Soccer Sunday

Before coming to Saudi Arabia, I was a little bit put off by the prospect of not having access to alcohol for three months at a time. For me, drinking alcohol has long served as the de facto reason for getting people together. But, in Saudi you have to find reasons to get people to congregate. My favorite of these is soccer.

So, why soccer, and not some other sport? Soccer is the appropriate game for the environment. There are no ice rinks, so hockey is out. There are no baseball fields, so baseball is out. There are no football--well you get the idea. Even in a small city like Rabigh there are several soccer pitches. They have sufficient lighting, and they are cheap (one hundred riyals per hour). In the day time it's much to hot to play but in the evening, it is very pleasant indeed. It's cheap, it's fun, its a good way to stay in shape, and it's an excellent way to socialize in the absence of alcohol. 

I started playing soccer in Korea, when I was thirty. I'm thirty two now, and just about everybody on the field has significantly more experience than me. I try to make up for it in enthusiasm. Also, I'm bigger than most people on the field and I'm (for better or worse) not afraid of getting injured. Unfortunately, I seem to have a tendency to injure other people on the field, despite being careful not to foul.  But I'm always getting better, and I'm beginning to rely more on finesse and less on brute force. Playing soccer has been a great reminder for me that it's never too late to start something new.

At first the pitch was rented by school, for the benefit of the employees but some of the players had bad attitudes, so it became harder and harder to find enough people to come out and play. The the poor sports were the guys responsible for renting the pitch, so when people stopped showing up, they decided discontinue the whole exercise. But my colleague Ahmed, and I took this as an opportunity, and started renting the pitch ourselves. We bolstered the ranks with our Spanish friends, and soon our  disenfranchised co-workers began to come back. We've been playing twice per week ever since!    

Although there has been a fair bit of altercation on the pitch, playing soccer has been, and continues to be a very satisfying and worthwhile practice. It's reinforced friendships with colleagues, and created new ones with the Spanish guys, and whomever else decides to come out and play. Sometimes students from the institute come out, too, which is nice, because we get to interact with those guys without playing the authoritarian teacher role. It's nice to just play together on the field where everyone's role is equal...and you don't have to remind them to turn off their cellphones!