PlayBeautiful

The Beautiful Game: My Story (Part 1)

I’m a girl. And I love football. But it wasn’t always this way. My love for the beautiful game started circa 2010.

I’ll admit I was never into watching sports. It just never appealed to me. I wasn’t raised in an environment where sports were a big deal. In other words, it was a foreign and unfamiliar territory. Most of the time I was focused on my schoolwork and other activities.

Three years ago happened to be an exciting part of my life. It was my last year in high school. I was a graduating senior. As cheesy as it sounds, I felt like I could take on the world. I was accepted into my first-choice university, prom was coming up, and I was acing all of my classes. The most memorable year of my life also coincided with the most important event of the year. One that makes the whole world stop. FIFA World Cup. The year I watched my first-ever football match.

I sat down at the usual table in my school’s lunchroom. But there was something different. Usually we only had a few television sets in the cafeteria, but today there were several in different corners of the room. There was no news playing on these screens either. Instead, every screen showed a stretch of vibrant green with 22 players kicking the ball around. A certain excitement was buzzing. It became a lot noisier. A large group of kids were fixated on every angle the ball moved. Hanging on every touch of this “Ronaldo” fellow. I heard a group of girls saying, “OMG he’s so hot!“ I didn’t know what to make of it.

With all the hype it was getting, I was intrigued to watch. Also, I lost count how many times I heard the words “World Cup” throughout the day. The particular match I caught a glimpse of was between Portugal and Ivory Coast. I knew nothing about the sport, but within 5 minutes I was invested into the game. The closer a player was to scoring, the more I felt myself caring. I thought a certain blonde player was pretty good. Who knew it could be so entertaining?


I had a whole month before I was going to move and in order to pass time I watched football. Even my sister, Laxmi, got involved with it. It was quality bonding time between us. During dinner we talked about tactics without even knowing what the word meant back then. One moment clearly stuck out to me. It was one of the hottest days of the year. The air conditioner was on full-blast and we were eating popsicles. Some men working on the roof were making a loud racket, but that didn’t ruin our day.

It was a showdown between USA and Algeria. Naturally, the team we were pulling for was USA. I witnessed magic when Landon Donovan’s rocket shot made it in the last minute of injury time. There was no time to react. We were jumping up and down. Screaming with unbelievable happiness. USA had booked a place in the Round of 16. Never had I felt so many emotions. Never had I felt chills. The message was clear: football was powerful and this was the effect it had on me.

Soon it became a ritual to turn on ESPN and wait for the next match to start. As soon as we woke up, we checked the times of all games being played that day. It became an obsession. I remember my mother saying, “You’re still watching soccer? Do you find this interesting? I thought it was over!“