Saturday, July 15, 2006

Time to grow up


The World Cup is over. It was a fun month while it lasted. Lots of goals were scored, some magnificent, some cheeky and some lucky. Lots of news stories were written, lots of photographs were clicked and at the end there was a winner and a lot of other good teams. Sadly, it's over now, and I can't remember any of it but that last 3 seconds of headbutting that has been played over and over again.

Italy won because they were the better team, France lost because of one man's momentary lapse of reason. Ironically, it wasn't any ordinary man, it was Zinedine Zidane. It was possibly the greatest footballer of all time, the controversial winner of the Golden Ball, the man who grew from a past-his-time to prime-time within a month.

It's now a case of he says, he says, personal abuses, racist comments, whatever. It doesn't matter what words were exchanged, it doesn't matter how personal the insult was, it doesn't matter that if anyone says anything about my loved ones, I would headbutt them too. What does matter is that on that day, Zidane was not playing for himself, for his family, or for his personal values, he was playing for his country. He needed to be extremely responsible, he needed to be stronger than most, he needed to be a man but he turned out to be a boy.

It's not the first time. I've often thought the difference between ordinary people and celebrities is that celebrities take longer to grow up. Maybe it's the unlimited supply of money allowing them to buy all the toys they want, maybe it's living life in the present, maybe it's not fearing security, or maybe they need to be brash, to have that edge to win and to succeed. Diego Maradonna's "Hand-of-God", Mike Tyson's moment of cannibalism, the many punches thrown, the fake penalty box dives, it's the boy shining through.

Tom Cruise's sofa jump, the Richard Branson's and the Vijay Mallya's, the unstable marriages, the parties and again the toys, it's all just a boy's world. So when does it stop? When does a brash young player from Las Vegas turn into the grand man of tennis? How?

Winning, success, glory, money, the fast ever changing life, every boy's dream life, it's fun only till you've outlived your right to remain a boy. The world might not need a superman, but it certainly needs its boys to grow up.