91Èȱ¬

Anna here posting for Hamid...

For the first time in my life, I am travelling to Africa, to the 'factory of African football', which has produced some amazing players, notably Drogba, Adebayor, Essien and Kalou. My entry today is obviously about football.

Instead of an epigraph

There are times in life, when you are full of your past and sitting in front of the computer unable to utter a single word - so great is that moment. And then your mind cheats, capturing something in the periphery as an astronomical black hole, it gradually sucking in particle after particle, seemingly something peripheral, something unnecessary, as if a midfielder keeping himself busy somewhere in the middle of the pitch, or even on the flank lazily juggles the ball from foot to foot, and then casually kicks it to the rival side, so that the ball rolls off of the pitch, and again the slow motion of passing, and fans are already beginning to tire, bored and whistle, and the ball instead of moving forward, rolls back to one of the forgotten defenders, and he passes it to his goalkeeper, who once again throws the ball to the flank.

So forget time, so time is wasted, and again as the sea in eternal and wearisome inevitability of catching up with wave after wave - until one of them which is the same at first glance, like all previous ones, all of a sudden does not adjust to the phase of the previous rollback and suddenly in front of your eyes as if the fur of the cat you were playing with stands on end and attacks your hand without a hint of playacting, like a song grabs you choking heart's blood - rewards you with present, that you so long avoided...

(Hamid Ismailov 'Ton Hvan')

Better than Pele

Sometimes I think that my writership is a sublimation of my failure as a football player.

Starting in 1962 (from the age of eight), I was deeply enthralled in football. Not just listening to friends' stories about Pele and Garrincha (playing that summer in Chile, in the World Cup), but also starting to attend 'Pahtakor' Football Club matches in Tashkent. The latter was as a ritual; we would come with my uncle, who was three years older than I was, from our suburbs to Old City of Tashkent. Very often, the road that was 7-8 km long, used to be blocked for the last 3-4 km and we'd have walked all the way to 'Pahtakor' stadium in a crowd of football fans, setting aside all the differences.

There was something mesmeric in that crowd; united by one passion, talking about one theme, supporting one team in the world - Tashkent's 'Pahtakor'. And 'Pahtakor' was paying back. If in the first season in 1960 it was the 14th in the all-Union table, in the 1961 it took the 10th place and in 1962 advanced to the 6th. So in 1963, our crowd was expecting (or rather projecting) the silver medals for second place. 'Pahtakor' lived up to those expectations in an odd way. It finished the season second... but from the bottom! Though even then it succeeded to beat Uruguay's 'Nacional' - one of the strongest clubs in the world - 2:1 in a friendly. I still remember that match.

There and then I decided for myself that I would play in the World Cup of 1970 in Mexico, when I turned 16. I had planned it so carefully, knowing that in the Brazilian squad of 1958 there was Edson Arantes do Nassimento - or simply Pele - who was the same age. So what would stop me doing the same... Alas, it's another story...

Uzbeks have a superstition, that if you wish something while sneezing, it will come true. So ever since then when I sneeze I automatically say to myself: 'I'll play better than Pele!'

Instead of an epilogue

If you have scored just one goal in your life, then you know the feeling of vast emptiness, to which your heart flies behind the ball; the leg is not yet bent after the kick, yet the muscles are playing a symphony along with the nerves, poised far towards a single point in the goal, and that point is either seen by the corner of your eye, or caught at random, yet the goalkeeper tries to get a handful of the past, to grasp at least the tail of it, but the ball has already done what was required of it in this world, on this earth, on this field, on this pitch.

And this feeling is not out of adult life, when the ball flutters in the net, there is a certain artificiality in it, as of a fish in the net of a fisherman, struggling in the air - and waterless convulsions, no, it's from childhood, from that football with the two schoolbags indicating two posts of the goal, between which the ball flies nowhere, launched by all your body, and especially legs that keep you on the ground: O Lord, lead us by the straight path as you lead those whom you reward with their pylons, whom you are not angry with and who have not gone astray...

Do you also consider football as one of the greatest inventions of mankind? Or it's something 'vulgar, of a low pop-culture' as one of my acquaintances said? Let's exchange views.