Can you see where I’m going with this?Īlmost without touching the ball at all, Clodoaldo – a centre half, remember – made four Italian internationals look like four versions of me. Even by Scotland a country with players by some considerable distance short of the level required to play for Italy, and an Italy good enough to reach a World Cup Final in another hemisphere. I was miles away from succeeding at that standard, and that is even more miles away from the Scottish lower leagues, which in turn is light years away from the upper levels of our national game, and the tiny, tiny percentage of players who make it to this level are still highly unlikely to get capped. I made it as far as Amateur level with a ridiculously brief possibility of lower level Junior status.
#EFFORTLESS EFFORT SKIN#
A potential contender, scraping layers of skin on the blaes in the west of Scotland admittedly, but I still thought I could make it. When I was younger, I considered myself to be pretty good at football. However consider the context of the part that started the whole move. Naysayers might now contest that when that last goal was scored, Italy were on their knees. Half a lifetime later though, here’s the three reasons why it is…and none of them actually involve Carlos Alberto.
Like most in our living room that day, I didn’t appreciate that then. In a match which has become synonymous with the pinnacle of what football can achieve, that fourth goal is now routinely considered to be the best ever scored. I missed Joey well for about the first five minutes of a match apparently being played in some footballing technicolor Oz.īut I’m typically digressing.
It was called Joey – the budgie, not the telly – and his failed attempts to get it to talk were the justification for its permanent ‘early bath’. He hated the bird and an opportunity to get rid of it as part of a bizarre pre-Bosman style transfer deal was too good to miss.
#EFFORTLESS EFFORT TV#
My entrepreneurial father had swapped our budgie and its cage for a loan of the TV in order to watch the 1970 World Cup Final between Brazil and Italy. Suddenly my mind goes to moments where I have witnessed people in sports and leaderships finding those moments of Flow, of “effortless effort”, and what it takes to attain that.įor today, then, I simply curate for you David’s writing and then the video of that goal…įorty-four years ago, me, my Dad, around twelve of his mates, and the neighbours of our top-floor tenement flat crouched around a small television set in our living room and watched the greatest goal ever scored. She gently encourages to find that place of “ effortless effort“. Pelé seemed to stop time, or at least, for himself and those watching, to slow it to a glacial pace for a beautiful instant.Īs I watched this repeatedly, a phrase came to mind, one Kate Dunne taught when she often uses when she works with an individual or a group on movement, stretching, strength, flexibility.
His body shape is perfect all poise and effortless balance.” I did, again, and again, and again. David encouraged: “ Watch him again…and again…and then again. Today is Pelé’s 80th Birthday, which my friend David Ross celebrated by sharing a wonderful piece of writing around the greatest goal ever scored and, in particular, Pelé’s part in it. I am fascinated by the concept of Flow (past post here). My friend and teacher Kate Dunne chose the name “ Flow” when she started creating her space and practice around therapeutic movement.