http://www.anthonyzolezzi.com/blog.htm Organically created tools for positive change in you, your business and your life en-us AnthonyZolezzi.com http://www.anthonyzolezzi.com/blog.htm OK, I have to admit it – my recent trip to South Africa, during which I experienced the World Cup phenomenon first-hand, has turned me into a soccer fan. In fact, even on a Continental flight today with Direct TV, guess what I watched? A soccer match, naturally. Now even when my kids were playing it, I never really understood the game. That’s because I had grown up playing traditional “hands-on” American sports, football, basketball and baseball. But soccer? No way. It was simply not part of our athletic agenda. Today, however, as I reflect on my sustainability activism and more simplistic, local orientation, soccer, a game whose principle elements are shoes and determination, is starting to look more and more like the sport of the future. Whereas players in the NFL must have over 100 pieces of equipment on them by the time they suit up for a game, the type of “football” we call soccer is dependent on little more than raw athleticism. Due to its relatively unencumbered nature, this now to me exciting pastime is one that I firmly believe represents the wave of the future in professional sports. Not only is soccer an intrinsic aspect of what makes the developing world different from the developed world, but it symbolizes how we are going to have to meet the challenges ahead of us by lightening our load. It is therefore my prediction that The World Cup of Soccer (or “World Football”) will ultimately gain ascendancy over other athletic competitions because, apart from shoes, this sport will not depend on helmets with microphones, unusual brawn or other unnatural burdens, but simply the raw talent of the individual players. It reminds me, in fact, of the factory farm versus the family farm. In the end, things will have to be sustainable in order to survive, and that includes our forms of recreation.