The Hero Who Failed: How 1994 Shaped My Life

With the World Cup being here in the US this year, I am reminded why I fell in love with the game. Let me be clear–I don’t need reminding why I stayed in love with it–just what got me here in the first place.

I remember being 9 years old in 1994 and seeing grown men show pure, raw, genuine emotion. Elation. Desperation. Agony. Disappointment. To the fullest. I can still see the Brazilian players embracing and celebrating… and then, Roberto Baggio’s face, after he missed the PK. It has been engrained in my soul since. 

For the next 20 years, I had a picture of him hanging on my wall. Not because he was the hero–but because he failed. He failed in front of the whole world and it destroyed him. He carried the burden of letting down an entire country. I saw the look in his eyes and I felt it, how heavy it was. I knew then–I wanted my life to be filled with all the good I saw him do at the World Cup, even if it came along with some of the bad. I knew I could face the bad too.

I was hooked.

It’s so difficult to describe what the game has been to me since then. All I know is that nothing in my life competes with that little round thing. I’m fully aware that my life looks like that of Peter Pan. I have not ‘grown up’ in society’s definition of the phrase. But that’s for other people to think about. To comment on. It’s not for me to care about.

What I know and what I feel deeply, every day, is that I should be playing soccer and coaching soccer and watching soccer. I should be involved with people who feel similarly about the game. People who get excited about it. 

One of my favorite Rainer Maria Rilke quotes that applies to so many things in my life is, “I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone.” 

I want to be around the soccer-obsessed. The ones who don’t stop. The ones who let it consume them - with joy and beauty and life, even if it brings them down to be disappointed sometimes. I love seeing people excited about the game with the bravery to show how it makes them feel.

I have lived a very full life up until this point (at 42 years old). I have lived, laughed, loved. I guess those are the big ones on the sign in your house, right? I’ve traveled. I have met incredible people. I am very interested in other things outside of soccer… I love literature, movies, and music. I love writing and reading. I love comedy. I am the funniest person you’ll ever meet for god’s sake. I love helping people realize their fullest, most genuine selves and going after impossible dreams. I love everything that I love so deeply.

Because I know how to. Because I let go. Because I did it for my whole life with one thing, and now I know how to love everything and everyone in sight. I show it in different ways. But my heart bursts with it all the time.

And it started in 1994. With a game. A “game.” With images of human emotion that we don’t see every day. It made me feel a certain way… that this is what living is. That life is meant to be felt. The good, the bad. And the only way to get to that point is to pour your whole being into something… a something that has a grip on me that nothing can undo. And even if it could… I wouldn’t let it.