A soccer game is a Wagner opera. The narrative sets up, the tension builds, the music ebbs and flows, the strings, the horns, more tension, and suddenly a moment of pure bliss, trumpet-tongued Gabriel sings, and gods descend from Olympus to dance – this peak of ecstasy. Rabih Alameddine Read Quote
I know many sports fans that don’t enjoy soccer. The argument is that there’s no action, not enough of it. Rabih Alameddine Read Quote
Now I love hoops. I’m a diehard UCLA fan, have been since my freshman year. But basketball is the ‘1812 Overture.’ Pomp and circumstance, fireworks and cannons, lots and lots of fun, and in the end, still Tchaikovsky. Rabih Alameddine Read Quote
I stuck out more in an English public school than I would have had I marched in a May Day parade with the Red Army in Moscow or sashayed the Yves St. Laurent catwalk with supermodels or hunted seals with the Inuit or – well, you get the idea. Rabih Alameddine Read Quote
In 1975, I left the burning city of Beirut for the quiet insanity of England. To say that short, frail and wispy 15-year-old me didn’t fit in would be such an understatement as to be a joke. Rabih Alameddine Read Quote
When I was younger, I used to find stories about divas charming. Not much anymore. Rabih Alameddine Read Quote
I gave up on the delusion that these players enjoy soccer as much as I do, that they play for the love of the game. Rabih Alameddine Read Quote
