This edition published in 2015 by Allen & Unwin
First published in Singapore in 2009 by Sunbear Publishing
Copyright © Text, Shamini Flint 2009
Copyright © Illustrations, Sally Heinrich 2009
The moral right of Shamini Flint and Sally Heinrich to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the United Kingdom’s Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.
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ISBN (AUS) 978 1 76011 226 4
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Cover design by Sandra Nobes
Cover photo by Shutterstock
‘Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude.
I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.’
– Bill Shankly
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Epilogue
Football Notes
About the Author
The score is 1 – 1.
They have to bring me on. They have no choice. I know it and they know it.
Sure enough, I get the signal from the bench.
My heart is thumping. Games don’t come bigger than this – the World Cup quarterfinal between Brazil and France in Mexico.
I know we can win this match. But I also know there is not much time left.
I try to shut out the crowd, to concentrate, breathe calmly. But it is difficult. The noise is unimaginable. Waves of sound buffet me. Half the stadium is in blue, the other half – my half – are in yellow.
My heart swells. I am so proud.
The linesman holds up the board.
My number is chalked on it – 10.
The referee waves me on.
I have a moment of doubt. The newspapers have not been kind. They say I am too old, too fat. What if they’re right?
Only one way to find out. I jog onto the pitch.
The yellow half goes berserk. Forget the papers. The fans still believe in me. I can hear the hope in their voices and in the frenzied samba beat.
I run into space. Do a few jinking runs. I feel good. Fit. Almost immediately I feel the rhythm of the game. Ebb and flow, stop and start. A quick dash, a pass, a dummy and then a flick. My teammates are a talented bunch. I am proud to be on the pitch with them. The yellow jerseys, the blue shorts and the white socks. It’s magic!
I catch the eye of Sócrates. I see a drop of sweat hanging off his beard. I smile at him. He is such a poser. Fancy a professional footballer with a thick beard and a philosopher’s name!
There isn’t much time left and the score is still 1 – 1. But I am so happy to be here.
I pick up the ball in my own half. Dip my shoulder and go around the Frenchman in front of me. Another is rushing in. I let him get in close. Too close. He is committed to a tackle. A quick sidestep and he is left behind. I look up – just a glance – and see a yellow streak racing down the field.
Branco is making a run.
I slide the ball through the middle of the pitch. The pass is inch-perfect.
Branco picks it up. He is in space. No one to beat but the keeper.
He keeps his head, waltzes into the box and around the keeper – and is brought down!
We turn to the referee. There was no contact with the ball. It must be a …
PENALTY!!
The referee has given it. I can’t believe it. Our luck is turning. This is going to be our day. I can feel it.
All over the pitch, players in yellow jerseys are hugging each other. I see teammates pounce on Branco who has yet to get up from where he was brought down.
All eyes turn to me and I remember that I, Zico, am the penalty taker. As I walk slowly forward, I debate my shot.
Right? Left? Straight?
It is important to have a plan. It is even more important not to let the keeper guess my plan.
I adjust the ball on the spot. I take my time. I know Joël Bats is more nervous than I am. He can hear the samba. He can see the screaming Brazilians out of the corners of his eyes. The French supporters have gone quiet.
I turn around and walk away. I spin back. Take a short run up. I am going right, low and hard. That is my plan.
I see from his body that the goalie is going to his left.
I consider changing my mind.
I don’t.
It is not a clean shot.
Bats gets a hand to it. He keeps it out.
There is a stunned silence. Then an uproar from the French crowd. They are chanting ‘Vive les Bleus’.
I tuck my blanket around me. I drag myself back to the living room. No football, no boots and no screaming fans – except on the television.
I am not Zico anymore. I am Maya. I am ten years old and I’ve never actually kicked a football. Not a real one. Not even once.
I can hardly believe it myself. I’ve pictured myself on the pitch for hundreds of games. I’m a brilliant player in my head. Usually, I imagine I’m Zico, the best football player in the world – ever!
It seems so real, being out there in the sunshine with the Brazilians.
It is this dark living room, the cane furniture, the whirring fan and being all alone in the middle of the night watching the World Cup on television that seems like a
dream.
I pinch myself really hard. That’s what the kids in books do to see if they’re awake. Ouch! I’m awake all right. Zico has missed a penalty and now my arm hurts where I pinched it.
I cannot believe it. My hero, Zico, has missed a penalty in the last twenty minutes of a World Cup quarterfinal. A penalty that would have put Brazil in the lead. Probably into the semifinals for a match against the Germans who are rubbish this year.
Zico’s face is close up on the flickering screen. He looks bewildered – maybe he’s wondering if he’s dreaming too. Probably he wishes he was in a living room somewhere watching the game on television.
He looks fatter than in the poster I have of him in my bedroom. In my poster he is fit and slim, wearing his socks around his ankles – the ‘I’m too tough for shin pads’ look.
I make excuses for my hero.
He’d just come on. He wasn’t warmed up yet. They shouldn’t have let him take the kick.
It was his pass that led to the keeper fouling Branco – in a way it was his penalty to miss.
I make excuses for my hero – but I know that Brazil is in deep trouble.
To be absolutely, perfectly frank, even though Brazil is my favourite football team in the whole world, I’m not actually Brazilian.
I’m Malaysian and I live in a small seaside town called Kuantan with my mum and dad and my brother Rajiv, who is older than me and a real pain.
But once every four years, during the World Cup, I support Brazil – more than that, I feel Brazilian. That’s because of the way the team plays football. It might be the World Cup, but they play like kids on a beach. Besides, Malaysia never qualifies for the World Cup – and I have to support someone.
The match is almost over. Still 1 – 1.
The sounds from upstairs are getting louder. It’s Mum and Dad, of course. They’re not interested in football. It’s three in the morning. But they’re awake.
And they’re yelling.
I’m not sure what it is about. I can’t make out the words. It doesn’t matter, really. It makes no difference what it’s about. I used to believe that if we could all sit down and talk about what was wrong, we could fix it. Now I know better. My parents quarrel because they have forgotten how to stop.
I stuff my fingers in my ears. I can still hear them. I just hate how angry they sound. Dad is gruff – I’d be afraid of him if I didn’t know he was my dad. Mum is crying. I can always tell – I don’t have to be in the room to see tears or anything. Shouting while crying makes your voice funny – sort of like you’re playing football with a bad cold and then have to stop and yell at the referee because he’s just given you a yellow card for diving.
Mum and Dad try and save up their quarrels until Rajiv and I are in bed. I guess they hope we won’t realise what they’re doing.
When we were younger, Rajiv and I would rush upstairs and try to break up the fight.
Rajiv was like the referee of a game where the players start shoving each other – he’d get between them. I’d be like one of the senior players and try to drag one of them away.
Then we’d both beg them to stop and cry hot tears of our own.
Sometimes it worked.
Mostly they’d tell us to go back to bed and not to worry because it was a grown-up problem and wasn’t about us children and we oughtn’t worry ourselves about things we were too young to understand.
Once in a while, instead of rushing up, I’d climb into bed with Rajiv and we’d both lie awake and listen to the yelling.
Nowadays, we just pretend it’s not happening.
I turn up the volume on the TV. It’s much easier to pretend it’s not happening if I can’t hear them.
The referee blows his whistle. The full-time score between Brazil and France is 1 – 1.
This World Cup quarterfinal game will be decided on penalties.
Sócrates takes the first kick.
He walks up. I know what he is going to do. In that second, watching him, I know he is going for placement, not power.
I just pray he doesn’t pick the same spot, top left corner, like he did in the last game. The goalie will be waiting for that.
Sócrates picks the same spot. Top left corner. The goalie is waiting for it.
Joël Bats keeps it out with a fine acrobatic save.
Zico steps forward.
I feel as if my heart might burst. How brave he is to agree to take another spot kick so soon after missing the last one. What if he misses again? He might be brave but he must also be stupid to take such a risk – maybe Dad is right when he says footballers carry their brains in their boots. No one will ever forget the man who missed two penalties in a World Cup knockout game. They’ll probably note it on his tombstone – RIP Zico – took two, missed two.
I cover my face with my hands. I can’t bear to watch.
I peep through the cracks between my fingers. I have to watch.
I go all limp with fear, like a player feigning injury to waste a few extra seconds of the time remaining in a game.
Zico scores.
Maybe this will turn out all right in the end!
Platini misses – he gets under the ball and it flies over the crossbar.
Maybe this could really, really turn out all right …
Júlio César hits the post.
Luis Fernández converts for France and Brazil are out of the World Cup – again.
Zico, they call him the ‘White Pelé’, will never win a World Cup medal now.
I switch off the TV and sit in darkness. There is silence upstairs as well. Mum and Dad have gone to bed.
‘That Zico is just useless,’ cackles my brother.
I stay silent. I knew breakfast would be tough.
Mum flips a dosa onto my plate, a sort of Indian pancake. Like I could eat anything after last night.
Mum says, ‘Don’t pick on your sister. You know she takes her soccer seriously.’
‘It’s football, Mum,’ I say impatiently.
I know she is trying to protect me from my brother but she could at least know what the game that has broken my heart is called.
My brother ignores her. ‘He missed a penalty! How could he miss a penalty?’
I wonder how he knows. The useless sod didn’t even watch the game. He must have spoken to a friend.
Rajiv slaps some peanut butter onto a slice of bread and shoves the whole thing in his mouth. He doesn’t like Indian food so he won’t eat the dosa Mum is cooking on a flat, metal skillet. Rajiv’s mouth is gummed shut with the sticky stuff and he cannot speak for a moment.
I’m glad. I need a break from his teasing. I don’t think it’s funny, you see.
Mum is upset that I’m not eating. She is staring at my untouched food with that worried expression she gets if she feels she isn’t feeding us kids enough. She looks like a referee who regrets not handing out a few early yellow cards to exercise some control over a rough game.
Rajiv and I usually eat like we’ve played ninety minutes of football just before breakfast but we’re still tall and skinny. Mum is always being told to put some meat on our bones, especially mine, by our relatives. Today, I have no appetite. After all, Brazil just got knocked out of the World Cup.
My grandmother totters in. She is wearing a white sari. I have not seen her wear anything else since Grandad died five years ago. Mum says it is a sign of Amamma’s (that’s what we call her) widowhood and to indicate that she is not long for this world. Dad doesn’t say it out loud but I know he thinks it’s been quite long enough, thanks very much.
I wouldn’t rush to catch up with Grandad in that great football field in the sky if I were Amamma. He was a nasty piece of work. My clearest memory is of him lying in an easychair and trying to hit his grandkids with his walking stick if they wandered too close.
The walking stick had an ivory handle carved to look like the head of a rhinoceros hornbill. I remember the cane so clearly because my grandfather had a huge beak for a nose – sideways, h
e looked a lot like his cane.
Amamma does not live with us. She rotates between her three children, my two uncles and my mother.
But when she is here, the shouting upstairs gets louder.
Now she says, ‘You need to feed the children better. Look at Maya. All skin and bones. No one will marry her.’
I’m ten and she’s already worried that no one will marry me. I’m not worried. If I can’t actually be Zico, I plan to marry Zico.
Mum is defending me. ‘Of course someone will marry her!’ she says indignantly.
What is it with these people?
I feel like shouting, ‘Hello, I’m only ten!’
I must have yelled it out loud because there is a sudden silence and my brother manages to mutter through the peanut butter, ‘Never too early to start worrying, if you ask me.’ He chortles.
He’s a fine one to talk. It’s pretty clear he’s inherited Grandad’s nose.
Amamma ignores my brother and me and continues goading Mum. She pulls out her trump card. ‘No one would marry you,’ she points out rudely to Mum, cackling and showing off the few teeth she has left, sprouting on her red gums like dirty brown mushrooms.
‘Dad married Mum,’ I exclaim indignantly, forgetting for a moment that it isn’t exactly a match made in heaven, what with the yelling every night.
‘That doesn’t count. No Indian man would marry your mother. That is why she had to marry a white man.’
It is impossible to reason with Amamma but I try anyway.
I have always thought I would be really good at talking to those people who stand on building ledges or on bridges threatening to jump – I am sure I could persuade them not to. I have a lot of patience. You need it in my family.
I say firmly, ‘There is nothing wrong with marrying someone different.’
‘Pah! Now you and your brother are half-breeds. No one will marry you. If your mother had been fair-skinned with a bit of flesh on her bones, this would not have happened. You’d better eat.’
I roll my eyes at Mum. She is smiling at me but her mouth is twisted down at the corners so I know it is one of those smiles of hers where she is proud of me but unhappy inside. I recognise it because I have the same sort of smile sometimes. I do my best – I bend my lips upwards like you’re supposed to but then my heart hurts and the corners of my mouth turn down suddenly. I smile back at Mum and it is a twisty smile too and a mirror of hers.
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