Monday 06 / May / 2024
34,000 people stood up and roared in unison as Ruben de la Red put the Real Madrid Legends 2-1 up against their Barcelona counterparts at the Sultan Qaboos Sports Complex in Boushar.
No more goals were scored on that night. No more needed to be, to be fair, because the Omani crowd were fired up for this game from the first whistle to the last one.
On my left, arms akimbo in the cool March breeze, was a tiny tot who could not have been more than three years old. Where his parents had gotten his little Barcelona jersey from, I do not know, but he seemed oblivious to the stares around him, his eyes glistening with manic anticipation as he cheered on the legends of the Catalonian giants. On my right was a man who could’ve been 90 if he were a day old. Clad in traditional Omani garb, he’d slung a Real Madrid scarf over his narrow shoulders and had a deerskin drum, which he struck rhythmically in tune with the undulating cheers around the stadium.
And in the middle, was I, the expat, sporting a France jersey that bore the name of my favourite idol, Zinedine Zidane.
Football has always united people of different backgrounds, and that is what makes the game so universally loved. It is an opinion echoed by former Real Madrid and Spain legend Michel Salgado.
“Football is a universal language,” said Salgado. “Everybody can speak football because it is a sport that unites people. It is a special sport because it is a sport that gets all the people together, from different cultures, different countries and from different kinds of situations.
“Football is universal, it is unique and it unites people. That is why I love football so much and that is why I try to pay football back because I really think football can do those kinds of things,” added the ex-defender, who now runs the Spanish Soccer School football programme in Dubai. Like any sport, football unites people from all around the world because in those 90 minutes, people go through a rollercoaster ride that encapsulates all the emotions of life.
People experience happiness and despair, joy and nervousness, ecstasy and sadness, and it is the unpredictability of the sport that makes it mirror the realities of life. It’s a simple thing, isn’t it? Just a ball and a goal, but that simple thing drastically changes the world. It closes the schools, it closes the shops, it closes entire cities and even stops wars.
We may not remember it, but there will be those who will always remember the Christmas Truce of 1914. With both Britain and Germany battling it out in a bloody stalemate on the fields of France during World War I, the morning of December 25 that year would see no conflict.
Instead of exchanging bullets, soldiers on both sides exchanged gifts, greetings, and even passes: In the midst of the freezing, icy swathes of no man’s land that separated both sides, games of football broke out between both sides, leading to some of the most memorable Christmas photos in existence.
It gave both countries respect, when that was in short supply, and incredibly, even brought the leaders of both nations round to hammer out a peace deal, even though that ultimately fell through.
Closer to our time though, when the Ivory Coast qualified for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, the nation was in the throes of a five-year-old civil war. Their legendary striker Didier Drogba achieved more than the politicians ever could when he asked both sides to put down their arms. Eight months later, a peace deal was signed and the Ivory Coast was whole again. A ball had united a people. In more ways than one.
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