I generally don’t go looking for news about soccer, but lately it seems to be all around us. Famous actors buy struggling teams and turn them into winners, Hollywood produces a show about an American coaching a “futbawl” team in England, and David Beckham, most likely until recently the only professional soccer player you could name, was able to realize his dream of bringing perhaps an even more famous soccer player, Lionel Messi, to the United States to play for his team in Miami.

I’m old enough that I don’t care. Well, that sounds harsh, but what I mean is that soccer wasn’t a thing when I was growing up. I do remember, in gym class, getting mimeographed copies (remember those?) explaining the positions on a soccer team and sample plays, and then standing out on the soccer field for the entire gym class. . . standing. It seemed as if about three people actually played soccer, and the rest of us stood there in the backfield waiting for our chance to touch the ball.

But now soccer has managed to work its way into our lives. Movies, popular culture, and money all played into that, but soccer doesn’t require a lot of equipment and you can play it on just about any field, making it a fairly cheap sport to play. Many of our kids and grandkids most likely are on some sort of soccer team and they probably understand the game more than we ever will and will look up to these players that are now all over TV and the internet.

Which brings me back to the US Women’s team. I don’t know if I have a warped newsfeed or not, but I would guess half of the stories I have seen about the team and the World Cup have to do more with political and I’ll call them cultural issues than with soccer. Several players on the team are using their status and world-wide platform right now to push for what they think is a beneficial change, and in our current culture, that is what makes the news.

I don’t know if we’ll ever go back to sports just being sports, but even if we don’t, we can celebrate the fact that God gave some people an incredible amount of athleticism and talent. And the women on this team took that gift and developed it with hard work and practice. They stood out in the sun and rain, day after day, waiting for their chance to touch the ball.

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