Football or soccer as it is referred to in the United States is by over a million miles the world’s most popular sport. If the truth be told, I’d say without mincing words that not only has football become a way of life and the way to live but football indeed is life. It has become a culture and a religion. Make a list of the world’s most popular brands and you will find your list littered by names such as Barcelona, Beckham, C. Ronaldo, UEFA, FIFA ,Arsenal, Real Madrid, Manchester United, South Africa 2010 et al. What is it with football and life ? A lot. Pay a little attention and you will find that football is just a microcosm of life.
At the beginning of every football duel, the score line is always nil all (0:0). You start out in life with nothing. You have the same time i.e. 24 hours with everybody else just like every football team has 90 minutes to make its mark. Whatever happens during the match is a factor of talent, belief and preparation. Like life a team loses or wins a football match based on how well it prepares itself and how much the team believes in itself.
That you are down does not mean you are out. That you are losing the game of life at the moment does not mean you are a loser. You don’t lose until the final whistle. Classic examples of teams that went on to win football matches when they were considered down and out include Liverpool FC against AC Milan overhauling a 3-nil 1st half deficit to hurt the Italians at the 2005 Champions’ league finals, Manchester United’s magical comeback against Bayern Munich some three minutes after the match commentator was talking about an English team losing yet again to a German team at the 1999 UCL finals, Nigeria’s miraculous comeback against Russia during the Saudi ’89 under 20 world cup. Very few people will forget Kanu’s heroics to reduce Brazil to a humiliating defeat after going 3-1 down at the Atlanta ’96 olympics. Recently I had almost completed my write-up on Obama’s midas touch helping the United States beat mighty Brazil at the FIFA Confederations’ Cup South Africa 2009, because the Americans were outplaying the Brazilians and were two goals up, but Lo and behold Kaka and co read a different script because even when they had a legal goal disallowed, they beat the Americans 3-2. My article did not see daylight. Examples abound and I hope you share some of your own memories of come backs in football. Each story is a tale of persistence, purpose and belief. As long as you don’t sit on the canvas, you are in line for victory.
Life’s a marathon, atimes to peak too soon is to finish tired and out. Need examples? Arsenal winning the league at the mercy of Liverpool FC despite the Anfield giants topping the log all season. By the final day of the season, right at the reds fortress , Liverpool could not match up to The Arsenal because the gunners still had more in their tank to condemn the reds to a 2-0 defeat thereby upstaging them to win the title at the very last hurdle in 1989 with virtually the last kick of the season. That is arguably the most thrilling finale to a league campaign. Manchester United dethroned Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle from the top despite being a dozen points behind the Tynesiders in 1996. In 1998, Arsenal fired on all cylinders buoyed by Arsene Wenger’s new training and diet regime winning all their final fourteen matches of the season, erasing some 12 points deficit with Manchester United and wrestling the title from the grasp of the Red devils by a solitary point on the final day. In 2003 and 2008, Arsenal faithfuls were apparently celebrating when Man-United came from behind to lift a trophy that is seemingly their birth right. Like football, Life’s a marathon, you peak when you should be building momentum you lose out. Step by step, day by day, precepts upon precepts, with every little step on the rung of the ladder you move ahead.
Football produces losers, winners, heroes, villains e.t.c . Atimes a good footballer loses out despite all his talent because he is in the wrong team. The world is full of people who are not winning in life because they are not playing with the right people. What about people finding themselves at the wrong place? Diego Forlan (villain in Manchester, hero in Madrid), Andriy Shevchenko (Priceless in Ukraine and Italy, virtually useless in England), Thierry Henry (Abused in Italy, Adored in England, Adorned in Spain), the list is endless. Often times, all a man needs to change is his location and he starts to shine like he’d done something extraordinary.
Life is beautiful. Football is beautiful. The times you don’t find Life beautiful are the moments you find yourself beaten by Life. There are times when things are seemingly not going your way. At such moments, life is far from beautiful. Ask a football fan what he thinks of the game when his team has just won a major competition. The answer you get will never be the same with that of the fan who finds his team on the receiving end of a bad defeat. e.g. Chelsea at the 2008 Champions’ League final, Manchester United’s painful loss to Arsenal at the 2005 F.A. Cup despite outplaying the gunners, Arsenal’s painful loss to Barcelona after holding out with ten men for much of the match at the 2006 UCL finals. Like life, often times we see football fans feeling the same event differently and interpreting outcomes with different emotions. Do these varying feelings change the fact that the game of Life is beautiful? In the same vein, what you are going through cannot change the fact that Life is Beautiful. Football and Life, the similarities never end. More than a group of 22 old men kicking a leather ball around, football indeed is Life if you go beyond watching it lived , to living your Life watched as an example of how to live Life. I love this game.

Japheth Omojuwa