“¡Que se muera!”
“Devi morire!”
“Tuez-le!”
“Mach ihn nieder!”
“Let him die!”
“Kill, kill, kill!”
The Language of War
Utilizing a competent tactical variant of their planned strategy, our squad leaped to the charge, surprising the enemy unprepared. It was a brutal attack. When the home troops invaded enemy territory, our battering ram opened a breach in the most vulnerable flank of the defensive wall and infiltrated the danger zone. The artilleryman received the projectile and with a skillful maneuver he got into shooting position, reared back for the kill, and brought the offensive to culmination with a cannonball that annihilated the guard. Then the defeated sentry, custodian of the seemingly unassailable bastion, fell to his knees with his face in his hands, while the executioner who shot him raised his arms to the cheering crowd.
The enemy did not retreat, but its stampedes never managed to sow panic in the home trenches, and time and again they crashed against our well-armored rear guard. Their men were shooting with wet powder, reduced to impotence by the gallantry of our gladiators, who battled like lions. When two of ours were knocked out of the fight, the crowd called in vain for the maximum sentence, but such atrocities fit for war and disrespectful of the gentlemanly rules of the noble sport of soccer continued with impunity.
At last, when the deaf and blind referee called an end to the contest, a well-deserved whistle discharged the defeated squad. Then the victorious throngs invaded the redoubt to hoist on their shoulders the eleven heroes of this epic gest, this grand feat, this great exploit that cost so much blood, sweat, and tears. And our captain, wrapped in the standard of our fatherland that will never again be soiled by defeat, raised up the trophy and kissed the great silver cup. It was the kiss of glory!
The Stadium
Have you ever entered an empty stadium? Try it. Stand in the middle of the field and listen. There is nothing less empty than an empty stadium. There is nothing less mute than stands bereft of spectators.
At Wembley shouts from the 1966 World Cup, which England won, still resound, and if you listen very closely you can hear groans from 1953, when England fell to the Hungarians. Montevideo’s Centenario Stadium sighs with nostalgia for the glory days of Uruguayan soccer. Maracanã is still crying over Brazil’s 1950 World Cup defeat. At Bombonera in Buenos Aires, drums boom from half a century ago. From the depths of Azteca Stadium, you can hear the ceremonial chants of the ancient Mexican ball game. The concrete terraces of Camp Nou in Barcelona speak Catalan, and the stands of San Mamés in Bilbao talk in Basque. In Milan, the ghost of Giuseppe Meazza scores goals that shake the stadium bearing his name. The final match of the 1974 World Cup, won by Germany, is played day after day and night after night at Munich’s Olympic Stadium. King Fahd Stadium in Saudi Arabia has marble and gold boxes and carpeted stands, but it has no memory or much of anything to say.
The Ball
The Chinese used a ball made of leather and filled with hemp. In the time of the Pharaohs the Egyptians used a ball made of straw or the husks of seeds, wrapped in colorful fabric. The Greeks and Romans used an ox bladder, inflated and sewn shut. Europeans of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance played with an oval-shaped ball filled with horsehair. In America the ball was made of rubber and bounced like nowhere else. The chroniclers of the Spanish Court tell how Hernán Cortés bounced a Mexican ball high in the air before the bulging eyes of Emperor Charles.
The rubber chamber, swollen with air and covered with leather, was born in the middle of the nineteenth century thanks to the genius of Charles Goodyear, an American from Connecticut. And long after that, thanks to the genius of Tossolini, Valbonesi, and Polo, three Argentines from Córdoba, the lace-free ball was born. They invented a chamber with a valve inflated by injection, and ever since the 1938 World Cup it has been possible to head the ball without getting hurt by the laces that once tied it together.
Until the middle of the twentieth century, the ball was brown. Then white. In our days it comes in different patterns of black on a white background. Now it has a waist of sixty centimeters and is dressed in polyurethane on polyethylene foam. Waterproof, it weighs less than a pound and travels more quickly than the old leather ball, which on rainy days barely moved.
They call it by many names: the sphere, the round, the tool, the globe, the balloon, the projectile. In Brazil no one doubts the ball is a woman. Brazilians call her pudgy, gorduchinha, or baby, menina, and they give her names like Maricota, Leonor, or Margarita.
Pelé kissed her in Maracanã when he scored his thousandth goal and Di Stéfano built her a monument in front of his house, a bronze ball with a plaque that says: Thanks, old girl.
She is loyal. In the final match of the 1930 World Cup, both teams insisted on playing with their own ball. Sage as Solomon, the referee decided that the first half would be played with the Argentine ball and the second with the Uruguayan ball. Argentina won the first half, and Uruguay the second. The ball can also be fickle, refusing to enter the goal because she changes her mind in midflight and curls away. You see, she is easily offended. She cannot stand getting kicked or hit out of spite. She insists on being caressed, kissed, lulled to sleep on the chest or the foot. She is proud, vain perhaps, and it is easy to understand why: she knows all too well that when she rises gracefully she brings joy to many a heart, and many a heart is crushed when she lands badly.
This Ming Dynasty engraving is from the fifteenth century, but the ball could have been made by Adidas.
Two historical images. The first is from a fragment of a mural painted over a thousand years ago in Tepantitla at Teotihuacán, Mexico: Hugo Sánchez’s ancestor maneuvering the ball with his left. The second is a stylized drawing of a medieval relief from the cathedral at Gloucester, England.
The Origins
In soccer, as in almost everything else, the Chinese were first. Five thousand years ago, Chinese jugglers had balls dancing on their feet, and it wasn’t long before they organized the first matches. The net stood in the center of the field and the players had to keep the ball from touching the ground without using their hands. The sport continued from dynasty to dynasty, as can be seen on certain bas-relief monuments from long before Christ and in later Ming Dynasty engravings, which show people playing with a ball that could have been made by Adidas.
We know that in ancient times the Egyptians and the Japanese had fun kicking a ball around. On the marble surface of a Greek tomb from five centuries before Christ a man is kneeing a ball. The plays of Antiphanes contain telling expressions like “long ball,” “short pass,” and “forward pass.” They say that Julius Caesar was quick with his feet, and that Nero couldn’t score. In any case, there is no doubt that while Jesus was dying on the cross the Romans were playing something fairly similar to soccer.
Roman legionaries kicked the ball all the way to the British Isles. Centuries later, in 1314, King Edward II stamped his seal on a royal decree condemning the game as plebeian and riotous: “Forasmuch as there is a great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls, from which many evils may arise, which God forbid.” Football, as it was already being called, left a slew of victims. Matches were fought in gangs, and there were no limits on the number of players, the length of the match, or anything else. An entire town would play against another town, advancing with kicks and punches toward the goal, which at that time was a far-off windmill. The matches extended over several leagues and several days at the cost of several lives. Kings repeatedly outlawed these bloody events: in 1349, Edward III included soccer among games that were “stupid and utterly useless,” and there were edicts against the sport signed by Henry IV in 1410 and Henry VI in 1447. The more it was banned, the more it was played, which only confirms that prohibition whets the appetite.