朗读版：踢碎了路灯和邻居的窗户，逃跑时遗落的足球梦 | CGTN周末随笔

小时候踢球像打游击，学校以外，是片空地就能凑合。临时门柱包括书包、软饮塑料瓶。最怀念的是一栋老旧建筑不常开的侧门，铁皮的，两米来宽，球砸在上面“哐哐”响，得没得分无法耍赖。

都是普通家庭的小孩儿，在九十年代城里那种温饱以上小康未满的状态下，还想不到凑点零花钱租球场这种事。就算想到了也不易实践，家和学校附近没有，远点的大人不让去。好在国内小区半包围式的空间里，或大或小总有片钢筋水泥、绿植、自行车填不上的“地块”。一帮熊孩子，用书包摆好球门、在球胆都露出来了的足球落地那个瞬间，这片场子就算我们“霸”下来了。

小区里街灯的灯泡，一层的窗户，自行车车铃和报废汽车的倒车镜，都见证了我们偶露峥嵘的球技。现在想想，如果真的瞄着这些物件开球，未必能轰得那么准，还能省下不少零花钱和无数顿骂。

据说，和马拉多一样试图通过足球来改变人生的阿根廷穷苦孩子都会努力钻研如何盘球，因为球在自己脚下停留的时间越长，被球探发掘的概率就会越大——而我们粘球则完全出于自己带球比眼巴巴看着别人带球好玩。

那些年里也不能说球技一点长进都没有。随着电视里各种比赛越来越多，我们的表演也开始“像不像，三分样”。遗憾的是生晚了一些，错过了马拉多纳1986年的辉煌。那些后来在各小区里和我们抢场地的大孩子有不少应该看过央视直播。再过几年，他们就开始在校服下面套偶像队服了。后来一到踢球的时候，在一众“巴乔”、“贝克汉姆”当中，总能见到一两件蓝白剑条衫。

虽然有大牌儿影响，小伙伴当中立志要走职业道路的并不多。除了天赋真的一般之外，在学校里也没有系统学过如何踢球。北京市全面推开中小学足球教育是2015年前后的事了。在甲A刚刚拉开职业化大幕的年代，家长对于鼓励孩子踢球为业也不那么上心。

想想马拉多纳和其他苦出身的传奇球星，可能还有一个理由让我们并没有那么拼命地抱紧足球：温饱的童年。哪怕在用饮料瓶摆球门的时候，我们也不需要通过足球挣命。

《体育画报》（El Gráfico）是阿根廷历史最悠久的体育杂志。1928年，杂志编辑、专栏作家里卡多·洛伦索这样描述那些努力依靠足球出人头地的孩子：

“污秽的脸庞上，闪烁着像星星一样的眼睛；蓝白条纹衫上……满是命运留下的褶皱；探出鞋头的脚趾，是无数次射门的隐证……用袜子和破布团成的‘足球’，只能让人越发讶异他们的成就……如果有一天，阿根廷能为这些孩子树起一尊雕像，我们会如礼敬上帝一般，向它脱帽。”

在洛伦索看来，贫穷把这些孩子的命运与足球裹挟在一起，在他们为了活下去而拼命磨炼球技的时候，意外淬炼出了阿根廷足球——在这个伤感的成就下，马拉多纳是为数不多的幸运儿之一。

根据联合国的数据，如果任由新冠疫情肆虐，截止2020年底，全球将有八千六百万儿童跌落贫困线下，将总数推高至六亿七千万。在这些孩子当中，不知足球梦可还能留下一丝碎片。

如果梦还在，他们的球门，可能是我们永远不愿去想象的样子。

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Sidelines | Football dreams left on street

Sidelines is a column by CGTN's Social Media Desk

The often-shut side door of an old building, a pair of backpacks or empty soft drink bottles: just a few of the things this columnist and his football gang used as goalposts back in the 1990s.

Being a bunch of restless primary school students, we were annoyed that playing fields were not in great supply. To begin with, Beijing wasn't what it is today. Many schools and universities didn't boast a proper football pitch. The economic pinch we felt but did not fully understand at home was not as bad as, for example, what Diego Maradona lived with when he was our age, but made paying for one on a regular basis out of question. Luckily, a typical neighborhood in Beijing often featured an enclosed area separated from the busy traffic by walls of brick, affording us a relatively safe space for our street football matches.

Born in Maradona's heyday, we could be pardoned for missing out on many of his on-pitch feats. Older kids (probably middle high school students) we occasionally had to vie with for the same makeshift football field in our neighborhood had better luck. They remembered how the Argentinian left England in shock and awe when the World Cup was first broadcast live in China in 1986.

The often out-of-service side door was ideal as a goal. About two meters wide and covered in tin, it let out a deep wail when the ball crashed against it. This gave the door the edge over a pair of bottles: you could never be sure if a mid-air curling shot above the plastic container went in or clipped the post, but with the door there were no arguments.

Due to our appalling marksmanship, the field's geography – a block safely away from traffic but surrounded by residential buildings – was a mixed blessing. If we had actually aimed at the streetlamp, the window of the ground floor apartment or the old car's wing mirror, we would surely have missed and saved months of pocket money.

Dribbling, the skill that young street football talents like Maradona hone and catch scouts' attention with, was not our strong suit either. And passing was scarce, as you could have more fun with the ball at your own feet in a game where everybody was chasing it. 

The more we played, the better we became, as far as our neighbors' windows were concerned. But the thought of growing up to be a professional footballer never occurred to any of us. In addition to our mediocrity, systematic football curriculums weren't very common in schools in the 1990s. The formal introduction had to wait in Beijing until 2015. From a parent's perspective, a football career wasn't very attractive given that China only kick-started commercializing its men's football championship in 1994, the year Maradona was banned from the World Cup for drug abuse.

China's economic boom also probably played a role. None of us had to live through the poverty that prompted the young Maradona to seek a brighter future through sport.

Borocotó, the editor of Argentina's longstanding sports publication El Gráfico, proposed in 1928 raising a statue to the "inventor of dribbling."

"The dirty-face street kids of a sparkling gaze" who in their effort to earn a better life via football had elevated Argentinian football to an art form, he profiled poetically. "His vest with Argentinian stripes … (his) shoes whose holes in the toes suggest they have been made through too much shooting. It must seem as if he is dribbling with a rag ball…bound by an old sock. If this monument is raised one day, there will be many of us who will take off our hat to it, as we do in church."

Fate smiled on the young Maradona but has remained stern to millions of other kids with a "sparkling gaze." According to the UN, 86 million children could be knocked under the poverty line by the end of 2020 as a consequence of the pandemic, sending the total number of impoverished children worldwide to 672 million. It's not only their football dreams that are under threat, worse, it's their lives. 

What could their goalposts be made of? It freezes me to imagine.

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