“Take the shot! Take the shot!!” There he stood, the football at his feet, the goal wide open, the rest of his team yelling more than enough encouragement, while the other team and their goalie were speeding back to defend.
It was a clear shot, and that goal would have put our team in the lead.
But … he turned around and passed the ball to another teammate.
A sigh of frustration swelled from the rest of us on the team.
This is so typical of him. He’s the best player here, and yet he’s always slowing down if the other team is struggling, or passing the ball to other people when he has the shot, I thought.
When we were chatting after the game, his over-eagerness to share the ball came up. This was something we teased him about regularly, as he was consistently the least aggressive player on the field. He wanted to win, he loved football, and he was probably the most talented of all our friends, and still he was the least competitive person I have ever met.
When one of our little brothers joined the game, he would always make space for him to play, pass him the ball, and give him advice. If the kid was on the other team, he would take it easy on him and make sure the other team didn’t position him somewhere that he couldn’t handle.
None of us had a problem with this; we all appreciated it when it was our little brother playing. But we didn’t appreciate it as much when he’d let a point slip through our fingers during a game.
But, to be fair, regardless of how much we teased him or huffed or rolled our eyes, we respected him for it. I know that with certainty because to this day when we speak about those games, we still respect him for it.
Looking back, I wonder if perhaps he was thinking less about his career as an amateur football player on the streets of South Africa and more about a different kind of career. No matter what happened around him or what others deemed as important—like scoring points in a football match—he knew how he wanted to live. He knew who he wanted to be. He knew what game in life he wanted to win.