This week, I watched the CBS 60 Minutes segment about Lamine Yamal. Lamine is 18 years old and already a household name with many soccer fans. He is a soccer prodigy, and he has the reputation to back it up. He recently finished 2nd in the Ballon d’Or, world soccer’s MVP award, and has helped his team secure a victory at the World Soccer Championship in Germany. He was scouted by Barcellona when he was only six years old, and made his debut with the team when he was fifteen years old.
During the interview, he is asked about his “soccer superpower.” He humbly responds, saying that he just wants to brighten people’s day. Additionally, he claims that the soccer ball is his “first love”. He reinforces this by stating that if the ball could talk, he would “Ask it to marry me and to have lots of kids”. Later in the segment, a soccer analyst was asked how to describe him. He responded, saying, “How do you describe candlelight?” These descriptions make the grand scope of his career very interesting to me. As established in class, the non-American vision of soccer is incredibly romantic. This news segment and the interviews have further driven this fairy tale romanticism of the sport.
I think I have a good understanding of the view eastern nations have of the sport. But seeing it described about a player in this current time with a player younger than me has shown me that I couldn’t begin to understand it. I once met a guy from Scotland who was a die-hard Hearts fan and could talk for hours about it. He talked about the sport as if it were omnipotent and could hear him praise it. I knew he felt something about the sport i couldnt comprehend. This story held lots of similarities between that conversation, and i couldnt help but think about the divinity that soccer is to some people.
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