Imagine that you are a 15-year-old kid from Honduras now living in Harlem,or you're a 13-year-old girl born in DC to two Nigerian immigrants.You love the game. You're on the field with your folks.You've just been practicing dribbling through cones for, like, 15 minutes,and then, all of a sudden, a marching band comes down the field.I want to associate the joy of the game with the exuberance of culture,to locate the site of joy in the game at the same physical coordinate as being politically informed by art,a grass-laden theater for liberation.We spend a week looking at how the midfielder would explain Black Lives Matter,or how the goalkeeper would explain gun control,or how a defender's style is the perfect metaphor for the limits of American exceptionalism.As we study positions on the field, we also name and imagine our own freedoms.I don't know, man, soccer is, like, the only thing on this planet that we can all agree to do together.You know? It's like the official sport of this spinning ball.I want to be able to connect the joy of the game to the ever-moving footballer,to connect that moving footballer to immigrants who also moved in sight of a better position.
