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Summer is approaching, and with it the smiles of the youngest children heading to the nearest patch of ground that belongs to them, ball tucked under an arm. It's true you don't see that image as often now — kids playing in the street. But not so very long ago, summer, street and sun meant a Mikasa ball on tarmac or sand. Rucksacks or stones for goalposts. Maradona used to say "the ball doesn't get dirty" — but getting home with the ball at all was already an achievement, because if it didn't get lost in the heat of battle, it certainly wouldn't arrive clean or in its original shape. Without question, the real trophy of childhood was arriving home with the ball nestled between hip and forearm.
If streets could talk, we'd be drowning in documentaries. In every corner where a ball once rolled, there were smiles. Fernando, for instance — a Cuban street kid — didn't like playing anywhere other than the street because it "didn't let him slide", and without sliding he couldn't enjoy himself. For Fernando, as for so many others, the beauty of playing in the park was that everyone could join in. Even those with no shoes. He told the story in the Cuban magazine El Estornudo. The ball gets dirty.
In my own case I remember those afternoons with great fondness. Below my window there was a small pink courtyard with wavy tiles. There was no more unstable surface on earth. For the generation of children who lived there during that period, that courtyard will always mean something more. There were no schedules — only the sound of a ball bouncing, which signalled that someone was playing, which in turn drew every other kid downstairs to play until the sun went down. We were a troublesome generation. What we saw as terraces were other people's houses, where we'd forget there were people trying to sleep. We had no timetable; the rest of the world did, and fair enough. They closed the courtyard on us.
Football forced us to experience the first heartbreak of our lives — that fateful moment when a sign goes up: no ball games. It was remarkable how much it affected us, especially given that there were perfectly good public courts just a few metres away. But they'd touched our stage — the place where we made music. Where results mattered least of all, and resources even less. It wasn't just a playing surface; for us it was the best in the world. It was also a forum for the most mundane conversations you could imagine.
I've seen many courtyards since then — some with better aesthetics, even. I suppose the courtyard or street where you first decide to get your ball dirty will always be something you carry in your heart, something hard to surpass. Especially when it's right below your window. For years now that courtyard has been governed by absolute silence, and the only sounds of a ball are those that drift over from a court a few metres away — from what was our favourite stadium in the world: the pink courtyard with the wavy tiles.
It's the magic of the dirty ball that has sparked a sense of wonder in so many of us — mostly for the small things, the small moments, the simple and noble things. The magic of the dirty ball that made us forget for a moment that we were children, that we were mortal. We thought we were stars, right up until our parents called us in for dinner.
