I was eleven years old when I caught World Cup fever. It was 2006, and Germany was hosting the globe’s best soccer teams in a fantastically epic, headbutt-filled, month-long tournament of The Beautiful Game. I had grown up playing AYSO soccer with my buddies, where we ran around the field like a bunch of headless chickens chasing the ball, getting out of breath, and maybe scoring a few goals with a well-struck toe-ball. It was organized chaos at best, and the highlight of those games was generally the oranges, purple gatorade, and Ho Hos at half time.
At that age I didn’t know soccer could be something beautiful. It started to dawn on me, though, when I flipped through the June 2006 edition of National Geographic magazine, that in other countries soccer was more like a religion. Around the world, people lived and breathed soccer, and watching their nation compete in the world cup was cause to shut down streets and close businesses, like some sort of federal holiday. I soaked in the images of kids, like me, playing soccer in the streets, soccer in the dirt fields, soccer in back alleys. Through those magazine pages I felt connected with kids around the world—we spoke different languages, we had different cultures, but we had one thing in common: we loved to play soccer.
That summer I cheered for the Dutch as they let loose in their total football style; I admired how the strictly organized German team cut up defenses with ease (they took third overall in the tournament); and I gaped in awe as I witnessed Brazil perform nothing short of magic on live television. After games, I’d juggle my soccer ball in the backyard, channeling my inner Ronaldinho. I practiced my shots on the concrete wall in the backyard; though, a few shots may have gone astray and might just have possibly broken a window. Okay, two windows. But could you blame me? I was preparing for my career in professional soccer, where I would soon have enough money to buy all the windows one could ever need.
The summer of 2006 came and went, and suburban Grand Rapids didn’t have much to fuel the fire for the global football culture I fell in love with in National Geographic. I moved on to other interests and soccer’s place in my consciousness waned.
Yet some flames never die. A few weeks ago I bought a pair of soccer cleats and stepped onto the field for a pick up game. It was thirty-two degrees, the cleats were tight, my breath filled the air like a steam engine, and I greatly second guessed what the hell I was doing outside at 5:30pm on a Wednesday. Passing the ball back and forth, everything came back. I felt the warm excitement of connecting with teammates, the rush of chasing down a long pass, the thrill of the ball sinking into the back of the net. Forty of us gathered to play pick up soccer (in January, mind you!), from various cultures, speaking various languages, and still the cohesion was instantaneous. An hour passed by in a blink, and were it not for my buckling knees and the cramps in my side it might as well have been the summer of 2006 all over again, and me, glowing with the fever of The Beautiful Game.
Jon Gorter (‘17) graduated from Calvin with degrees in English and environmental studies and holds an MS in natural resources from the University of Michigan. He enjoys fly fishing, mushroom foraging, and waterfall scrambling near his home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina.
