football is life

there was once a boy who grew up in bolton, a little red dot on the map of england that was slight, but remarkable - it was the home of reebok. as in the guys who make reebok sneakers.

like many other boys, he liked football. he played it a lot. in fact, he liked it so much and played it so much that he got rather good at it. it was a combination of talent and hard work, as his coaches would say.

spotted by his local club's talent scout, our friend signed a professional contract, albeit a somewhat peculiar one. he was to fly to argentina to train at a school that maradona had set up (imagine maradona had aged gracefully, without the booze and drugs - this is just a story after all), after which he would return to play for bolton wanderers for a couple of years. a pretty neat deal for all involved, wouldn't you say? training with the hand of God himself, and a guaranteed spot on a professional club's roster. which self-respecting english lad wouldn't want that?

so far so good.

in the summer before he was supposed to return to bolton and play for the wanderers, our boy went on loan to arsenal. just for the summer. bolton thought he'd be able to learn a thing or two from playing with the gunners.

and learn he did. he learnt to play fluid, attacking football. he did little tricks and flicks. he even fancied a shot at goal once in a while. he had the time of his life. the skills he had cultivated over the years were finally put to good use. not that there isn't aesthetic beauty in sheer technique, but football is a sport after all - skill is nothing without results.

the summer at arsenal was fruitful in more ways than one. for our dear boy (almost grown up now) not only had a ball of a time, it turns out arsenal liked him so much they offered him a contract. now, given a choice between arsenal and bolton wanderers, it is clear which team any self-respecting english lad who happens to be a professional footballer would choose. no surprises with billy bolton-turned-balla: he wanted to sign the contract real bad.

there was, of course, a problem. the contract with bolton, the club who had spotted and signed him way before arsenal was even a distant dream. billy knew that he had to go on home and play for his hometown team. the glamour of reebok had not changed how bolton saw the world. he would be labeled traitor by his half-drunk moustachioed uncles and vilified in the local press if he so much as mentioned the possibility of moving to london to play for arsenal.

and so, head on home he did. it wasn't going to be so bad after all. he had followed the wanderers with all the keenness of a local lad, even when he had gone off to argentina. he never, no God forbid, considered himself an argentinian, or even a londoner for that matter. it would be an honor to pull on his own white jersey and blue shorts, he told himself.

"i don't really know what kind of football they play in argentina. it most certainly ain't the football you're gonna play as a bolton wanderer. just cos we thought you were one of the best bolton had, isn't gonna guarantee you a spot on the team.. not until you show that you can scare your opponents just by looking at them. not until you appreciate how hard it is to lump a perfect long ball down the field. not until you run like a terrier on ecstasy when you're playing defense, which is almost all the time, by the way. get it in your head: play like us, or you'll sit on the bench. i don't care how good you are, i just want you to do your part and keep quiet when spoken to."

it was a rather harrowing dressing down that billy boy got on his first day at training.

so with tears rolling down his reebok kit, he bit his lip and handed in a transfer request the very next day.

and who would have blamed him? arsenal were going to pay him twice as much, and the manager there seemed to like him. he had no doubt which team had more fun on the pitch.

football is life, and life is a beautiful game, if only you know how to side-step the old-fashioned tackles.