The Mighty Casillas
Anyone who has followed international football in the last five years will recognize this hand. It belongs to Iker Casillas and it is truly miraculous. It has saved many a game by repelling hundreds of nearly impossible shots-on-goal. And that is a modest claim compared to what they have written at the Real Madrid Museum - a temple to "the Greatest Fútbol Team of All Time". Reading the displays there reveals some of the most purple prose imaginable, stopping just short of discovering a cure for the common cold or colonizing the moon. But I do like watching Real play and I love the Spanish national team - fast and graceful, they play as a team like a finely tuned watch - so it was great fun to tour the stadium and visit the museum while we were in Madrid. Alas, we did not get to see them play, but we will be back someday. And hopefully Iker will be there, keeping his team's goal eternally safe.
Make fun all you want, and complain about how "it can't be a game if it can end in a tie" but I like to watch soccer, particularly European soccer. The magical footwork, the precision passing, and the players spreading across and down the field like a silent fog, all of it mesmerizing until BOOM! a lightning quick strike that either finds the back of the net or is repelled brilliantly by the likes of Real's Casillas, or Juventus' Gigi Buffon. There is nothing like watching a world-class goal, unless it is a world-class save.
Now that I am over 40, with a sciatica problem that has rendered my two left outermost toes numb, I must admit I look back and ask myself why I didn't play more soccer when I was young. I did play in a summer rec league for a couple of years as a teen, but I could have extended that through to my adult life. Hell, Icould be playing now. But I made the choices I did and have the bad back and heavy gait to prove it. But as long as I can watch gifted athletes like The Mighty Casillas play in ways I never could even if I had kept it up, I will enjoy the divine game that is fútbol.
