Dear Editor,
I am beginning to feel my age, check the calendar some more, look at the clock ever so often. What’s that silver years, or senior moment? Whatever it is, childhood flashed past my eyes recently. For the first time last week, and then again a day or two ago. Believe it or not, it had to do with football. Not the one with helmets and where they carry an oblong ball in their hands, but what used to carry the genteel label of Association Football.
First, there was Mario Zagallo at the ripe old age of 92, who called it a final whistle and is now at some stadium up there, wherever they have them. I hope the angels and cherubs like artistry. Mention Zagallo, and the years simply disappear, and it is back in football’s glittering era of the 1960s and 70s. The men around him not only glided on spikes, they floated with instinctive avian authority. We rule the field of play, they say, and they did. Rivelino and Jairzinho; Carlos Alberto and Juantoreno. When is the last time there was a team involved in anything with lyrical names like those, with Tostao and Socrates left out? Talk about classics and they were it. They exuded sheer class, and all we had was those little radios to capture the excitement of the World Cup, and Edson Arantes in green weaving his balletic magic on the green. It was a time of legends, and Zagallo was the man in charge of keeping a tight rein on those free spirits of our next-door neighbours. The friendly ones. They were lightning in a bottle spilled in rawness and purity, and anybody who saw them (we didn’t, no telly at the time) was sure to give a silent word of thanks to the gods for the gifts that they men brought on a field, with Mario Zagallo as the orchestrator and symphony conductor. If ever there was Mozart on a field of play, it was the fellows from Santos and Corinthians, and names to make the brain sing.
From the far side of Europe, came a superstar of whom only superlatives do justice. He, too, like Zagallo was surrounded by a pantheon of silky-smooth foot racers chasing after a round ball bouncing hither, thither, and yon. Franz Beckenbauer, a man and practitioner of the fleet-footed arts, who should have been an Argentinian, where he could have perfected his tango, which was what he did in midfield like some general who knew that the battle was always his to win. He did. Who can go wrong with names like Karl Rumminge and Gerhard Mueller for company? Each man made the other better. Those were the days, indeed. It was our privilege, certainly mine, to have been part of that time of skills that made the mouth water, and the mind soar. We were poor boys with dreams of something about destiny, and they were our heroes. Listen to the rollcall of immortals: Bobby Charlton and Bobby Moore; Pele and Rivelino; Beckenbauer and Hoeness. Slightly later came the Flying Dutchman, Johan Cruyff and Neeskins.
Suddenly I feel a shade slower, and a wee bit older. Those were great times, some of the all-time greats named here made it that way.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
