Soccer Needs the Heroes of Yesterday
By Angel Luna

The World Cup has taken over televisions across the world, and it is clear that it is bigger than any other sporting event. What it also shows is that futbol is the king of all sports.

Even though America is not really soccer oriented, I still catch a couple of homies that don't watch soccer at all, talking about the World Cup matches and about who is gonna win the whole thing. Of course USA and Mexico were choices, but both of them are out and they didnt play the major role that we were all expecting. Even though Mexico has more experience then the USA in this kind of tournament, they still always choke on the big games and they leave all their fans, including me, broken hearted and crying. But, this cup is full of surprises, like France eliminating Brazil and Italy sending the host (Germany) home to watch the final. To be honest, I'm disappointed at the fact that it's going to be an all European cup, but what can I do but enjoy some good soccer and just watch the final with my fam.

Soccer has been a big thing in my life since I was a little kid in Mexico. It made me smile and it made me cry, this was way before the media called it a phenomenon or before playstation and X box infected our young brains. It was when money didn't really mean a lot to me or to my homies. This was when just catching the game on the living room with a soda and some chips was phat, playing a street game or what we called a little cascara was hella sic. That is why the World Cup has everyones attention, a lot of people relate to it because the sport passes social class, language, and race, plus it is super easy to play and really affordable -- two rocks make a goal keep, and you can play by yourself or with some other homies.

But there is something missing in this World Cup, its heroes. Watching the cup now, feels like we don't have a real hero that we can look up to. We don't have icons like we used to back in the days, now we have just people worrying about their endorsements. I remember being a kid and playing soccer in the streets of Mexico and everybody had a favorite soccer player you would want to be like. Actually for all of us, the guy we looked up to the most wasn't even from Mexico, but he really represented the coolness – that was Diego Armando Maradona.

I wish we still had people like Diego Armando Maradona in the field or just somebody like him in our time. People like him made soccer so appealing not only by showing his great skills and ball control but he made the game so much fun by him doing it his way.

Diego Armando Maradona is a hood icon in Argentina and in the rest of the world. He came out of the potreros and the periferia of Buenos Aires to become the most successful soccer player and the most controversial of all times because of the his views on the game and the political world. Maradona is also a very charismatic person who made history with great moments in soccer like playing with injuries or traveling back and forth from various countries to play with the Argentinian National Team. But he also made mistakes like his cocaine controversy.

Maradona also had a TV show call “La Noche del Diez” that he hosted every Monday last year. The show had a pretty good rating in Argentina. He had special guests, from famous sport figures like Pele, Gabriel Batistuta, Ronaldo, and Mike Tyson to to comedians like Chespirito or musicians like Vicentico from los fabulosos Cadillacs, and Shakira (funny thing about Shakira is that she modified some of her lyrics from her new song “The Hips Don't Lie” by adding the name of Maradona on the song, all this for the final game of the world cup). He also had political figures like Fidel Castro. In this show, Maradona expressed his views on how he doesn't like president Bush or American Imperialism. He even revealed the truth about his most controversial goal in his carrier “La mano de Dios”, when he admitted that he pushed the ball with his hand on the goal against England in Mexico '86.

In my opinion Maradona should be right up there as one of the greatest leaders of all time, next to Chespirito, Che Guevara and Tupac.

But today, we have no Maradona figure. The popular players are talented, but they can't make it to hero status. Take for example one of the most well-known players today, David Beckham.

David Beckham in my eyes looks more like a pop star that should be acting in an MTV show, the OC, or some telenovela, than playing in a World Cup. Yeah he may be a good player, and nobody can knock that, but he is more of a metro-sexual hero than a soccer hero like Maradona was. I'm not trying to be a player hater, but this guy is more Hollywood material than soccer material. It may be great that he married a Spice Girl, but popularity and money don't make you a legend.

Right now there are millions of inner-city kids across the world who didn't get a chance to see Maradona and greats like him, play. It's a shame, because they'll never know what they missed.

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