Now you who are regulars here know that I am an enraptured lover of the Beautiful Game. Which, as the article insists, means that I know better than a non-fanatic that the game itself - any match, many matches - can be an awful, dire, tedious slog.And that's all true.
There's no sassy kickiness to watching two rec league teams thrash out a nil-nil draw in the rain. The Lingerie Football League it ain't.
And a LOT of soccer is like that - a hopelessly dire kickabout where nothing happens for a long, long time.But - and here's the odd thing - that's part of what makes it wonderful.
Because it's so like life itself.
You spend hours, days, weeks, maybe even years, grinding away. Sleeping, working, eating, and sleeping again. For days at a time nothing happens to you that hasn't happened before and will surely happen again tomorrow, or the next day. And that goes on for years, one day following the next like tarnished beads on a dirty string. Get up, go to work, come home, read, sleep.
But...every so often...
Once a year, once a decade, once a lifetime...Something achingly beautiful, or unspeakably terrible, can happen.
A sunrise, a song, the look on someone's face after making love.
A death, a war, pain, fear, the taste of chocolate, the birth of your child.
And that changes you forever.
And soccer's a little bit like that, too.
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