In the universality of football lies its power; it is, in a way, the world's language. Children in Riyadh, London, Rio de janeiro and all in between have access to it. They can play anywhere - on concrete, dirt, barefoot - with anything - a sock filled with hay and shaped into a ball, for instance. Each understands this language; it is one intimately connected with the human form - a feature common to all.
Football is transcendent, precisely because it does not rely on words: it is a language unto itself. Thus, it is not confined by nationality, geography, ethnicity, economic status or any other divisive grouping, which manifests itself in linguistic differences and so in group-segregation. Football speaks to man on a level deeper than cognition. It relates one individual to another by communicating common themes closely related to our humanity, such as sin, as with Maradona's "Hand of God" goal in the 1986 World Cup finals, and redemption, as with his "Goal of the Century" brilliance minutes later.
The superiority of football to all other sports is further found in the dichotomy of difficulty and simplicity that is its unrivaled beauty. It is the beautiful game borne of technical skill, physical endurance and sheer athleticism, which are inextricably intertwined and demand a complex understanding of position and movement into space. The action in football, as John Lanchester observed, is "hard to describe and it is even harder to do, but it does have a deep beauty...this is the reason why soccer still sinks so deeply into us: Because it is, it can be, so beautiful."
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