Yesterday, when I wrote about the poet Carl Phillips, I
quoted the following from his poem “Archery”: “To have timed your arrow/
perfectly meant watching the air for a moment/ seem stitched throughout with a
kind of/ timelessness.”
I very much doubt that Phillips had English soccer even the
slightest bit in mind when he wrote those lines, but I’ll admit that when I
read them, one of the first things I thought of was this:
Talk about timing your arrow perfectly.
I promise I’m not going to go the full John Updike and
pretend that sports are literature. That said, if you’re a fan of either soccer
or poetry, you’re deeply familiar with the experience of feeling time grind
away as you watch ideas come to nothing and real risk get eschewed for easy,
cynical ploys. Trust me: any lover of poetry or soccer who has read Longfellow
or watched the Colorado Rapids knows this shit can be boring. But if you’re
into it, you keep waiting in the hope of some moment of grace—the
perfectly-weighted pass, the unexpected turn of phrase—that will make time jump
and stand still all at once. The page and the pitch are blank, brutal spaces,
but every once in a while someone transforms that nothingness into beauty.
Over the past few weeks, as the Premier League has started
up again in empty stadiums in England, one of the best players in the world has
been an American: Chelsea winger Christian Pulisic. Just watch what he does here
against a Manchester City team that gets paid roughly $200 million in total salary:[1]
On the occasions when American players have done big things
in big games—both men’s and women’s—they have tended to rely on sheer physicality
and effort: the speed of Landon Donovan, the strength of Abby Wambach, the
tenacity of Clint Dempsey. And while Pulisic is a remarkable athlete, possessed
of excellent speed and agility, what jumps out in this clip is his tactical
foresight, his well-timed risk-taking, and how calm he is finishing a
high-pressure shot. And yet, somehow he’s from Hershey, Pennsylvania rather
than Argentina or Italy.
2020 has been a sad, tragic, and embarrassing year in
America. I can’t imagine you need me to list the reasons why. And of course the
fact that a kid from Pennsylvania is good at soccer changes absolutely none of
that. But still, it’s been nice that for a few hours each week, at least one
American is excelling on a global stage.
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