe in 2005 in gained a new respect for the game. It truly is the world’s game. All that you need to play is a ball. It’s a game for the poor and the rich. It even unites the rich and poor…and sometimes turns the poor into rich. There are few things about the game that I’ve come to appreciate more greatly…

1. No goal scoring. 

A game that ends 0-0 (or nil – nil) can be the most fun games to watch as a fan…90 minutes of play and nobody scores. This could say a few things about the match. Both teams were equally good. This was an intense game that kept people on the edge of their seats. These teams played terrible on offense or great on defense. Either way, I’ve come to appreciate a good tie. I used to say, “Seriously, a tie?” But I’ve learned that football is more than the score, or a single game. It’s about a tradition. A rivalry. A club. A history. A bigger picture. Every match that a team plays is important. But some clubs in Europe have been playing for over 100 years. Seriously. So, there is a different appreciation for the effort of the players. Each match is a part of the bigger story of the club. A piece in a puzzle…not the puzzle itself. Winning matches and being successful is about the trajectory of the club…not a temporary moment in the euphoria of winning. This type of attitude does two things for the fans…It makes them more supportive of players as ‘being perfect’ is not the goal of every outing. If a player misses a close shot the fans clap for them and their effort. They don’t boo and call him a bum for botching a play. Not scoring goals also builds a tension in the club, that when broken the fans go into a frenzy. 

2. The players are super fit and pretty tough (despite rolling around on the ground like they’ve been stabbed after getting kicked in the shins…which is also a part of the game)

Ok…I was watching the Turkey vs. Germany match yesterday. In the second half of the game two players both went to win a ball in the air and hit heads. Both players came down grabbing their heads. At first, you can’t tell if one of them is faking to get a foul called. But both players were bleeding pretty bad. The way that subbing goes in football is this: both teams get only 3 subs. Period. That means that if a player is hurt and they have to be subbed, the team only gets 2 more. Also, when a player is subbed out, he can’t come back in the game. He’s done for the match. So in this case…Turkey had a pretty limited roster due to injury and this guy had to figure out a way to stay in. So the trainers came on the field to treat him. They stopped play, the trainers put some pressure on his gash, cleaned it a bit, sprayed his head with cold spray, and then stapled his head on the field and play carried on! Seriously, they stapled his head on the field…and he played the rest of the match! I watch a lot of sports and I’ve never seen this…The way most sports are organized, it’s possible to give treatment to players, or sub players out for a rest…but not here. In football, players don’t go down with an excrutiating knee injury….get carted off to the locker room for a cortisone shot, just to return to the floor to pretend to be a hero…ala Paul Pierce. There is none of this. If a player goes out of a game…he stays out of the game. If a player is hurt and needs to be treated, his team plays a man down until they decide if the hurt guy can play or not.

3. These games really are more than just about 11 players vs. 11 other players. They are about country pride. They are about history.

This past week Spain beat Italy. You’d think, “One game, big deal. Spain wins. Good.” But Spain had not beat Italy in competition play in 88 years! That means that the majority of Spanish people alive had never seen Spain beat Italy when it mattered! They also beat them in a shootout. I’m still not a fan of the shootout ending games, but after playing 120 minutes with an equal score it just needs to end somehow. And it can be exciting! Think France vs Italy in World Cup final…tense. And a quick side note: I can’t stand the Italian football team. Hate might even be a fair word. I think they are cheap and fake fouls at critical times of the game and in critical last moments (think vs Australia in the last world cup). I think that they are overrated and I could not be happier that Spain beat them. I could go my whole life and be fine with the Azzuri never winning another match. Watch this clip of my least favorite player in the world to get a taste of how lame Italian play can be.  Materazzi was also the player that Zidane head-butted in the World Cup final. Foolish decision, but it was about time that Materazzi got punked. Ultimately, jokes on Zidane…his team didn’t win. 

Ok….have to work now so that I can watch the Spain vs Russia match today! 

We’re packing. Again. It is disturbing to be me how much stuff we acquired in our time in the States. It was disturbing how much stuff we had when we got our shipment back from Europe. To be fair to ourselves, we thought for a few months that we were going to be staying in Portland for a while. And so we were preparing to that end. But now, all the goodwill shopping that we did was for not. We are again sorting, packing, and filtering the stuff that follows our lives around. 

This experience has given Jen and I a much different take on ‘stuff’. To a degree, we are both developing a disdain for stuff. This year we have learned both not to grab a hold or to let go of things to quickly. We’re learning to be wise with what makes it into our suitcases. (i hope) We were talking today about how we wished that we had been even more brutal with what we shipped back to the US…hindsight is always 20/20. But we will have learned nothing through our experience if we don’t use this moment of clarity to inform our future. A wise person once told me….”You can learn from great experiences and you can learn from bad experiences, but whether or not you learn is up to you.”

I’ve been noticing lately in the Bible how often people make the same mistakes over and over…and over…and over. You may have heard of a guy in the Bible called Gideon. He was a leader in the tribe of Israel whom God called out to be ‘a might warrior’. One of the first things that Gideon did when he realized his calling was to go and tear down the phony idols people were worshipping. Fast forward through the fleece and the fighting….At the end of Gideon’s life, he had a memorial made from offerings given to him and guess what…people began to worship it! Then when Gideon died the people rebuilt the fake idols that Gideon had torn down and went back to worshipping them…just as they were when Gideon started. They forgot about the God that saved them and lead them to victory and went back to doing the same old stuff. 

I’m still a firm believer that the number one sin we as followers of Jesus commit is the sin of forgetfulness. God teaches us something, often times through the painful consequences of our bad decisions, and soon enough we’re at it again. And the cycle repeats and the depth to which we learn the lesson again goes deeper…at least I hope. I think the our challenge is to continually ‘be doers’ of the lessons that God teaches us, but bad habits die hard right? That’s why we have to be all the more committed to continually dragging these lessons into the light…

This post ended up being a lot longer than I thought, and has actually become a little more revealing about Jen and I’s desire to learn to live a bit more prepared to be on the go…for as pilgrim-like as we have been living, you would think that we would have had a chance to learn this lesson before…wait we did, and I forgot. 

Off to bed for now and back to packing tomorrow. Sifting through all the things that I hope I won’t later say, “What was I thinking keeping this around?”