The Run of Play is a blog about
the wonder and terror of soccer.

We left the window open during a match in October 2007 and a strange wind blew into the room.

Now we walk the forgotten byways of football with a lonely tread, searching for the beautiful, the bewildering, the haunting, and the absurd.

The Genius of Basketball and the Genius of Soccer

Photo credit: cirox, on Flickr

One takes something so difficult that a practiced adult can’t do it reliably and makes it so easy that we see it done dozens of times, acrobatically, in a game. The other takes something so simple that my two-year-old niece can do it and makes it so hard that seeing it done once in a match is a cause for wild celebration.