Book Beings

As much as I love my New York Football Giants and enjoy NFL Football, I have to concede that this wonderful North  American sport  is not football, it is something else.

Yes, there are punters and kickers in American football, but punts and kicks are secondary to throwing and catching and running the ball, and blocking and tackling your opponent. The vast majority of the players don’t ever touch the ball with their feet. In fact, kicking the ball intentionally if you’re not the team punter or kicker could get your team slapped with a fifteen-yard delay of game or unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.

Football, remarkably enough, is that sport played with a round ball and feet. What we in the USA call soccer is football to everyone else in the world, for obvious reasons.

As kids growing up in Newark, we distinguished between “touch” and “tackle.” We’d play touch on concrete or asphalt, and tackle when we had access to dirt or a patch of grass.

Tackle should be what the Giants play. The New York Tackle Giants of the National Tackle League (NTL). Sure, it would take some getting used to, but it would not be a bad thing for us as a nation to admit that maybe others outside our borders have got at least this one thing right.

Football is football, tackle is tackle, and soccer is? Well, surely some enterprising person could find a profitable use for the word.

The just completed 2010 FIFA World Cup tournament, grandly hosted by South Africa, has deepened my understanding and appreciation of the sport that sends nations and continents into extended periods of despair, resignation, or euphoria every four years.

Unfortunately, for the land of my birth, USA, the end came too soon. The Americans just couldn’t seem to focus hard enough in the initial stages of games and extra time to keep their opponents from scoring quickly and consistently forcing the Americans to wage the exhausting battle of playing from behind. Ghana scored in the third minute of extra time in their Round of 16 showdown, a blow from which the USA could not recover.

Happily, however, my ancestral home, Spain, recovered from a shocking opening match loss to Switzerland,  allowing just one goal from that point forward, in what amounted to six consecutive knock-out matches. The Spaniards asserted themselves as the world’s best football nation with their extra time 1-0 win over the Netherlands in the final.

For Spaniards, this first World Cup championship (only the eighth nation to win a World Cup), has at least for a time softened the harsh moment the country is experiencing with unemployment near 20% and a crippled economy. The historic accomplishment of the national team has permeated to all the corners of Spain and into the hearts of Spaniards of all the various regions of the country.

More than one will be delighted that divisive Catalán and Basque nationalist voices have been drowned out by the cries of deliriously happy and proud Spaniards in the streets of Barcelona, Bilbao, and every other city, town, and village in Spain.

Roberto Martínez, a Spaniard and Catalán (currently manager of the English Premier League team, Wigan Athletic) did a fantastic job as guest commentator for ESPN’s television coverage of all the World Cup matches. Martínez suggested the historic triumph of La Roja (“The Red,” the nickname of Spain’s national football team), would have enormous repercussions, not just for Spanish football, but for Spanish politics as well.

The model comportment and camaraderie of the Spanish players (who come from all the corners of Spain), and the dignified leadership of their coach, Vicente del Bosque, illustrated for an entire nation that unity and selflessness can accomplish great things. For the second consecutive World Cup, La Roja was awarded the FIFA Fair Play award for its noteworthy sportsmanship and humility.

We can only hope Spaniards throughout Spain will find in their national team, and not in agenda-driven politicians, a model to follow.