Steven Petrov
The Paw Print
Soccer is the world’s most popular sport, played by over 250 million people around the world in over 200 countries. Football or “soccer” as we know it is not just a game that you want to watch for fun, it is a way of life that people from different races, nationalities, and social and economic backgrounds share. The ultimate power of bringing people together for those 90 magical minutes as well as far beyond them is the thing that separates soccer from all of the other sports played worldwide.
The word “magical” is not being used just for the sake of using it, but rather to explain to the greatest possible extent of the complex qualities, aspects, characteristics and roles that soccer as a game, a sport, and a way of life encompasses. David Beckham once said “Soccer is a magical game,” and the reason for that is that it is a life changing experience for everyone involved in it, starting from the average fan who, for example, is ready to travel to the other side of the world just to support his favorite team, believing in the players and motivating them even when the team is on a long loosing streak. On the other hand, players and coaches like Zinedine Zidane, Ronaldo, Johan Cruyff, Sir Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Gareth Bale and many others are treated like gods by the fans of their own club as well as by everyone else who loves the game. The players’ perspective on playing professional soccer is the one thing that they would not trade is getting paid to do what they love the most; is like not working at all and is the best feeling in the world “I have the chance to do for a living what I like the most in life, and that’s playing football. I can make people happy and enjoy myself at the same time”- Ronaldinho.
Grasping the importance of the game as an international phenomenon is a little bit more difficult here in the U.S. where we can honestly say that the game has been overlooked and underestimated by the general public. However, there has been a huge improvement in that aspect ever since the USA held the 1994 World Cup, and now year after year more and more people get involved in the game. New facilities have been built within the country for all the levels that soccer is being exercised at– middle and high school, academy and college level, as well as numerous professional stadiums worth millions of dollars. These changes again testify to the power of soccer to transform lives, economies, and societies, because what everyone around the world calls football was once not a U.S. sport at all. However, in the recent years, with a new local name, “soccer”, the sport has been slowly penetrating the American culture and understandings; gaining more and more trust, fans, and respect around the country. Hopefully this trend will keep moving in a positive direction adding more and more people to the huge, international soccer “family”.q
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