Golazo!!!

It's that time of the year folks. Rather that time that comes once in four years. When the world goes mad. When one ball in black-and-white becomes the point of focus of every color TV in the world. Probably the only time when boardroom discussions and drunken brawls begin the same way, focused on it (never mind they go very different directions after that). When even Brooke Shields' posters are torn down from hostel rooms to make room for posters of men-in-shorts. Yes, it's Football season!!! The FIFA World Cup is here, and with it, all it's jing-bang!!!!!!

Well, if the beginning sounded over-enthusiastic and made you think I was one of those soccer crazy guys who knows every player in every soccer playing nation of the globe, mea culpa. My interest in the game would probably rate, average. I know enough to know Pele from Maradona and even know Ronaldo and Ronaldinho are two different guys, but ask me who the mid-fielder for Costa Rica is, and I'll ask you who the twelfth emir of UAE is. However, here's a game you just cannot ignore, and I have many a fond memory of this game!

My earliest memories are of the 1986 world cup. A World Cup immortalized by Maradona's 'Hand of God' goal, and subsequently, his 'Goal of the Century'. I remember, as a boy of 8, waking up rubbing my eyes, in the middle of the night to my dad shouting Goooaaaalllll and then sitting with him to watch the rest of it. At that age and level of sleepiness, I tended to empathize with the king who ordered a ball apiece so that twenty two guys wouldn't fight over one ball, but the next morning, I knew enough to call myself 'Maradona' in our gully-football team. Maradona got his shin kicked every other minute.

Come World Cup, 1990. Supposedly a dull world cup, but not for us kids! I even remember the lego-block mascot of this worldcup! I was more grown up and had more friends. This time, we were tracking the worldcup before it began, and had even converted our road from a cricket pitch to a soccer stadium. The local Maradona no longer got his shin kicked every other minute. Another more talented kid had kicked my butt and taken the name for himself. Our sports teacher meanwhile spotted my talent and offered me the chance to carry bottles of water for the players.

I vividly remember this world cup. The soccer world cup final and the Wimbledon mens' singles finals were on the same day. I'd made up a very smart comment in my mind and was looking for someone to crack it on. Looked around and saw this gullible 8 y old mallu on the slide. Went and told him "Both Becker and Beckenbauer (German manager for that world cup) are very tense today." He gave me one look and vacated the slide for me, and ran to dear mummy. For some reason, I never met him again till 1999, when unfortunately, he had to run to catch a bus. The next day, I heard he'd gone to Dubai.

For the records however, Beckenbauer's team won. No such luck for Becker though. He lost a five setter to Stefan Edberg in one of the most memorable of their matches.

The next, World Cup 1994 in the US is supposed to have been a great world cup with lots of goals, but it's not one I wouldn't care to remember much. There's not much for me to remember anyways. We did attempt to revive the local Soccer Club, but I was in Class XII and it was made amply clear to me, as much by fellow players as by the grownups around that couldn't hold on to a football even if I were allowed to use my hands. A career in Engineering was offered as an alternative and that cost me the fun of this World Cup.

Making this world cup even tougher was the news of Maradona being expelled for cocaine use, and then Columbian keeper Escobar being shot for scoring a self goal. Soccer could get bloody bloody.

World Cup 1998. I lost this to friends. No we weren't betting. We were growing up. And had formed our close circle of friends in college. The world cup was in France, and the matches were usually telecast at odd hours of the afternoon, when we were either at college classroom or in the canteen, eitherways, too busy in our chattering to bother about the world cup. France silently came up and won the cup. We lost the fun.

World Cup 2002. Hosted jointly by Japan and South Korea! I was almost a grown up now. I even had a job! And the job gave me an email address, My job itself required working more on Text Editors and Unix terminals than on Power Points but MS PPT did come in useful to watch all the powerpoints of the hi-tech stadia. Stadia where the roof would open up, stadia that could turn inside out. Stadia that floated on water. Stadia that could seat a nation. In between admiring all this, I'd lost interest in the game itself. I'll admit, I had to google to see who even won this worldcup!!! What a fall.

And now, World Cup 2006. This promises to be different. I'm in the US consulting at a company that's into sports and has a liberal sprinkling of Employees from the Continent. So that does make it difficult to ignore the game! And you must talk intelligently, even if it means saying "The Brazilians should've done a one-two in the seventy-eighth minute"!

So I wake up every morning to catch the 6am match. It's fun. It looks right, it sounds right...but wait, it sounds almost, but not quite right! And then I realize. My cable dealer, for whatever reason, is beaming the match with commentary in Spanish!!!!! I do a status check with my wife and that reveals that one year of living in the US has increased our Spanish vocab by three words, so that it now totals three words - Adios, Amigos and Gracias.

But one thing it has taught us. It doesn't matter whether the commentator says 'Goal' (pronounced Gooooaaaalllll) or Golazo (pronounced 'Goooolaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaso'). Either word is going to send the crowds into a frenzy and draw us from wherever we are, sleeping, brushing whatever, to watch it.

Some things are beyond the barriers of language. Football IS a Language. A Universal Language. Life for me, for millions of others like me, and many millions, much more passionate than me, is not going to be the same, for the next one month.

I would've said 'I love Football' in Spanish but I haven't caught the commentator say that so far, so I'll just say Gracias! And Adios for now!!!