Right here’s a classic soccer [aka soccer] submit in celebration of the World Cup…
Albert Camus as soon as mentioned, “After a few years through which the world has afforded me many experiences, what I do know most absolutely in the long term about morality and obligations, I owe to soccer.”
He was referring to his faculty days when he performed goalie for the Racing Universitaire d’Alger (RUA) junior staff. Camus was an honest participant, although not the good participant that legend later made him out to be.
For Jim White, writer of A Matter of Life and Dying: A Historical past of Soccer in 100 Quotations, soccer maybe taught Camus a couple of issues about selflessness, cooperation, bravery and resilience. That’s a sunny manner of taking a look at issues. However maybe The Telegraph will get on the deeper, darker life classes Camus took away from soccer:
[T]right here is one thing acceptable a couple of thinker like Camus stationing himself between the sticks [that is, in goal]. It’s a lonely calling, a person remoted inside a staff ethic, one who performs to completely different constraints. If his staff scores, the keeper is aware of it’s nothing to do with him. If the opposition rating, nonetheless, it’s all his fault. Standing sentinel in objective, Camus had loads of time to replicate on the absurdist nature of his place.
And maybe the absurdist nature of life itself…
Camus — who seems within the image up high, carrying the darkish coloration jersey within the entrance row — contracted tuberculosis when he was solely 18 years previous. His lungs too broken to proceed taking part in sports activities, the younger man turned to philosophy. When Camus moved from Algeria to France, he realized that philosophy was a tough and tumble recreation too — one thing his soccer days ready him for. He as soon as quipped, “I realized . . . {that a} ball by no means arrives from the path you anticipated it. That helped me in later life, particularly in mainland France, the place no one performs straight.”
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