Fútbol y Comunidad

We first met in 2L, my second year of law school, when I asked him if I could join in on a soccer game going on on a broad pitch close to school.  Rather short at 5’3″, the social dynamic told me to ask him. “Sure.” That intuition was vindicated. He had complete command of the field. He had beautiful ball control and shouted sound field directions that people could trust to follow.  I am used to playing with people who “played semi-pro” when their skills don’t track, but it was no surprise when a year later he told me he played for Gotham FC and Red Bull juniors when he first immigrated here.  He freely admitted it was because he had acclimated to regular play at Bogotá’s altitude and had the lung capacity to run circles around Manhattanites.

As an outlier woman who plays pick-up games or in male leagues, it struck me immediately how M treated me exactly the same as the male players, with no lingering glances, flirtatious remarks or comments on my appearance or me being a woman. Like Messi, he had a dogged focus on the ball and the goal.  It felt like he saw my personhood. Refreshing when we are inundated on all sides with reminders of a sexualized gaze directed on especially certain types of bodies. 

I joined the Cornell green room’s meet up group and we became online mutuals among many other soccer friends. I spotted that he had a gorgeous pre-med girlfriend.  My respect for him heightened. I realized he had no wandering eye and felt nothing of it to show his companion respect even when she was not there. He didn’t need or want from me, as what would my opinion matter, beyond that of the trust of a friend, when he respected himself and his decisions? I continued to play at the green room and in outdoor pick-up games. 

Then one evening before Christmas break, M brought a beautiful Spanish polo player friend of his to play. The Spaniard was a non-stop flirtation machine, and M egged him on to ask me out even though I was a grad student.  On my second date with the Spaniard—more pleasant on eye than ear—a girl came up to us and complained at him for ditching her for me.  A cue to pack up (lol).  

I thought again about M but in a different light after his encouragement to his friend, and saw that he had been single for a while.  I reached out and we chatted, then went on a date when we came back from break. He thought nothing of the fact I had dated his friend because he had no insecurities about why I would choose to go out with him.  He was optimistic and clever, and cherished dearly by friends.  Dating him indulged my extroversion; we played or watched soccer or went to Latin dance parties probably five times weekly. That we connected on this thing that always had centered us as individuals—the community that forms around una bonita pelota—was a new experience.  I shamelessly brought him in as a ringer to trounce our law school soccer opponents. 

But when M and I had deeper discussions on values, I found a chasm between us. His loving nature was limited and had a hard edge I couldn’t abide.  His care extended only to maximizing resources available for his family and close in-group friends. He had no desire to learn about or fight against structural or systemic issues that caused this resource-scramble in the first place. His reading, and perhaps emotional exploration, stopped at Milan Kundera and Steve Jobs.  His work in the Bay Area tech world drove him deeper in a techno-autocratic direction. When I broke up with him, it was because there would never be an alignment.  He told me he felt real estate development would be easier and achieve this cushion he sought for his kin.  He moved to the South to pursue these ambitions and we never spoke again.