by Colin Hyde
Hey, the World Cup is on. It happens every four years, and every time I am reminded of our greats in the period when I was a child. This WC is the most controversial one ever, and how the US and Iran clashed in a do-or-die match to decide who would move on to the knockout round, well that couldn’t be scripted. No, I don’t agree with cynics who I expect are saying that for losing, all the Iranian players will get green cards to the land of milk and honey within the next few years. The US is boring, but if it’s about money, I would have put mine on them over Iran in Qatar.
A fan of Pelé linked me to the Richarlison goal for Brazil that has everyone talking. Nice, very nice. It earned its place to be talked about, quite rare indeed, a shot that demands quite a skill set and presence of mind. The Business Standard called it a bicycle kick, and the title of its article discussing that goal is, “A bicycle kick goal in World Cup: A feat that Pelé couldn’t but Richarlison could achieve.” But it wasn’t the true bicycle kick, not the true chilena.
In the article, the Standard said Pelé wrote in his autobiography, “I have just three-four of my 1,283 goals with a bicycle kick. It’s difficult, and my greatest regret is that I have never scored a bicycle kick goal in a World Cup.” The Standard says a bicycle kick goal is “as rare as it gets,” and it “combines spontaneity and science, art and acrobatics, physicality and elasticity.” Yap, it does. The Standard says one Sandip G, writing about the bicycle kick in a recent Times of India report, said: “It is like a bullet fired from the paintbrush of an artist, designed in the needle of a geometrician’s compass, requiring a dancer’s feet, a bullfighter’s physicality, a poet’s imagination and a gambler’s enterprise for the perfect execution.”
Richarlison’s goal was the much-easier-to-pull-off scissors kick. Ah, I’ve seen a picture of Pelé pulling off a true chilena. I saw D-Line pull off one too. It’s no ordinary feat.
Hey, some of this story might be old news from this corner, but I’m certain there are some snippets here that I haven’t related before. In the mid to late 1960s, Landivar, Independence, and BEC were the big Belize City teams. There were tournaments that included the top teams from the districts, and some not so tops. I saw Queen’s Park Rangers. Salada Eleven wasn’t so good. I loved the flamboyant Columbus and the delightfully named Rummy Martinez of La Victoria. The brother might have been named Romel, so drink a rum on a Krismos maanin might have had nothing to do with his colorful moniker.
Big Fred Martinez was a fearsome striker from San Joaquin, and the midfield of that club featured the elegant Malanga; their tireless and acrobatic full back, P&G, and their lockdown stopper, hmm, can’t remember his name today. I didn’t like Maya Ortega of Avengers because Cayo-ans and Independence haters said he was better than my heroes, Di Mohga and Big Mole.
Peeta of R-A-C became an immortal, my hero forever, when he stopped Keith Gardiner’s penalty in injury time to preserve a 2-1 victory over the hated Landivar. But I wasn’t pleased with his team’s leader, D-Line, when the following week he led R-A-C out of the MCC Grounds at halftime after a disputed call. I held my seat behind the southern goal for some time, hoping R-A-C would return to the field, until the word came that they were well on their way to the Hummingbird in their truck.
I worked hard to earn my 10 cents, the fare for the games on the weekend. From midday on Saturday I was a perfectly behaved boy, and on Sunday mornings I put on my dress pants and shirt, and shoes, and went to mass, all just so my mother didn’t ground me on Sunday afternoon.
D-Line wasn’t thinking of little ball hounds who lived for Sunday afternoons at the MCC when he pulled his team. Worse was to come the following season. That year, Landivar, the richest club in Belize, loaded up like the daam Yankees and Dodgers. In those days players were lucky to get an orange at half time. I learned that after games Salva Habet, Landivar’s owner, took his players to a club and treated them to fried chicken, a “whole” half bird. In the 1960s chicken was expensive, a Sunday dish only, definitely so in the city. Madaz, a “whole” half chicken!
With the Gardiner brothers, Keith and Charlie, and Angus, Landivar was already a super team, but they went on a raid that gutted their closest rivals, Independence and BEC. Those bohgaz, they plundered Koako, Baba, and Gyas from Independence. They snatched, more likely bought, the flamboyant goalkeeper, Bowza, from BEC, and that club’s midfield general, Mimi. They had Kalibuhm on their right wing, but I believe they’d recruited him from the year before. And they went to Stann Creek and stole D-Line from R-A-C.
That season was no contest. No, no team in this country, maybe no team in the world could have matched Landivar that year. But ball hounds, they never give up. Sometimes lee man do fall big tree. So, when BEC played them, I was on the bench behind the southern goal, praying for a miracle. BEC always gave Landivar trouble, but not this time.
It was a total rout. I think it was in this game that the classy Baba struck a goal that you haven’t seen anywhere. The great goals are created in a blink, from out of the corner of the eye. From 35 yards out, midway between the middle of the field and the west touch line, Baba saw, and he popped the ball in the air, just enough ahead of him to create some space between him and the defender dogging him. When the ball came down, he slapped it, hard, with just enough arc to get over the goalkeeper’s reaching fingertips, and enough sink to dip under the V, where it hit flat against the inner part of the upright and dropped into the back of the goal.
Landivar would roll to a 5-nil victory over its once worthy rival. It was a trouncing. Why
Mimi rubbed his former teammates’ noses in it, I don’t know. Koako played him a square pass through the middle and he pinned the ball between his heels, rolled over with it between his legs by the hapless opponent charging hard to foil him, and sent a perfect pass through the ravaged B-E-C defense line, where one of his teammates put the ball in the back of the net.
It was 5-nil, late evening, and Landivar was making BEC look silly. All of them were showing off for the ladies, and all the non-Landivar fans, and those of us who hated them, were praying for the long whistle to blow and bring a merciful end to the slaughter, when Kalibuhm, from the right side, centered across the edge of the box, 18 yards out, to change the flow of play to the left side. The pass wasn’t for D-Line, it was well over his head, but he sprang up, and at the height of his jump he somersaulted. His legs were directly overhead, pointing to the heavens, his back to the ground, when he struck the ball with his right boot.
The ball rocketed toward the goal. Merciful God, it crashed on the cross bar and ricocheted unto the field where, fortunately, just before an onrushing Landivar forward could slam it in a B-E-C defender was able to clear it, thus preventing another goal, saving that ignominious 5 from becoming 6, the ultimate humiliation.