This article was published in sanlian life weekly, No. 49, 2020, the original title is "The Teachings of Diego Maradona", it is strictly forbidden to reprint privately, and infringement must be investigated
The End of Youth: Federer Retiring, or Maradona's Death?
Text/Zheng'er Eight Classics
2010 Fifa World Cup in South Africa, Argentina national team coach Diego Maradona
Maradona died suddenly. On the way to work, looking at the constant flow of information on my phone, I was stunned and could hardly restrain my emotions. It suddenly occurred to me that whether the years of self-understanding should end with Federer's retirement or temporarily changed to Maradona's death seemed to be a difficult binary choice. This choice not only means a long-term difference at a certain stage of life, but also means how I define the essence of youth and the way of life after middle age.
In other words, if youth is defined in terms of Federer, it shows that the goal of life I aspire to is Western European, elite, conservative, steadyly ascending, individualistic. Because man always pursues the side he lacks, that means that my real life situation is actually the opposite of it. And if my youth is marked by Maradona, it shows that what I have cited as ideal is Latin American, grassroots, revolutionary, roller coaster, collectivist, and likewise, my real life is the opposite of it. In the face of maradona, who had suddenly passed away, I couldn't help but feel suspicious of the course of my life.
It was this time last year that Maradona and Federer had a moving intersection. At an exhibition match in Argentina, Maradona was supposed to go live to watch it, but he ended up with a date, but he sent a video. In front of more than 15,000 spectators, he said, "Hello, Master. I like to call you that. You were not only the greatest one, you were, you will always be unique. He added, "If you have any trouble in my country, you can call me and tell me what help you need." Hearing such a grand praise and gangster-like care from Maradona, whose eyes were above the top and his eyes were wide open, Federer burst into tears on the spot.
I've tried most of the sports, and only tennis and football are the biggest passions of my life, for reasons that are largely related to Federer and Maradona, respectively. The difference is that Federer was an encounter I had after playing for many years, and the love of football was almost entirely triggered by Maradona. I have written about my meeting with Federer on other occasions, and today I only remember the old horse.
My playing career
The summer of 1986 was probably one of the most enjoyable times of my life, and at the age of 13 I was admitted to my freshman year of high school, the only time in my life that I was exempted from the exam. Putian No. 4 Middle School is not a head middle school, and it can only be regarded as a poor and unsatisfactory. Throughout June, the escort students were still in school, but no one was in charge, and we and a few desperate test prep students, who knew that no matter how hard they tried, would be thrown back into the country middle school or thrown straight into society, they lingered at the West Lake Cinema and the Guanqiao Cinema at both ends of the school, as well as the billiard stalls nearby. At that time, putian street was still low one- and two-story houses, and residents ate in the house or took a cool shower at the door on summer nights, and the door was always open, neither worrying about safety nor caring about privacy. Some families already have black-and-white televisions, and only units or relatives of overseas Chinese have color TVs, and we rural teenagers watch TV at the door, and the owners often don't think badly.
It may be that in the process of watching "The Legend of the Archery Hero" or "Journey to the West", the frenzied pictures of the Mexico World Cup, the miracle shots of Maradona and the high-pitched tone of Song Shixiong flashed from time to time. Years on, I'm not sure if I've been impressed that summer with "The Hand of God," "the best goal ever scored," and passing the ball to Brutzaga in the final moments, and it's likely that Maradona's miracles were actually remembered in later iterations. Putian has never been a fertile soil for football, there may not have been a football field before 1986, and I have never seen football in real life. As the hometown of athletics, we have heard of Liu Yuhuang in the long jump, Weng Kangqiang in the decathlon, and Lin Shuijing, the Indonesian badminton national treasure who was talked about because of his ancestral home in Putian, and Liu Yudong, who was later known as the god of war of the men's basketball team. I never realized that football was so popular around the world that no sport could match it. Anyway, this Little Argentine Guy got into my head that summer and planted a football seed.
The seeds broke through the ground four years later in the Italian summer. In the spring before that, in order to raise funds for the Beijing Asian Games, Cui Jian's "Rock on the New Long March Road" toured to the Hongshan Gymnasium in Wuhan, and I went to see the first live concert of my life with two classmates, which cost 10 yuan. Almost two months later, the World Cup in Italy began. In the past two months, Commander Yang, who had gone to see Cui Jian with me, had already preached to me everything about Maradona, and the air was filled with an unconcealed atmosphere of excitement, nervousness and grandeur. At the opening ceremony, another stunning scene shocked us, that is, the model wearing a green hollow horizontal stripe, the silhouette of the crisp breast, both mysterious and noble, and the enthusiasm. Sports and beauty! That year, for those of us who had already had enough appetite, Maradona's performance was somewhat disappointing: he was beaten by the Cameroonians in the opener, and fell at the feet of the West Germans in the final, making a bad start and ending a bad end. But his assist in Caniggia's crush on Brazil in the face of unbearable adversity is still a thrilling scene in our memory. Goechea's performance of saving Argentina from four penalties in two consecutive penalties also reminds people of how important the brother behind Maradona is.
I remember that a Wuhan classmate from the IFC class brought a small TV from home, and the fans of the entire management institute were crowded into a dormitory in Guiyuan Eight House on three floors to watch the ball. Everyone shared precious tobacco and beer, clapped their chests and stomped their feet together, and called out the mountains and tsunamis. Rock' roll, football, tobacco and alcohol, imaginary sex, brothers on the field or watching football, the standard of youthful restlessness and enlightenment, surged in at the turn of the spring and summer of 1990.
At the turn of the spring and summer of 1990, I also officially started my career. Commander Yang is my real football mentor, upside down, stop ball, arch, instep, banana ball, volley, upside down golden hook, these terms are all taught to me. But unfortunately, perhaps Commander Yang's coaching level is more average, he is from the Lüliang Mountains, Shanxi people and Fujian people, has never had a local professional team in history, the result is that my foot kung fu is too bad, I never had the opportunity to play, and then I changed careers as a goalkeeper, until today. At the 1994 World Cup in the United States, the fox friends who watched Maradona with me had become a group of young people in a small town in Dongguan. The old horse only played two games, and was swept out of the house because of a positive drug test, saying goodbye to the World Cup. Although we are disappointed by the departure of the old horse, at least his brother is still fighting, and the World Cup is still continuing, which does not affect our continuous "gambling waves". After 1992, the whole of South China was illuminated by the light of the economy, and several professional football teams such as Hongyuan, Helios, Shenzhen, and Foshan mushroomed into A A and A B in those years. It was the golden age of the market, and Chinese had some good lives, not clubs in the hands of super oligarchs as they do now. It was also my teammates who watched the ball together, we won the championship in the town with five clean sheets, and we also represented the town to Humen for a certain city games, and in the first game, we returned home. Fighting with my brothers, drinking and even "gambling" with each other allowed me to integrate into the life of Guangdong natives without any obstacles, and they called me "Xiongzai" or "Xiong Shao" in Cantonese, rather than Fujian people waiting to be eaten.
Seeing Maradona again in the big scenes, it has come to around 2010, and he led the Argentine national team to the South African World Cup as a head coach. Despite winning four consecutive games, he finally lost to Germany in the quarter-finals, saying goodbye to the World Cup for the second time. I was barely impressed by these games, maybe just a cursory look at the shot highlights, and the only impression I had on me at the South African World Cup was the earth-shattering whining Zula, which was extremely irritating. As an old Ph.D. who was often ridiculed by my supervisors as "graduation is almost time to retire", I completed my doctoral dissertation defense that summer, and my job search was not very smooth, and I was anxiously preparing an opening report for a postdoctoral opportunity.
During my years at Peking University, I joined the PhD soccer team. The founder of the team, Si Chen, was from the Chinese department of "just lose it", and my roommate pulled me to sign up, but in the end I was selected. The doctoral football team may be the most active football organization in Peking University at the same time, and our more fixed opponents are the Tsinghua Postdoctoral Team, the New Oriental Employee Team, and a later institutional team led by Jiang Jin. I did a pretty good job, and Jiang Jin once teased me that I must have received professional training. More than a decade has passed, and the members of this team have been scattered all over the place, and some middle-aged people with big belly are often seen in the media, but they are still keen to share thousands of mile balls, string beer and various small yellow pictures in the WeChat group in the middle of the night. You see, we are all disciples of football, disciples of Maradona.
After the postdoc, I joined the unit football team again, and we probably never escaped the bottom three in the annual Central State Organs League. I've only played a few games, and we have a goalkeeper who calls himself Cheng Laohan, who is a more enthusiastic football enthusiast who knows many guoan celebrities, and because of his presence, I slowly faded out of football. Maradona died and the era was over.
On June 27, 2010, in the quarter-final of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, Argentina played against Mexico, and Maradona cheered excitedly after Argentina scored
Football is a company of brothers
When we talk about football, we're actually talking about Maradona. Pele is too far away, most of the Chinese have not seen him play; Messi and Ronaldo are momentarily bright, but weaken the representation of any of them, and compared with Maradona, they are too like well-behaved professional athletes, but they have never been able to bring a bad team into the top league championship, and never lifted the Hercules Cup.
Football is a company of brothers. I grew up fighting countless times, and after three or four years of fighting in front of two children, I decided not to get into trouble or take care of things. From elementary school to college, my age was always younger than my classmates, I wasn't sure if I joined the team because I couldn't win the game, or because I had the blessing of the organization and caused more trouble, in Wuhan, Dongguan, Beijing, there were teammates who fought for me or for my teammates. Maradona is a model, like a big brother, leading his brothers to fight in Argentina, fight in Italy, fight in the World Cup, and be expelled and banned again and again. I don't really think friends are for violence, but that brothers are good to go, as Maradona said to Federer: "There's something to call!" ”
Into football, into a foreign land. Maradona, who helped Napoli win the First Division title at stadio San Paolo in 1987, said on television that it was the most important celebration of his life, more wonderful than winning the World Cup, because he had never won a title on his home soil. And now, Naples is his home. But what kind of place is Naples? The rich elite northerners referred to Naples and the Neapolitans as "The Sewers of Italy" and "Cholera Sufferers", hoping to destroy them with the lava of Mount Vesuvius. When generation after generation is involved in the global dispersion and says goodbye to our hometowns, no matter what situation we are in, we always need football, or something else, to settle our bodies and minds.
Imperfect people and life. By defeating old rival England (think the Falklands War) and eventually winning the title, Maradona saved a latin American homeland in decline; by winning the league title for Napoli, Maradona saved a tired and desperate southern Italian city, though it may not have been lasting. Since then, Maradona has become a man with the same name as God. But that's just one side of Maradona. On the other side of him are abuse, lying, drug use, shooting journalists, irresponsibility, and countless crimes that can be listed. Compared with Federer, the most famous perfect man in the world of sports, the old horse is a standard model that rises from the slums and is bound to eventually fall. His death did not stir up a large-scale screen commemoration in China as Kobe's death, and it is rare to see someone say "my youth is over" or "an era is over". I think that, on the one hand, the people who are familiar with Maradona have been young for many years, and they are not the main force of mourning in the circle of friends; on the other hand, Maradona represents a real end of a big era, the end of a small era needs to remind each other, and the end of the big era is silent.
Most importantly, as people in modern society, we may not yet be good at accepting a flawed person, and we have not yet learned to adapt to a life of ups and downs, gains and losses, black and white, and loyalty and indistinguishability. The moment I write this, I am playing football in Haidian Park with my 5-year-old son. Although my initial plan was for him to practice tennis well, and then go to the special "double first-class" or apply for the "Ivy League" and follow Federer's life, I eventually sent him to the football club first. He has taken 11 training sessions and today is the first official competition. He didn't get the starter, and at one point he was a bit angry, but he finally forgot to cheer up his teammates, and once he couldn't help but rush into the room and shovel his opponent, causing the referees, coaches and parents to laugh. I know that the seeds of football have sprouted in him, 12 years before his father.