Refreshing and Uplifting
I took a break last night from the Premier League. My weekend pain and disappointment wouldn’t let me watch Wigan and Hull play out a pretty meaningless 2-2 draw or Blackburn add a little more
misery to Arsenal’s rather woeful end to the season that saw the Gunners’ title hopes fade into oblivion.
I felt depleted and dejected and wasn’t in any mood to listen to studio talk about the weekend’s action and implications, about the way teams and players performed and what lies ahead in the
future, about transfer specualations and/or managerial changes. I didn’t even feel like watching any football itself.
But then I did. No, it wasn’t a Premier League game – or any game in England or Europe at all. God bless the age of digital communication and satellite television, and God bless America too for
the Women’s Professional Soccer League, which is now four games into its second season and highlights from which turned my evening into a pleasant and refreshing one.
No, it wasn’t the best football I have ever seen, and I didn’t see packed stands of chanting and singing fans, but it was great to watch football being played by some very talented and
committed athletes, who I look forward to keeping an eye on from now, primarily for the love of the game.
Yes, it is a professional league and the likes of Kristine Lilly, Marta, Shannon Boxx, Casey Nogueira, Amy Rodriguez, Lianne Sanderson (names most of you have probably never heard before) and
others are getting
paid to play, but there was something about the hour or so of highlights that I watched that conveyed a sense of football purity, football joy, football fun, football innocence, football love
that I found so refreshing and uplifting and that is no longer a part of the fame-and-fortune professional game as most of us know it.
I became an instant fan last night. With four games played in the 2010 season, FC Gold Pride, led by four-time FIFA Women’s World Player of the Year (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009) Marta, head the
eight-team table, just a point in front of Philadelphia Independence. I’m looking forward to the rest of my learning and loving WPS experience. I’ll keep you posted.