It's World Cup season but none of us should become the WC widow....

I have been watching football for as long as I can remember. Having 5 guys in the house, you can't run away from being forced to join them watching football matches on the (then black and white ) TV set. Back in the late 70s I just watched with my brothers but had no clue of the players' names or the colors of their jerseys (dah sah lah TV black and white). But I remember we usually cheered for Germany and England. I could still remember whenever any of my brother's friend or the orang-orang kampung wore the 3stripes Adidas shirt, I would look at them admiringly and thought, 'Woooooo.... Baju Jerman...!'

When I grew up and had money of my own I did stock up a lot of Baju Jerman in my wardrobe simply because of this childhood fondness of the 3stripes. I finally bought Jersey Jerman two years ago which has Podolski's name printed at the back. *Ngeeeeee*

My most memorable World Cup was the one held in Spain in 1982. Names like Zico, Socrates, Kevin Keegan, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (it was damn hard to spell his name then because I was only in standard 2!), Maradona, Paolo Rossi and Dino Zoff were so big then. I thought Dino Zoff was so interesting because he was quite old when he played for Italy in Spain (40 years old) and his name sounded like dinosaur.  Only years later I learned he's actually one of the few goal keepers who captained a team. That's why he was so famous. Heheh.

Brazil - 1982 squad

My brother managed to trick my mom to buy him a World Cup magazine one day and we studied it cover to cover. We memorized names, jersey numbers, their positions and even the clubs they were playing for. I remember Zico was on the cover.We didn't get to watch all matches because we had to wake up early in the morning to go to school. So, we followed the WC results in the newspaper and from repeat games on TV.

We played more football in the afternoon when it was WC season. Badminton rackets were out of sight then. When we played, each of us will pretend to be our favorite player and at the same time tried to become Hasbullah Awang (just imagine, gelecek bola sambil jadi commentator sendiri...) I still remember the brown plastic ball we had and ia telah menjadi seperti belacan during WC season.

We were lucky to have a very spacious laman, it's even bigger than a futsal court. None of us have proper sports shoes and just played berkaki ayam. It was a lot of fun especially when my neighbours' children joined us, so we could have 3 a side games. The only thing I hated was when out of nowhere somebody would shout to me, 'Oi, awak tu pompuan!' Like I needed to be reminded that I'm a girl and couldn't play football? Well, that's sooooo fifties.

I still play futsal/football today whenever I get the opportunity. And I still watch football matches. And now that it's World Cup season, I'm definitely going to be very very happy. Yippeeee!