Aleksandar Hemon - The Matters of Life, Death, and More: Writing on Soccer

Farrar, Straus and Giroux
New York

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I watched my first World Cup in 1974. Yugoslavia, my then homeland, had qualified for it in a dramatic game against Spain, in which Josip Katalinski, a player from eljezniar, the Sarajevo team I supported (and still support), scored the decisive goal, which I can replay in my head to this day. As many a ten-year-old, soccer-crazed patriot would, I passionately roorted for the national team. One of its games on the way to the inevitable elimination was against the great Polish team, featuring Deyna, Lato, Szarmach, etc. I distinctly remember the bright-green pitch, the white-and-red jerseys of the Polish team, the blue, red, and white of the Yugoslav teameven though I watched it on a black-and-white TV. I was insanely involved: I rolled on the floor and screamed with every missed chance, I beat my chest with every decision against us, while my frightened mother tried to calm me down, claiming it was just a game, and I damned her to hell for not understanding its importance.

Needless to say, Yugoslavia was losing because of a grave and systematic injustice. How else could we lose when we had my passion to drive us forward? When we were such great and decent people? It quickly became clear to me that it was all because of the referee, who made all of his decisions against Yugoslavia, because he for some reason obviously hated us. Even the Poles, it appeared, were appalled by the refs blatant bias. At one point, the Polish player Gorgon (who looked like a Slavic god: wide-shouldered and strong, complete with blond locks) was taking his time with a free kick. I thought that even he was so disgusted with the evil ref that he was refusing to restart the game, out of sheer solidarity peculiar to the Slavs, well acquainted with injustices of this wicked world.

Shortly thereafter, naturally, I realized that the ref was disinterested, that Gorgon was willing to do anything to win the game for his team, that Yugoslavia was a lousy, loser country and was deservedly defeated by the team that nearly made it to the finals and beat Brazil, the reigning world champion, in the third-place game. But blessed are the childhood days when it is possible to see the world neatly divided between right and wrong, between the evil ref and the rest of us! How glorious it was to live with the conviction that we were always right! Thats why I remember that day: it may have been the last time I was unquestionably on the right side, and how sweet was the comfort of righteousness.

A few years ago, playing in an acrimonious soccer game that I largely spent screaming at everyone else, I got into a fight with a young man named Clemente. He said something about my sister in a disrespectful manner and I kicked him in the head. I could feel the ridge of my foot catching his cheek. Of course, I was horribly sorry later, but there was a moment (and that moment was simultaneous with kicking Clemente) when I was at perfect peace, when there was a stable, solid center somewhere deep inside my fury, somewhere in the tranquil space of unmitigated self-righteousness. After a lifetime of insult and injuryor so I felt in that instanthere was an occasion to let all that accumulated anger go: he took my blow because of something that had begun, a long time ago, with an evil referee. It was after kicking Clemente in the head that I finally and fully understood what Albert Camus meant when he said: Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to soccer. It was after I kicked Clementewhose name could be translated as mercifulthat I started my anger therapy.

Throughout the 1982 World Cup in Spain, I was in love, which is to say that I suffered through a painful conflict of most intense interests. I was a Sarajevo high school senior and an unwilling virgin. My girlfriendlet her be known as Renatahad just graduated and was studying for a med-school entrance exam. Under the pretense of helping her prepare for it, I spent a lot of time at her home, which she shared with her father and schizophrenic brother. In her room, I read mock test questions to her, mainly biology-related, until, slowly, hotly, we moved from the theory of adolescent biology to its practical questions: Where does the heat in our heads come from? What should we do with these hormone-driven, tinder-box bodies? The biology textbook tossed aside we practically dared her father or brother to barge in and catch us locked in a feral clench, conducting biological research by petting each other very, very heavily. Sometimes the room was so infested with arousal that we had to open the windows and let it out to affect the innocent birds and bees of Sarajevo.

If you are reading this at all, you know that sex and soccer do not mix well. In the evenings, when her father and brother would go for long walks, we would be left alonewhich allowed for all kinds of fantastic possibilitiesbut the World Cup games were on, so I had to find balance between my soccer obsession and our biology. I regret to say that because of the conflicting circumstances I missed some games; some of them I perceived with just a half of my brain, as the other half was suspended for the sake of our biological research. But for the semifinals, I mustered enough gumption and hormone control to forgo the heavy petting and risk indefinite deflowerment deferral: I demanded to watch the game in peaceno biological experiments, please. Renata put away her books and pencils and we lay on the living room sofa facing the TV. Her father and brother were away, France vs. West Germany was on, and I knew it wasnt going to be easy.

Though my team of contrarian choice in 1982 was Italy, I was rooting for France in that particular match. Although the French were laughably unimpressive in Argentina in 1978, I liked the 1982 team: after a slow start in Round 1 (losing to England, tying with Czechoslovakia, finally beating Kuwait) Les Bleues picked it up in Round 2 group stage. They beat Austria with Genghinis superb free-kick, while Northern Ireland was disposed of mercilessly: Platini danced past the entire Northern Ireland defense to pass the ball to the puny Giresse, who scored the first goal; Rocheteau raced with the ball all the way from the half line to beat Pat Jennings at the near post; the French midfield ran the Northern Irish ragged and both Giresse and Rocheteau scored again. It was an impressive performance, but they did it all with a certain, charming ease, which invoked for me the relaxed atmosphere of Parisian cafs, as yet unexperienced. When I recall Platini from 1982, I see a full head of uncombed Rimbaudian hair, indecently short shorts and a big smilea copain having loads of fun.

I could easily imagine Platini or Tigana growing up on a Parisian street, kicking a deflated ball with other boys, rehearsing the magic theyd dazzle the world with much later. The ease and flair they exhibited while playing was different only in degree but not in kind from the soccer I played with my matesamong the French, much as among the Brazilians, the joy of playing bespoke the purity rooted in the street game. But no one could ever accuse Germans of enjoying playing. In fact, no one could ever imagine them even playing on the streetthose men were always at work, and enjoyment would run counter to their work ethic. On the parking lots where I came up playing soccer, a German was a boy who brought you down on the concrete, someone who would run a lot because he could do shit with the ball. The victory in soccer, Id grown up believing, should never be a consequence of hard workrather, it should be a kind of epiphany, an act of supreme magic, unlearnable and inexplicable. That was why I had always hated German soccer: the mechanical discipline and the maddening, unmagical ability never to give up made the classical German soccer philosophy my main ideological enemy. Ive changed my mind since, but in 1982, I saw the semifinals as a great battle in the philosophical war between work and magic, between the (stereotypical) Teutonic rationality and (equally stereotypical) Gallic passion. It was set up to be a great game.