(click on the image to enlarge) "If this can be termed the century of the common man, then soccer, of all sports, is surely his game.... In a world haunted by the hydrogen and napalm bomb, the football field is a place where sanity and hope are still left unmolested." ~Stanley Rous, 1952
World map has changed significantly sice then, lifestyles have changed, yet football remains the most celebrated activity on this planet! You learn it chasing a ball that barely weighs a pound, and now you see half the world battle it out to show who does it best. There's spirit in the field, desperation running, bodies jostle and fall, and comes bliss when the best prove it, romancing the ball making others look tap dancing around them!
And there it goes, leaving behind memories, Germans firing cannon balls past some great walls, the most skilled Argentinians failing football unable to prove their mettle, Zidane and Henry stripping Brazilians of their loose defence, stark naked; and Italians rewriting the art of war!
But just as life seemed to be returning to callous monotony, witnessing hundreds die in bomb blasts, never ending crisis in the middle east, thousands losing lives on fight for resources in africa, comes my next reason to rejoice; returning home, back to Manipal, and I start counting days. Nothing else matters...
