Caught Offside




Carola Medina
Caught Offside

            The thing about discovering that you are in love is that you have the insatiable urge to surround yourself with the object of your affection, to fill all your time and expend all your energy loving this one person or thing, and that was the situation I found myself in three years ago.
      It will always come back to the same thing. It will always come back to white jerseys, the green grass, and the blue stadium lights. It will always come back to Madrid, to Spain, to Europe. It will always come back to the cheers, the jeers, the whistles, and the tears. It will always come back to Real Madrid. It will always come back to football.
      I'd like to say that it was love at first sight. That I took one glance at a ball, and my heart sped up, my palms started sweating, and whatever happens to other body parts that start malfunctioning when you fall in love happened too. I'd like to say that but I can't. No, my obsession with football happened the same way every other major obsession in my life has come about: with a deep, passionate hatred.
      My dad's greatest passions in life are football, family, the Cowboys, and law maintenance, in that exact order. A former football player, he wanted his sons to become prodigies. His first born son, my younger brother, was named after the famous Diego Maradona, and was immediately enrolled in club football the moment he could kick a ball without falling over. It is very difficult for me to recall a Sunday from my childhood that was not spent on the sidelines of a football field being eaten alive by mosquitos, and trying not to get accidentally slapped in the head by an overexcited mom. My dad never could go to any of the games due to his work schedule so it was up to me and my mom to be my brother's reluctant cheerleaders.
      I hated it. I hated the heat, I hated the annoying moms and dads who would scream at the kids, at the referees, and at the other parents. Come on people, we are watching five-year-olds running in circles nothing to get worked up about.
      I hated the fact that I had to sacrifice my time to be there, and I hated that I was never asked to play and was never taught to play. I didn't even know how to kick a ball properly.
      Whenever the ball would wander over to where I was standing, I would break out in a cold sweat as I remembered the time I had tried to pass the ball to the goalie. I kicked the ball with the tip of my foot and had sent it shooting straight up in the air much to the amusement of the field full of seven year old boys. I avoided touching any balls after that, and my dad never encouraged me to either.
      And for the rest of my childhood, football became the One Thing I Was Not A Part Of.
      My resentment for football pretty much continued until the age of twelve or should I say, it continued until the summer of the World Cup of 2006. The World Cup in my house was treated as a Big Deal, an event that could rival Christmas. For my dad, it was like a month long spiritual retreat that the rest of us were forced to join him on. During this time, changing the channel while any team was playing was an offense punishable by having a cleat thrown at your head. The severity of the punishment increased if the team was Germany. Despite not having one ounce of German blood flowing through their veins, the men in my family supported the German national team with enough fervor to rival that of actual Germans. Names like Bastian Schweinsteiger, Michael Ballack, and Miroslav Klose were used in regular conversation so much I started to believe they were distant cousins I had never met.
      I tried to stay away from the football marathon in the living room as much as possible, but it was difficult considering my brothers wanted to be glued to the television the entire time. I would try to convince them to come outside and play with me but they wouldn't even glance away from the Germany vs. Poland game when they would say no. Bored and alone, I resolved myself to my fate, and joined them on the couch.
      The first few minutes of the game I could not stop rolling my eyes whenever my brothers would let out excited gasp as the German players would take a shot on goal. However, something changed as I continued to watch the game that I soon began to realize was so unlike anything my brothers ever did.
      The players were skillful and able to move with the ball in ways that I didn't think were possible. They would run with an almost inhuman grace and their feet would give the ball just the slightest touches to make it bend at a tight angle to score the most beautiful goals. Soon, I was joining my brothers in their shouts of frustration at the players when they would make mistakes or be caught offside. The game was exciting, it was engaging, it was suspenseful, it was like watching a great story unfold. There was no way to predict what was going to happen next and the only thing left to do was sit and keep watching. And so I did.
       When the game was over and my brothers high fived each other over Germany's win, I sat on the couch feeling unsettled and slightly embarrassed. I had been wrong about football. It was not boring, or stupid, or whatever excuses I had come up with that had kept me from watching and enjoying the game. I blushed, hoping no one would notice my revelation, and secretly I decided to watch the rest of Germany's games and try to catch up on everything missed so far. I followed them all the way until the end of the World Cup, where they finished in third place much to my disappointment.
      But the sudden fever that had gripped me during the World Cup faded soon after it ended, and just like the third place medals shoved to the back of the closet, the memories of the games where stored in the back of my mind and soon my life returned back to normal, and football went back to being something only the boys in my family liked.  
      When I was fifteen, my brothers decided to stop playing football. They had grown tired of morning games, late after school practices, aching knees and backs, but most importantly they had grown tired of playing just to please my dad. He tried to resist, not ready to give up the dream of raising the next Beckham, he took away their video games, he yelled, ranted, and raved about how they couldn't do this, he forced them to practice, but all that resulted was in resentment and an even further resolution not to continue playing.
      The summer of the same year happened to be the year the 2010 World Cup. This time around, I actually sought out the tournament by myself. Secretly, of course. Talk of the tournament had managed to generate interest in me and I was curious to see if I would feel the same way I did the first time around. For reasons of silly girl pride, I had not told anyone about my last experience with the World Cup. No one in my family knew that for one blessed moment I had lost my mind and fallen in love with football. The memories of the last World Cup were faint in my mind, but the strong emotions of passion, breathless exhilaration, elation, and shattering disappointment, were easy to recall.
      Since my brothers had rejected all things football, I could no longer use them as my cover. The first day of the tournament I waited until everyone was distracted or at work and away from the television and started flipping through channels making sure it looked like I had just casually landed on the Germany game. As soon as the commentator started presenting the teams, there was a buzzing undercurrent of excitement running through my arms and legs. Even sitting here now writing this, I can feel the ghost of that excitement, that feeling of anticipation when you know you are about to witness something incredible. Falling back into being a football fan was as easy and comfortable as slipping on a favorite pair of boots.
      Soon, I fell into a routine as I hid my football mania from my family the entire time. Looking back I realize how completely ridiculous my behavior was, and if I am being honest I probably realized this at the time, but I did not want to admit it. I did not want to admit it to my family, to my dad, that I actually liked football. I spent my entire childhood hating this sport and coming back around now and saying that I was a fan, and a rather hugely emotionally investment fan at that, felt like a betrayal of my younger self. Of that little girl who hung around in the sidelines and was never invited to play, who was never encouraged to like this sport, who was overlooked for the position of “next football star” by her dad because she was a girl.
       I spent the summer becoming immersed in the world of football, learning the language, the strengths and weaknesses of each team, and the names of all of the important players. Learning all of this by myself in secret certainly increased the appeal of football because it made it my own in a way, and separated it from everything I had come to know about football through my experiences with my brothers and dad.
      After the Cup was over and Germany had once again finished in third place, to my eternal frustration, I expected my interest to wane once again and be put on a shelf until the next World Cup, but for some reason the passion for the game would not leave me alone. It pestered me at all times making its presence known in my mind by flashing scenes of spectacular goals that would leave me feeling turned inside out, and having me relive the moments where my favorite players would have an amazing run would make me smile randomly throughout the day.
      I needed to find something to fill the football shaped void in my life now that the World Cup was over, but I did not know where to find it. The urge went unfulfilled and I was reduced to relying on the etched memories in my head.
      When I was sixteen, I had a panic attack out of the blue. I was diagnosed with clinical depression several months later, and no one knew why, including myself. During that time, I felt like I was living underwater and running out of breath. I was desperate to feel normal again and to reclaim my sense of self. My mother tried sending me to therapy, I tried the pills, I tried prayer, but my depression remained. I learned to cope with my depression, but there were certain days when it would take me out completely and I could not do much but lay on the couch.
      On one of these days, I was laying in the living room when my dad came in. My relationship with my dad had never been the greatest father and daughter relationship. He was too aggressive, and I was too sensitive, and we clashed too often. It had become even more difficult for us to communicate, and he didn't attempt to then as he sat down and just gave me a smile. He turned on the television and flipped the channels until it landed on a football game. The commentator’s voice filled the living room with noise and the familiar rhythm of the game soon sucked me in. The teams were clubs I did not recognize. They weren't national teams, but teams from the Spanish first league, La Liga.
      Real Madrid vs. Real Sociedad read the scoreboard.
      The men of Real Madrid wore clean, white jersey with black lettering and from the first touch of the ball I could see they were the superior team. The players of Real Madrid all seemed to be performing on a superhuman level, with a certain artistry and effortlessness in their every movement. The metaphysics of their game seemed to encompass all of the beautiful things that I admired about football. As I paid more attention to the game certain faces stood out to me. They were the faces of players that I had seen before in the World Cup. Players like Cristiano Ronaldo, and Mesut Ӧzil who had become my favorites for the tournament. It was no surprise that I immediately pledged my alliance to Real Madrid and started routing for them, but it did not look like they needed me on their side as they easily split apart the opponents’ defense and scored one goal after another.
      When the game ended I felt a little lighter than I had before and deep down inside me I knew that I had found something special. Real Madrid became my escape that day. For those 90 minutes of game time my mind had experienced some clarity for the first time in months, and I was desperate for clarity.
      Real Madrid made it almost too easy for me to fall in love with them. They gave me beautiful football, beautiful players, a beautiful history, they gave me a beautiful life again. They gave me the distraction that I needed from the disaster of my mental state. The day following the game I spend my time researching the team trying to absorb as much information as I could about their history, their players, their fan base, and everything in between. I wanted to immerse myself in their world so I would not have to live in mine.
      I started to watch their games regularly and this time I decided not to hide it from my family like some dirty little secret. The first time my mom saw me watching the game on television she gave me a strange look, but did not comment. My brothers did not care about what I watched as long as I was done with the television by the time their cartoons started, and my dad was at work whenever Real Madrid was playing. Watching the games out on the open made me feel exposed, but in the same way it also made me feel liberated.
      But still I did not want people to question my love for football, especially not my dad. When he finally caught on to the fact that I was a Real Madrid fan now he seemed a little surprised because he had never seen me show any interest in the sport, much less any teams. He did not ask me any uncomfortable questions like “Why do you like them?” or “Since when are you into football?”, but instead completely surprised me by saying “I like Real Madrid too”. Those words angered me and unsettled more than any question he could have thrown at me. I felt like he had stolen something from me. That he had found a way to steal this special team from me.
       It was naive of me to think this way, but I could not help it at the time. I was possessive of my team and his statement made me feel as if he was claiming ownership over them and flashbacks of my childhood exclusion of any football activities were brought to the forefront of my mind. Those thoughts were dispelled from my head once I realized that he did not love the team like I did. I could share the team with him, but I did not have to share my relationship with them. That was uniquely mine, just like the World Cup experience was uniquely mine.
      Real Madrid and football are a constant presence in my life, and it seems almost ironic that something that gave me so much grief in my childhood would be the thing to give me comfort in my adolescence. My mother still cannot believe sometimes just how serious I am about this sport. She still remembers me complaining about how dumb football was with her on a bright morning so many Sundays ago, and I think I completely shocked everyone in my family when I discarded my childhood dream of becoming a veterinarian in order to make room for my new life ambition: to become a sports journalist in Madrid. My relationship with my dad improved slightly once he found out about my passion for football, and my mutual love for Real Madrid, but it did not fix it completely. Now when we fight, we fight about football.
      Some people like to compare their football team to their religion, but I would never be so crass. Real Madrid did not “save” me, but they did help me survive. They helped me find myself again by bringing joy into my life through football. Now I cannot separate my life from football, they have become so intertwined it’s hard to think of one without the other. The moments when I am not thinking of football or trying to relate something that just happened back to football are rare. It feels strange to me that there ever was a time when this was not the case. If I could go back to those days to when I was the girl standing on the sidelines of her little brother’s game, I would tell her to kick the ball, and to take that chance to fall in love with football. 



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