Football and me

The World Cup is under way, and what a beautiful game that was between Brasil and Croatia. Tough on Croatia to encounter Brasil at the very beginning of the tournament. They played well, big, aggressive bruisers, but the Brazilians are artists, dancers, who play a very attractive style of attacking football. The top teams, Germany, Netherlands, may be able to grind them down, but the Brazilians will always be a joy to watch. This made me think of why I enjoy football so much.  On my father's side, I come from a footballing family. As a boy and young man my father played for one of the Ferencvaros amateur teams. He still had huge calf muscles as a middle aged man, and was quite nimble with a ball.  Ferencvaros, the football team of the Budapest 9th District where we lived had an illustrious history. In 1911 the team went on a European tour and my father remembered seeing the team being carried in a triumphal procession through the main street of the district after their return from England where they beat Woking F.C. 3-2 in London, the home of football. I didn't inherit my father's footballing skills, but I kicked a ball around at a nearby waste ground from a young age. When I was about 11 or 12 my parents gave me a real football; nothing like footballs today, it was stitched together from strips of leather, a work of consummate craftsmanship.It had to be inflated with a pump and then laced up like a boot. On the day I got it I couldn't wait go down to the grund, the wasteland and kick it around. I was bouncing it on the way home, when it rolled out of my hand and rolled right under a bus. We took it to a boot-maker, who repaired it, but after that it had a protruding bump, it was no longer like the real thing. At high school in Budapes I played football in the small courtyard, but could never dispossessed Fuhrman, a boy in my class, who was brilliant at dribbling, but could never shoot straight and never scored a goal. Huszti, I can't remember whether little or big Huszti was the goalkeeper. Once I went to a game of real football at the Ferencvaros Stadium. The only thing I remember was the athletic save by the Ferencvaros goalkeeper, and the effortless goalkeeping by the keeper of the other team, Ujpest I think. He seemed to be always in the right position, but on one occasion when the ball went for the far corner, he just flew across the goal mouth like someone shot out of a gun. I listened with my father to the broadcast of a Hungarian - Austrian international. I can't remember who won, but I remember the excitement and the joy of sharing this with my father. I had a team of buttons, chiselled down to make them shoot over the top of other buttons and played button football. Each button was named after a real football player. We played very intense games. Andris, my friend still has my entire button football team. I didn't bother bringing it with us to New Zealand. When we came to New Zealand the Hungarian football team was number one in the world. My school probably had high expectations from me, but I am afraid I was a disappointment. I worked hard at my training, went for long runs to get fit, but never graduated beyond the third (and bottom) team. Perhaps had I stayed for the last year of the school I might have made the second eleven, at what I think was the last game of the season my coach singled me out as the notable player of the team and to my father's delight, his account was published in the Manawatu Evening Standard. School sport was big news, perhaps the only news in Palmerston North. When I came to Wellington to university I played for one of the lowly teams, but we were scheduled to play at a park I couldn't find, I tried to get there by tram but never made it. After that I gave up. That was the end of my unillustrious  football career, though I did coach one of the teams when I went back to teach at my old school. Now I just watch, but get entirely caught up in the game. I love it, love it even when my team the Wellington Phoenix play like a bunch of school boys.