First let me preface this post with a brief intro to myself, the newest addition to the world renowned CapU blogteam. I’m the middle brother of the brains behind this whole operation, unfortunately not gifted with the artistic talent of my two brothers. Whereas my older brother built a fussball table by himself in high school, and my younger brother makes some ridiculous longboards (see below), my greatest accomplishment was painting “the Volcano” in preschool. I’m clearly missing some part of my brain that was given to them in spades, and I’m reminded of it on an almost daily basis.
What I do have is a passport full of visas, stamps and water stains. I’ve been robbed by a group of shirtless 10 year olds on the banks of the Bosphorus, crossed Class 5 rapids in a basket while backpacking to Machu Picchu, and walked through slums a few blocks away from glimmering IT campuses in Bangalore. I’ve seen a bunch and always want to see more. Through it all, I’ve played soccer on four continents on surfaces from dirt to concrete to cow pasture. You meet some crazy people on the field, and the game allows you to connect with them in a way that no tourist could ever hope to do.
Today’s entry is about the 5v5 AstroTurf field I played on in Sarajevo, a field that quite literally is in the shadow of a cemetery. FK Sarajevo used to have four training fields for its sides to play on. Unfortunately, Sarajevo didn’t have enough space to bury everyone who died in the siege of the city during the Bosnian War, so two of those fields were converted into a cemetery. So what you see now is a dirt field, a grass field, a Muslim cemetery, a Serb Orthodox cemetery and a Catholic cemetery. Mind you this is all right next to the stadium that held the Opening Ceremonies for the ‘84 Winter Olympics, a sad irony that was never lost on me.
So anyway, I played futsal on this field every day last summer while I was working at an NGO in Sarajevo. If you don’t know how futsal or baby works, you need to check out the rules on this page, because it’s how some of the best players in the world develop. The guys I played with were mostly older than I was, and I could definitely envision a bunch of them having fought in the war 12 years ago. One of the crazy things that you notice right away in Bosnia is the distinct lack of people in their twenties, and the futsal courts were only slightly different.
The cast of regulars was pretty hysterical. My favorite was this guy named Darko, who must have been drinking every day since the end of the war, as evidenced by the giant potbelly he sported under his Inter Milan jersey. Somehow, he just sat right near the goal all day, and would score on “fast” breaks. Due to my lack of Bosnian language skills, I became known as Peter Crouch or Becks, depending on the size of the person yelling at me. It had been a few years since I’d played futsal on a regular basis, and it took me some time to establish myself on the field. The pace of futsal, even when played by guys in their thirties and fourties is pretty insane, and these guys were no exception. The ball flies around the field, and after a few touches, you gotta get off it (unless your name is Falcao). Games were for an hour twenty, and I was seriously winded at the end , despite being one of the younger players.
For three months I would play on these fields everyday, but I could never quite get over the surroundings, and I was always struck by the same thing. Five times a day, Sarajevo turns into an echoing valley, with the call to prayer being played from mosques all around the city. There is nothing more surreal than listening to those words drift onto the field while you’re playing with a team of Muslims, Serbs and Croats. Looking up, I would see the small graveyards that dot the hillsides and then turn my head and see the giant cemetery where the two training fields once were. They say it’s a beautiful game, the one we play, but in those moments you understand that it is so much more than that. It’s when people play in these conditions, surrounded by the tragedy of their city that you realize what this game means and how powerful of an allure it has.
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