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Camus Played in Goal for Algeria

Christopher T. George

Sunday, July 24th, 2005

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 “All I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football”
Albert Camus (1913-1960)

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 Football, boxing, swimming, oui, you did it all, till TB ended
your career as a goalkeeper. What football lost, the world
gained in a great journalist, author, intellectual, philosopher,
defender of truth, moderation, justice, … earlier, defender
of the holy goal, the sacred net, don’t let the others score!

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 Christopher T. George

© Christopher T. George 2005

Notes

http://books.guardian.co.uk/authors/author/0,5917,-33,00.html

http://www.britannica.com/nobel/micro/100_82.html

Thanks to Kevin Raymond and his note to “Camus In His Way !” As you see, Kevin, Camus did more than just play for a small team in a Paris suburb. I would like to read that short story of his that you mentioned though.

I did find this–

In 1930, Albert Camus was Saint Peter guarding the gate for the University of Algeria’s soccer team. He had been playing goalkeeper since he was a child, because in that position your shoes don’t wear out as fast. From a poor home, Camus couldn’t afford the luxury of running the fields; every night, his grandmother examined the soles of his shoes and gave him a beating if he found them worn.

During his years in the net, Camus learned many things: “I learned that the ball never comes when you expect it to. That helped me a lot in life, especially in large cities where people don’t tend to be what they claim.”

He also learned to win without feeling like God and to lose without feeling like rubbish, skills not easily acquired, and he learned to unravel several mysteries of the human soul, whose labyrinths he explored late on in a dangerous journey on the page.

From Eduardo Galeano, “Soccer in Sun and Shadow”

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/camus-played-in-goal-for-algeria/