raging gracefully #1: lessons from the pitch
ballin', brawlin', and shot callin'
for the next few loosies, I want to write about my issues surrounding anger. not that i fly off the handle, get in fights, or am uncontrollable, no no, the exact opposite. i need to learn how to release this anger.
my patience and kindness are a choice in the face of everything i’ve dealt with and everything we all have so i wanted to document my journey into learning how to accept my frustration with the world around me, advocate for myself and others, the prisms through which i’ve navigated it, and how i’m not allowing it to marinate within me and transform me into a resentment jambalaya or perhaps an irritation gumbo. enjoy 🌱
an incredibly thorough, gender non-specific, completely scientific classification of footballers I’ve encountered in NYC. including but not limited to:
The Former D1 sweetheart – very good, very humble, great head on their shoulders, a joy to watch
The Former D1 dickhead – very good, won’t see heaven, head firmly up their own ass, a joy to hate
The Blokecore Blockhead – knows all the up-to-date stats, has all the throwback kits, not amazing at footy but works hard and knows how to make shit work for them
The “I Haven’t Played Since I Was 8” – yeah buddy we can tell BUT I love that this is something you’re enjoying and I’ll always gas up your progress
The Glory Reclaimer – they used to be really good, they aren’t as sharp now, and somehow that pass going way out after 17 touches is someone else’s fault, hang it UP
The “Just Like We Practiced” – probably played club or at a high level but doesn’t know how to match anyone else’s freak; more a math player than an artist
The Cheeky One – all footskills, their goals are megs, pannas, and assorted ankle breakers, finishing is an afterthought
The Body On The Field – “look dawg, the homie said they were short, I’m just here”
The Neg-ative Nancy – 99 shit-talking masquerading as encouragement, 17-55 skill, 0 bitches
The Last Resort – if you two were the last people on earth, they would still find a way to pass to themselves
The Captain (flattering) – clear communicator, level-headed, hand-picked by a higher power, mostly in charge of a group chat, type A but like a lowercase one
The Captain (derogatory) – romanticizing their leadership capabilities when the rest of the team would kill them if they could get away with it, less coup de grace, more coup d’etat
The Lost One – is only good when 1-3 long-time homies are there to play with him, maladaptive, needs some encouragement, normally alright
The General – taking this shit way too serious, simmer down before you slip a disk
The Lover Of The Game – has such energetic reactions to every play, great energy, can get caught up spectating on the pitch
The Golden Snitch – chats shit to the referee because by and large, they probably would be a cop if they weren’t freelance
The Communicator – tells everyone “we need to talk out there,” doesn’t
The Copa Player – “Ball? What ball? I’m going through you”
The Touch Tyrant – “wow, great first touch! And second, okay fifth…27th…nigga tf wrong with you, pass the ball”
The “I’m Here To Make Friends” – they just want to be friends, not get added to drama
The Brawler – self-explanatory, always wants the smoke, doesn’t realize that the multiple war stories over recreational local football make them look like a maniac
The Lamine Yamal – the 22-year-old playing with the 30-year-olds, great vibes, can tell you who Teezo Touchdown is
The Brazilian — can be from anywhere but yoooo how’d you doooo that????
The Stranger – perennial substitute, international person of mystery, not always there when you call, always on time
The Haircut – mostly flash, about to do a Cristiano Ronaldo-level Oscar performance when they hit the ground; bro why are your shorts an adidas x Versace collab
The “Back In My Country…” – true or not, I’m listening to every word, I’m locked in
La Luz – genuinely great people, a light in every sense of the word
The Locker Room Guy/Gyal – there early, leaves late, might do another game if people need a sub
The Black One(s) – no two are the same and yet we are one
just wait until i get this footy tv show off…oooooohhhhhhh….
when teaching characters in my screenwriting course earlier this summer, i told my class that if you ever want to get a little bit deeper into who a character is, put them in a game with another type of character and think about how they would play that game. games have taught me lot about who a person is. are they a good loser? are they a good winner? do they have an excuse for everything? are they taking it too seriously? are they not taking it seriously enough? are they better at individual efforts or team sports? do they have to be the center of attention or are they a good team player? are they really really hard on themselves or harder on others? do they need to be dominant? why? show don’t tell in action.
i love an activity — a game? sign me up. two games i play incessantly are uno and football, the former being a tool of chaotic camaraderie and the latter an international unifier.
in a recent interview for a writer's room, i was asked "what is a core memory of yours?” and look, as a championship yapper, i could have done the lore dump, sprinkled some trauma on top, made inside out 3 real awkward, but the first memory that came to my mind involved me and my father at the college pitch. i remember the sky being such vivid purples and oranges as the sun set on a short evening with my mother, sister, and neighborhood homie spencer.
ball at my feet, i passed it back to my father who said “watch this.” then he kicked the ball into the sky and it stayed up there for so long, with the ill heavenly technicolor backdrop, that i never thought the ball would come down again.
i’ll always be the first to say my father is my hero but in that moment, he made me feel invincible too.
i remember seeing my dad standing up straight in the closing minutes of games, hands behind his back, calling out failed plays on the pitch (a thing i do now). my pops used to put on the telemundo feed when we were in the us because we could hear the drums and the crowd better (also it was clearer, them univison satellites built different). i remember watching zizou headbutt an italian player in a world cup final, get a red card, and go down in history as my favorite player of all time. i recall watching maradona and pele highlights, learning to dance with the ball like ronaldinho, and putting a hex on luis suarez after he denied ghana their glory. i remember drinking tea with cousins back home, all huddled around a small tv as we supported senegal and cote d’ivoire in afcons. each memory, uncorrupted, committed to replaying at random, filling my heart with bittersweet nostalgia – bitter because i’ll never be able to go back, sweet because they happened in the first place.
footy’s in my blood and not just because of the international status. my uncle was an assistant coach for the mauritanian national team. another uncle worked with the malian national team. another uncle was on the club team out of aioun where most of my family is from – there once was a club game vs kiffa (a neighboring town) and after every goal, the entire audience would crash the field.
my pops played. my cousins play. my sister played (i coached her team for a while). my cousin in aioun’s nickname for me was “coach” because of how i support on the field. before my surgery, my team at the time got me the custom ted lasso coach jersey — i love the game and it loves me back.
like an AC in the background fading into the noise, football has always been in the room with me. it took me far too long to realize just how important football was to my entire personhood – to others and to myself. it’s just what i did for a long time, no questions asked. it is a lens that frames how i see so much of the world. it’s rote to call it the beautiful game at this point but unequivocally it is the people’s game, the working class game, universal connector.
put a ball down almost anywhere and you’ve just unlocked an international basic language and an intimate character study if you look and listen hard enough.
i had no personality during the copa america and euros this summer – deadass every day was, wake up, go play pickup footy with secret, watch euros, bike to work, watch second match, teach, bike home, watch copa, sleep, repeat. one question that always comes up in the heavy football months (which seems to be all the time now? tf happened? oh yeah, money) is “who are you rooting for?”
i don’t really root for anyone – my pops used to say “root for a good game” and that was it (except when anyone from africa is playing then it’s gang shit).
i told someone this and they hit me with the follow up: “what about your passion?” damn, great question ummmmm
i’ve been told i’m a libra which means i like balance and not taking sides (my dad is too, this all checks out astrologically) but as it pertains to passion…i didn’t know how to answer it. it sent me on a spiral: “i mean, i’m competitive but i don’t care about winning or losing…do i care?” “i want the result but not at the expense of not having fun…” these thoughts rumbled around in my head until a final one rolled through by brain: “maybe i’m not passionate because my passion looks like anger to the wrong people.”
for those of you tuning in to being black (got a few seasons you should catch up on but this episode is pretty self explanatory), our emotions are never our own. yeah, we have them but have to think about them through the prism of their interpretations no matter the intention.
my demeanor is pretty demure and laissez-faire so people assume i’m go with the flow until someone needs to know or needs to go and i don’t think people understand how restrained i am in those moments – anger doesn’t come easily to me but football taught me so many lessons about me and others and the older i get, i should be less surprised by what the game still has left to teach me.
the following are lessons football has taught me about myself, my blackness, my relationship to anger and passion – some anecdotal, some observational, somewhat chronological.
high school
george bell was a wooster, ohio staple. older black dude, gym teacher, coach, local referee. it was an alumni game, i believe i was a sophomore or junior – the high school soccer team didn’t get a second black player until my senior year. the game had no stakes – it was recent graduates vs. the current alumni. we played well but the ball was not coming my way – not good, i was a forward, 99 speed. i was calling for it but the ball wasn’t coming my way at all – i was too aware of the team dynamics, people passed to people who matched their freak, strategy be damned. i was just happy to be on varsity.
whistle. play stopped, we shaped up but george bell was walking up to me with purpose. nigga, why me? first thought: damn am i in trouble? second thought: how could i be in trouble? i ain’t have the ball. but coach bell walked up, calling me in and told me “you know why they aren’t passing you the ball.” interpreted this as a question, searching for an answer: position, i’m on my heels, etc. he cut through it and repeated it: “you know why they aren’t passing you the ball.” a clear statement, one that spoke on a frequency that only the two of us could hear.
i nodded. he told me to get loud and get mad – the man was the ref. that was the first time that i experienced care and understanding in such a direct way from a black male role model outside of my family. it was a universal truth that everyone would tell us was a lie.
i needed to get mad. i needed to get active.
i would play soccer with local latinos because of the lack of african diaspora in town — kobina and kojo, the ghanaian homies, weren’t always in town so it was just me. i wouldn’t be talking out to turn if i said that latinos got some diasporic intercommunal conversations around race to iron out in there – easy to see, hard to quantify. i didn’t speak spanish; bambara and french were hard to find out in the midwest.
i would bike 30 min to come play pickup footy – i ain’t coming all this way to not touch the damn ball, bffr. it would be a lie to say that i didn't have fun playing soccer with these guys and it didn't make me a better soccer player – it made me faster, it made me smarter, it made me learn how to play without the ball. but the thing that it taught me the most is how to speak spanish.
how many times can a man yell “open” or “through” or “center” or “drop” or “man to your right” before losing his mind? so i started listening. i kept hearing words and trying to understand what it meant.
eventually, i yelled “détras” – a hail mary. mans with the ball didn’t think twice, passed it back, turned to look at me and i saw the genuine shock and confusion on his face; he ain’t mean to do it. determined, i took the ball up as far as i could, had a crack on goal, and missed. but the point was proven. i was gonna have to learn spanish. some phrases i learned:
dame dame dame!
izquierda and derecha (duh)
pásame la pelota, coño!
al lado-
corre!
quién es un moreno?
tenemos algun problema?
calmaté
iykyk. 1000 days deep on the duolingo streak didn’t teach me as much spanish as football, the telemundo announcers, and using it to get in the mix.
to this day, if i have the ball, i know i’m going to have to prove myself because i gotta fight for the ball which means i gotta fight for me.
i was getting mad but i was getting results.
hate that black people are cursed to prove their worth in literally every arena we exist in
(some arenas we quite literally built)
west holmes game. i’m getting carded, it’s looking straight to red. no one has my back.
if you’ve ever played footy with me, i’m a de-escalator on the pitch. i do you up, you get a dap. you do me up, you get a dap. make a mistake? “unlucky.” have a crack and it’s out? “good shit, let’s shape up.” it’s automatic and it’s not that deep – i just enjoy all efforts on the pitch and especially after 30, this is all unserious let’s just have a fun match. but back to west holmes.
a white kid is rolling around by my feet, clutching his ribs, in agony. i know exactly why he’s there. he knows why he’s there. the ref does not. ref comes up to me, ready to throw me out when i remember coach bell and choose to tell exactly what happened: “he called me the n-word so i elbowed him on the run.” the ref stops going for his cards – this was not on tonight’s bingo sheet.
the ref calls over the coaches and i watch two angry white men come towards him, demanding an explanation. oh, they mf got one because it was immediately quiet. a pause, then a verdict: i would be subbed, the worm on the ground would be scooped up, and play would resume, no cards. i don’t even remember the result of the rest of that game.
that night on the bus home, coach came up to me and struggled to give me “the talk” – honestly i get it, there’s exactly one word he couldn’t say. he told me, struggling through it, to “let him know first if any player ever said the n-word or was racist in any way.”
deciding not to rico my entire team for various microaggressions (a word that didn’t exist back then), i just nodded.
someone fucked around, someone found out, i didn’t get thrown out or in trouble and i should have felt happy, right? nah, i hated that he got that reaction out of me and vowed never to get there again. i wish it felt good, but it never did. i felt out of control – discipline was so important to me and i hated that i’d slipped.
nyc footy, 2017
that uncomfortable and familiar rage was boiling over on brooklyn bridge pier park. combo platter: i wasn’t getting the ball (even to facilitate play) and the other team had a sneak disser. i wasn’t for the long talk — i was on iso melo time, bro just gimme the rock.
i finally got the ball and knew where it needed to go and had a crack from distance – crossbar so hard that the goal jumped up off the line. one strike, all my frustration contained in it, and i missed. shouldn’t have been so hard on myself but while i thought the strike would be an exhaust port for my irritation, it wasn’t enough.
i yelled from inside my soul; not at my team, or at anyone else, at myself. the deep-seated frustration was heard loud and clear and i could see how others were seeing me – i was tight, i called for a sub.
on the sideline, i was getting frustrated: “this game has no fucking stakes!” “i just came out here to have fun.” “i hate feeling like i have to prove myself at my big age” “i’m faster than everyone out here! i’m in space.” “mans out here dribbling himself into no man’s land before passing and for what?”
I couldn’t place one thing that was making me mad but concluded it was a lot of things adding up from off the pitch — an ongoing family situation that clouded my mind, unstable work conditions, a personal trauma from the year before. parsing through my feelings was nothing new to me — response over reaction gang since ‘91. but the big takeaway: don’t bring things from off the pitch onto the pitch. the game is the game, remember why you do it. a flash memory of my pops kicking the ball into the air all those years ago. breathing calmed down. memory of seeing my sister score a goal. breathing normalized. memory of high school homies chanting “anything you can do, mamoudou better, with my mum in her headscarf in the crowd. we’re back.
three whistles, games over, can’t tell you the result. i breathed through it. none of this matters. remember why you play. play your way. next time.
nyc footy, 2017, next game.
moments before, i’d put in a goal.
now, i’m on the ground, writhing, watching upside down as some of the nicest people i know are putting the bops on the person who put me on the ground with a nasty slide tackle from the back. it’s unbeknownst to me at the time but i’ve torn my ACL, LCL, and PCL – too many CLs if you ask me.
the one time i want to fight, i can’t. i’m not even crying, i’m just angry, blank, powerless watching the teachers i played with at the time put hands on the dude who did this to me before play resumes.
“i’ll never play again.” went out with a goal though, dumbass thought but if I had to go out, it had to be tough, the fit had to look good. hate that it had to be in a dumbass rec league against a man with a customized “trump 45” footy jersey.
anyway.
2020, brooklyn.
we started figuring out just how serious covid was and people were getting more comfortable seeing each other outside, so me and a bunch of friends began “just kickin it” where you could come and play a little bit of footy or just come and hang out, picnic, journal, yap, whatever.
the beauty of it to me was that it reminded me of playing pick-up back in aioun – it made me remember my sister coming out to play with some of our cousins and neighborhood kids and sometimes i’d just watch from a distance, reminiscing silently. sure some people were there to ball but people were also there just to hang out and given the circumstances, everybody needed community, something near and dear to my heart.
i was asked to sub for a co-ed nyc footy game. this was a bad idea given that i couldn’t afford surgery — the CLs were still straight linguini in my kneee. but in the last three years, i’d learned to walk, run, then lift again – maybe it was time to push the issue.
i played and i loved it. low to no stakes, purely just helping a homie out, absolutely in my head about my knee, speed, touches, etc, but i held my own and we had a great game. just one game. real ballers know, that once you get a taste…
to protect my knee, i had to learn a new way of playing: responding to how the other person was playing and forgoing my ambitions.
if you had a freak, i was there to match it or shut it down. for example, a lot of ballers are selfish so i made my game about them. if they like holding onto the ball, zone; they gotta pass or get through you. if they like to muscle someone off a ball, just kick it out, make them reset. pressure passing lanes on defense and offense and make people press the issue. ultimately, make them play me if they wanted to play the game. and if i got the ball, do something consequential because those passes ain’t coming often.
i’d never played co-ed (woefully outdated) before and while i was testing my limits playing footy, i was getting to know what i was up against. each team must have two women on the field which we did but i was learning a different lesson – the men on the other team just wouldn’t pass to women. 7 a side and you’re only using 5, dumb as hell to me but go off. these dudes on the other team would wanna show off their footskills to quite literally no avail and put up kaka dookie water shots. what do you do to a former D1 neymar wannabe who wants to do a clinic rather than play the game? let them play.
i started zone defence on them and made them get around me and if they couldn’t they’d pass to their last options – the women on the team.
this was a feeling i was used to; being looked down upon by someone, feels like shit. i felt their frustration as if it was a solid being on the pitch with us. i wasn’t one of the girls but i was one of the girls adjacent, does that make sense?
nyc footy, summer 2021
a renaissance painting. picture the end of pirates of the caribbean at world's end as the ship is blowing up around me watching the machismo of a dark-sided irish guy and a hare-trigger local latino dude combine to create a football powder keg for 40 minutes only to spark into a co-ed brawl where there was the main masculine fight and then the undercard where the captain of my team was about to beat the brakes off of a woman on the other team.
i wasn't playing that game – i was taking it easy on my knee before my upcoming surgery, now 4 years after i tore my ligaments. as i watched this immature display of dumbass peacockery, it kept coming back to me: it's not that deep, it's not that serious. everybody was fighting, i was not proud of anything i was seeing even more so because i invited my good friend ashley to come and potentially join the team – of course, on that day everybody was on their worst behavior (it's also not lost on me that as a black dude, i had to make sure that i was de-escalating because the rules are very different at my fenty shade)
don’t get me wrong, i chat shit if someone wants to get active but i know the line. how did all this happen though? where was the discipline? where was the fun? where was the joy? that was when i realized that i might’ve been playing a different game the entire time.
in no way am i trying to put my perspective on a pedestal but we all arrived to the game of soccer or to any game with different intentions and it was revealing character. machismo, superiority and inferiority complexes, etc. i just wanted to move my body and enjoyed watching people get better at soccer and better acclimated at playing with one another. a lot of people just want to win, by any means necessary.
winning means absolutely nothing to me.
losing means absolutely nothing to me.
all lessons, games, etc are experiences that you take something from and for me that's something is the opportunity to have done it in the first place. all of this fighting and shithousery, etc and for what?
everyone was out here trying to prove themselves in one way or another but at what cost?
september 2021 – september 2023
already wrote about it so you can check the loosies back catalog but football taught me that you cannot rush healing. i got my surgery in september and had a goal of getting back onto the pitch, remembering why i do it: because it's what i've always done.
after they sewed me back up, my surgeon and pts warned me that i would never be at the same level of football again but that didn't matter to me. what mattered was that i could actually get on the pitch and touch the ball. it is a literal miracle that i can walk, let alone run, let alone look at a ball coming at me in the air and touch it down to my feet and shoot it today.
in the healing process, ain’t gonna hold you, i definitely had periods of extreme depression and grief, unsure of whether i'd ever be as good as i wanted to be. unbeknownst to me, it was at this time but I was deciphering what my passion was as a pertained to passion.
again, allegedly, i’m a libra. regardless of the space, i do seek balance in every part of my life and passion contains all emotions. anger was one i simply never try to use. not to say i’ve never been mad — as baldwin would say, i got the rage at a simmer, i just don’t like when it boils over. but it’s part of me and that anger was telling me something it took 30 years on earth to understand:
i was mad that i wasn’t happy
football is one of the joys of my life, one of the ways i connected to the world, to my family, to strangers, to my cousins back home, to other’s cousins. it is dance, it is music, it is language, it is freedom. and i was letting self-seriousness, others’ seriousness, other’s perspectives of me, other’s projections of self, artificial stakes, and expectations ruin something pure.
with that joy as a guiding light, I worked my way back to the pitch, healing my knee, healing my relationship with football, and allowing a fuller spectrum of emotion to exist within me.
september 2023, nyc footy
i had just been cleared to play by my pts and my surgeon – i had never been more back. the same day i was cleared, i was invited to come play as a sub for a friend's team. it was a little bit rainy but i was determined to get out on the pitch.
got there right at the beginning of the game after spending an extra hour in the gym warming up and getting the knee ready. banged in two goals in the first half – you couldn't tell me i wasn't him. first one rattled around a little bit, second one professional goal. i was absolutely feeling myself, are you kidding me????
some action on the sideline, i poke out the ball from behind this shorty on the other side of the pitch and she slips on the wet turf after (from my perspective) very light contact. immediately she starts talking about how aggressive i am – and incredibly coded and heavy word for what had just happened but i ate it and just apologized and kept walking.
that could have been it but instead Dickhead McGee (i didn’t name him that, blame his mama), some other asshole on her team was in the ref's ear about how i should be kicked out of the game because i'm playing too aggressively. mind you, i have not made physical contact with more than two players the entire time and i was still on my best being positive to both sides of the pitch behavior.
inner monologue: they don't know me, they don't know my lore, they don't understand that if there's one person on this pitch who cares about playing safely right now it's absolutely me… aggressive is a strong word, he knows what he’s trying to do, it ain’t even his business like that…i gotta let it go….
actually, i have some time.
i turned and started walking directly at him and the referee: “nah, you. yeah, you. if you have something to say say it to my face- nah nah nah, if you got something to say, say to me. we got a problem? no? then let’s play. stop running your mouth, show me with your feet.”
my man reacted like any ex-vice employee-looking white guy did when a black guy’s walking him down. I eased up: “alright, shut the fuck up and ball.” (at this point, this was me easing up i swear down)
i slipped in discipline but this time i didn’t care. even my teammates were surprised, they’d never seen me like that before. shit, me neither.
i didn't change my behavior at all for the rest of the game, i was still nice to both sides except for that specific dickhead (his mom gave him a terrible name) – every time the ball came to him i would make sure i wasn't marking him but i would make everybody on the pitch hear me when i yelled “make him show you with his feet.” he choked every time.
2–2, seconds left. i get the ball and it’s me and shorty who missed the wet floor sign from earlier. she tries it: “show me with your feet.”
oh nah, not meee. i went into flow state, and crossed her up til she fell on her own – zero contact, just a pretzel. all i remember is hearing my team yelling as i caught a body.
am i proud of that moment? no. wait, yes, quite. but still…had another crack on goal. missed. full time, it’s a tie. i high-five everyone including shorty and she unprompted apologized for the “aggressive” statement (“i didn’t think about it”) and we squared it. accountability, repair, bing bang boom done.
but the other dude was still chatting to the ref, using the aggressive statement.
you already got your lick in. he’s had enough. let him be a bum in peace.
actually, nah
i walked after him and immediately started tearing into him again but this time with righteous anger. see my problem was not that he was chatting shit it was that it had nothing to do with him and he had no idea how racist the shit is to keep saying that about the only black person on the pitch. i even turned into my mom for a little bit telling him that i did not enjoy when someone was talking shit under their breath. loser behavior. my man orlando pulled me away.
this whole experience sent me to therapy for two whole sessions, so upset at myself for getting mad again. my therapist reassured me that i had every right to be upset and then planted a different seed:
what's the worst that can happen if you get mad at the way you're being treated? why are you so willing to go to war for somebody else but never for yourself?
i'm far too old to be out here romanticizing loneliness (especially in rec league soccer) but i felt lonely because i was playing a team sport but never quite felt like i was part of the team.
i move with intention — i’m used to distributing, creating space, screening so someone else could have a better shot or pass but i don’t think i got the same consideration ever in my life. i was playing on teams where people played for themselves and not playing for each other, with each other, to talk to one another, to meet people where they were.
i make a mistake and have a bad touch and that's my fault and i need to be better. but if i do good, people are quiet – surprised even. it’s the micro of the world we live in, soccer is life. these microinteractions, unchecked, build up. they corrode the game, sully the spirit, and ultimately, yes, reveal character.
people are always so quick to label your faults, but never gas up your wins.
unfortunate, but it is a truth that manifests both off and on the pitch, especially as a black person and i’m certain for any marginalized people
my therapist helped me label this and in doing so has inadvertently set me free.
where is my passion? i love football with all of my heart and my indifference over the result should not be mistaken or not caring. my passion comes from joy, the stupid little laughs i have as i’m dribbling past a friend, trying a skill move i’m too old for and collapsing, or watching a game with people and clowning with them in a bar, living room, or around a phone with a strong ass hotspot.
my passion is joy and my anger is justified in protecting that joy.
anger is never my reaction, it’s my response — i come to very few things angry, it is a long-ass build-up.
my anger isn’t random; it’s not a sawed-off shotgun, but a precision instrument, a sniper and i will not miss. most times, the gun is pointed at myself, being too hard on me but *clears throat* i will make the choppa sing on anyone who continues to try and rob me of my joy, on and off the pitch. and just know i’ll not only be right, but i’ll be informed and hilarious about it, too. wallahi, i’ll have your girl and your homies laughing at you too, nasty work, but i’ll take some pride in it, as a treat.
a lot of mfs out here could do a little bit more second-guessing, more responding than reacting, and i can say that because i've been overly thoughtful my entire life. it's a waste of time sometimes because my first guess is often right.
soccer and djing go hand in hand for me because they are ways that i can blend communities, blend world views, make two different styles meet in a way that no one has seen or heard before and it is a movement onto itself.
this doesn't mean that footy doesn't have its faults and the people who bastardize it. plenty of people who use it as a cult of personality that cosplays as community – let the people play.
plenty of people who don't know the difference between collaboration, cooperation, communication on the pitch, etc and orders – be your own boss, brother.
too many people with an entitlement to the game and not being a facilitator of it. soccer isn’t a science, it’s an art, it’s a dance, it’s a call, it’s a response. and some of the best ballers out there are black, forced to play more than one game on the pitch.
zizou headbutted materazzi in ‘06 for what? racism and insults. they were throwing bananas at balotelli in italy and he was their player. they were harassing saka in the press. tim weah jr getting international racism for his performance at copa. argentina is currently in hot water about their racism towards french players. they make monkey noises at games still (wack, lazy, been done, fuck you).
vini jr said he was a “tormentor of racists” and i love that but i want more for black footballers than to be the first line of offense for football and be left with little to no defense.
black ballers are the cornerstone of too many national teams and clubs at this point and people are starting to notice. lamine yamal, youngest euro scorer ever, moroccan, eq. guinean. nico williams, ghanaian. most of the english team (we claim cole palmer and part of foden). shit, half the french team deadass my cousins. afcon leveled up in such a major way in this last tournament.
the gold cup and copa putting black ballers on the front page of the world and unfortunately have to navigate the conditional love of the international football community: love you for the chip, you’re a failure and blight on the game if you bring back anything less than your best. oh, and act right because if you don’t you’re a thug and will be punished. colonial mentality, everything can be traced back.
i’m not naive enough to sit here and pretend i’m god‘s gift to soccer but i’m not gonna sit here and watch people pretend that they are either. how do we combat this sort of elitism as it pertains to soccer? in the united states, i have no idea. too many pay to play options and not enough options where people can just go out and play barefoot, for free, for hours, like they do in all these other countries. but as it pertains to the treatment of players, it has to start on the micro before we go to the macro.
a lot of white and white-coded players don’t even know what subconscious racism on the pitch looks like. it’s not just the n-word or making weird comments about someone’s athleticism because of their body type — it’s never passing, it’s using us as a last resort to get you out of a situation you dribbled yourself into, it’s backhanded compliments about someone’s ability to play, it’s emotionally unintelligent talking down to people like they’ve never played, it’s consuming black culture without connecting with black people, it’s being unable to sit with the discomfort of letting antiblackness in any form cook on the pitch because it’s not your problem.
i’m happy to say that i’m running into fewer and fewer of these types of dickheads in recent years, but i know that we have a long way to go. the “stop racism” armband ain’t enough i fear.
to black ballers, old and new, our day is now — i’m seeing more african and caribbean names on the back of premier league jerseys and while that is not my metric of success, it is a metric of changing tides. if i’m pulling up to the pitch, i’m dapping up everybody, but i gotta get my black folks first because i understand what other things that they bring to the pitch and what they decide to leave off the pitch too.
i was genuinely joyful when america crashed out of the copa america — there’s something beautiful about these titans with all the resources in the world being unable to defeat islands with almost no global support. i spoke to a black american who was like “well who am i supposed to root for now?” and i told him root for a good game and, in the words of issa rae, “root for everybody black.”
so many of my football heroes are not black themselves, but understanding how much a black player has to go through to even get a look, how much time they have to put in both off and on the pitch, and the composure to represent people who wouldn’t represent you otherwise, that’s just another level of play that never gets it’s flowers.
i’m still learning the appropriate way to be justifiably angry when someone out here talking spicy or getting too aggressive — my main mode is relaxed and unserious but this shit can level up so, channeling dream doll, “talk to me nice, everything nice.” ⚽️
thanks to woodbine fc for mixing the passion and pleasure with the political in a way where i feel like i can finally exhale
thanks to secret futebol club for fostering a great environment to play in and expanding options for dope people to connect (kawabunga was rigged, i’m gonna prove it)
thanks to wavy footy and 5aside media for covering specifically black ballers and following what they gotta go through and the drip (immaculate)
thanks to yedoye for always commiserating with me on these issues and being a perfect footy homie (and infuriatingly well-studied opponent)
thanks to wandera for being terrifically unserious during all of this and making me laugh through things
thanks to claire and leah for always being game to kick a ball around
thanks to all the footy folks that ask me to sub/be part of the gang/come kick around, bianca, nicole, wilson, poppy, anna, my knee surgeon, pts, all my coaches (hansen, crawford, bell, a little ford), my uncles and cousins, my sister, and finally my pops.
whenever i get low in the game, i remember the wonder in my heart watching that ball fall back down to earth on that one evening, reset, and remind myself of that moment when anything was possible 🌱
This is brilliant.