HAI AGAIN

I´M IN TEH STUDY

POSTIN ON UR BLAG

AGAIN

 

talking footy

finally playing football is starting to feel like language again. for the first few weeks of the season, i was suffering from a completely debilitating cartesian duality. and we all know that the cartesian mind/body split is a hoax that never gets us anywhere. and football is no different. there was a bleak division between what i felt i should be able to do, and what seemed to happen when i told my body to move and do it. tonight though was becoming-football. feeling my body to be – as of course it is – completely tied in with the cerebral functions that presume to guide its movement. i felt myself to be in the field of play, and sensed things. i saw players look to where they were going to pass, and moved in advance to be there. prediction is easy if you understand the language. that’s what sports commentators mean when they talk about people ‘reading the game well’. you find yourself before a system, and you find a way through it. chaos is important. you can’t know that anything will lead to anything else. you can never really know what the best line out is, because you are relying on other consciousnesses, bad lighting, patchy grass. but you move within it. and when you start to feel yourself to be a part of that system, and not pushing up against it, you stop being frustrated, and you feel the way you do when you learn a language. or remember one. you stop translating from one language to another (mind to body) and start thinking as a spatially located body.  and of course everything does not happen perfectly, because of chaos, but lots of things do happen the way you want. and with each successful manouvre, you become more grounded in the space, and feel more confident. you become-more-football, i guess.

tonight was good also because we played against better players, which again is like language. no matter how competent you are in a language, it remains mere potential when you’re talking to a toddler. anything fantastic you say won’t be understood anyway. the more involved the register of the discourse, the more, obviously, you can say/play.

 

for these tears, for this argentina

Here is a link to a youtube video comparing Leo Messi’s recent goal against Getafe, to what is commonly considered the greatest goal in history, Maradona’s goal against England in the quarter finals of the 1986 world cup (right after his equally (in)famous hand of god goal). The best thing though is the original commentary by the Argentinean commentator,  subtitled in the  clip, and translated for those who can’t read Spanish.

On the 26th October 1997 the football of Diego Armando Maradona died and on the 18h April 1997 it was resuscitated in the feet of Leo Messi.

– Maradona has it there, he’s got two men marking him. He controls the ball, sets off on the right, the genius of modern football. He can touch it to Burruchaga… all Maradona…Genius, genius, genius… tac, tac, tac….  gooooooooooool… I want to cry… Dear God, long live football… what a goal, Diegooooo Maradona, it’s enough to make you cry, excuse me…. Maradona in a memorable run, in the play of all time… Cosmic kite* From what planet did you come to leave behind so many Englishmen? So that the country becomes a clenched fist screaming for Argentina… Argentina 2, England 0, Diegoal, Diegoal… Diego Armando Maradona… Thank you, God. For football, for Maradona, for these tears, for this Argentina 2, England Nil… –

*here there is a fantastic double entendre, because barrilete means kite in Argentinean vernacular, but in Spain can be used to refer to a short, stocky person eg. nugget. personally i prefer cosmic nugget. also, another cool thing, his middle name and his surname (actually probably his first family name) are almost exact anagrams.