Eye on the ball

A complex, highly civilised game based on the simple idea of kicking a ball forward -- what do you think of that? It is not simply a matter of kicking and running. There is, too, a constant, absorbing struggle -- and a battle to score the greatest number of goals in order to win -- a fervent battle. Each game is split into two halves, each of which is 45 minutes long. Yet why does each pass so fast, as if it is only 15 minutes long?

Those who claim that the game has no roots in Egypt display an astonishing myopia -- in a word, they are wrong. For in 448 BC Herodotus wrote that, on visiting Egypt, he encountered a game called "the game of the ball", in which a sphere made out of goats' skin stuffed with cotton or straw is kicked by members of two competing teams until it reaches a point of no return, after which the team that managed to transport it there is said to have scored a goal against the other team. There is every reason to believe that Egyptians knew football in ancient times, therefore.

Yet it seems a horrendous earthquake -- or perhaps it was a meteor like the one that exploded in Siberia a long, long time ago -- destroyed the game, obliterating every last trace of it. (This had to be a natural catastrophe, since nothing human could have drawn Egyptians' attention away from their sport of choice.) For many years afterwards, therefore, football disappeared -- only to come back at the turn of the 20th century.

Since then it has lived with us, an essential part of our spirit till the end of time.