Living life: Just like life

Now that the soccer season is over, perhaps it’s time to teach that, your soccer-hating spouse, a few things about the world’s most popular game without spewing useless statistics about the Norwegian league. For starters, the soccer team is constructed like a human body. In every team there is a striking line whose job is to threaten and torment the opposing defence, and always leads the attack ahead of everybody else. Oprah Winfrey has a very generous striking line. Then we have a variety of midfields, sometimes as thin, flexible and creative like the Barcelona one which annihilated Man United last week, or as thick and packed as the one for English national side. Women usually prefer to have a thinner wasp-waisted midfield. And behind it all there should be a defence as stoic as Manchester United’s (Eto’o and Messi didn’t feel it though). Such a defence could be wide like for an average Rwandan woman with dangerous wing backs like Patrice Evra and two solid full backs. Some people prefer to call a person’s defence their sitting allowance (their words not mine). And like in relationships, there are home matches, away matches and neutral venues. Once in a while, the big cup finals like honeymoons are taken to Wembley stadium or to the Stadio Olympico in Rome. But fans are not encouraged to attend. In soccer there is always a winner and a loser and however gracious the loser pretends to be, losing always leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. But in life, matches can result in a win-win situation. Some people are even happy to lose hectic, dramatic matches because the doctor says it is good, especially for your health. To buy an expensive player like Brazil’s Kaka, you must first talk to his club with which he has signed a contract for their permission before you try to woo him, with a huge weekly wage and many other perks. Good enough in life, sometimes you don’t need the club’s permission to talk to the player of interest and if you try using an agent like the way Carlos Tevez did, you end up paying a ridiculously high amount because the agent has to take his cut, for rather average skills. But if the player is a free agent (not contracted to any club), the Bossman rule says the interested club does not have to pay a transfer fee. Bad enough in life, a free agent has the highest transfer fee because her skills are ‘fresh’ and unused. You do not have to even wait for a transfer window to make your offer. In fact by the time you make your bid, most clubs (read parents) have usually approved of the transfer and are just waiting for the formalities (weddings). In every match, you need match winning tactics, both in life and in soccer, only that in life unlike in soccer, the better the tactics, the sweeter the loss, the more gracious the loser and the more likely that a return match will be on the cards, even if the league organizers are unaware. Such matches can be friendly matches, whose results are meaningless, except for match practice and for pleasure. They can also be league matches where a draw would suffice or the do or die cup final matches, where the two teams make meticulous preparations and are both in it to win, which they usually do. Enough of the boring soccer lessons, enjoy your soccer-less Sunday. kelviod@yahoo.com