From Colombo to the World Cup

6 min readJun 29, 2026

Some friendships begin with people. Mine began with a football.

In the Colombo of the 1960s, football belonged to every boy. We did not need much to play it. An open patch of ground, two piles of stones for goalposts, and a ball were enough. Cricket was a game for those who could afford bats, pads and gloves. Football asked for very little and, perhaps because of that, gave us so much.

I was never one of the fast boys. I was small, happier with books than with games, and not particularly gifted with the ball at my feet. At school I usually found myself standing in goal. It suited me. While the others ran themselves breathless, I watched the game unfold before me and let my thoughts wander beyond the field.

The Colombo sun, however, never left me alone. Before long my fair skin would turn an alarming shade of red, and the boys watching from the sidelines would point and laugh. There was no malice in it. I laughed with them.

One afternoon has remained with me for more than sixty years.

I was in Grade Seven when I came first in the entire college. During the school assembly, Brother Cassian called me onto the stage and placed my prize in my hands — a brand-new leather football.

Even now I can remember the smell of that leather. There is something about the scent of a new football that stays with you long after the ball itself has disappeared.

I carried it home as though it were a great treasure. Before long there was a knock at our gate.

“Denzil, bring the ball!”

Then another knock.

Soon boys from every lane nearby were waiting outside. Every evening we played until darkness quietly claimed the ground and the ball became little more than a shadow rolling across the grass.

I doubt I have ever received a prize that gave me greater happiness.

Years passed.

By 1976 I was working as an apprentice with the Sri Lanka Telecommunications Department. Colombo was preparing for the Non-Aligned Summit, and a new satellite earth station had begun receiving television pictures from overseas. Sri Lanka had no television service then, so every successful transmission felt almost miraculous.

When I learnt that the European Championship Final between West Germany and Czechoslovakia would be one of those test broadcasts, I persuaded my friend Vijitha to come with me.

We sat quietly among engineers who seemed more interested in signal strength than in football. Then, almost magically, the pictures appeared from Belgrade.

That evening I watched Antonín Panenka take the most audacious penalty I had ever seen. Instead of striking the ball hard, he gently lifted it into the middle of the goal while the goalkeeper threw himself to one side.

At the time I thought only of the brilliance of the moment.

Many years later I realised that the two countries playing that final would themselves disappear, becoming part of history. Football, somehow, had preserved them exactly as they were on that summer evening.

The following year I left for Dubai.

The World Cup in Argentina arrived soon afterwards. Like thousands of expatriates, I watched matches with friends from many different countries. During a World Cup everyone suddenly becomes an expert. Friendly arguments lasted long after the final whistle, and for a little while nationality mattered less than the joy of watching a beautiful game.

Some moments never leave you.

Harald Schumacher’s terrible collision with Patrick Battiston.

Maradona’s impossible “Hand of God.”

In those days there was no VAR to rescue referees from their mistakes. What was given remained given, and the debates continued for years.

By 1998, work had taken me to Japan from Australia.

That year the FIFA World Cup was being played in France, but for the Japanese it was about far more than a tournament taking place on the other side of the world. It was the first time their national team had qualified for the World Cup, and an entire nation seemed to be discovering what it meant to belong on football’s biggest stage.

One evening I found myself in a club where Japan’s match was being shown on giant screens. The place was overflowing. People wore blue jerseys, waved flags and sang songs I could not understand. Every attack brought the crowd to its feet. Every missed opportunity drew a collective groan. When Japan came close to scoring, complete strangers embraced one another in anticipation.

I had never witnessed anything quite like it.

Until then, football had largely been something I watched. That evening I discovered another side of the game. It could unite complete strangers and make them feel part of something larger than themselves. I could not understand the language around me, yet for those ninety minutes I understood every emotion. The excitement was infectious, and long after the final whistle I carried that memory with me.

Life, meanwhile, carried on with its own quiet certainty.

My family grew up in Australia.

In 1994, when my son was still a little fellow — not yet four years old — I enrolled him in our local football club. His attention wandered more often than the ball did. He watched birds, clouds and passing dogs with equal fascination. Yet somehow he stayed with the game, season after season.

Soon my Saturdays belonged to football fields.

Tuesday evenings belonged to training sessions.

I do not remember every match he played, but I remember standing beside the touchline in winter sunshine, chatting with other parents while the children chased a ball with all the seriousness in the world. Those ordinary afternoons have become some of my happiest memories.

Every four years another tradition quietly entered our home.

When the World Cup arrived, I would wake my son before dawn. The house would still be asleep as we sat together in front of the television, wrapped in blankets, watching the world’s finest players perform beneath distant stadium lights.

There was something magical about those mornings. The kettle would boil softly in the kitchen, the commentators spoke in hushed excitement, and outside our own windows the first birds were only just beginning to sing.

Only recently have I realised something else.

I never woke my daughters.

It simply never occurred to me.

In those days football was still thought of as a boys’ game, and I accepted that without ever questioning it. The world has changed since then, thankfully. Today girls dream of World Cups just as naturally as boys do.

One of my daughters eventually joined a football club while she was at university.

Watching her run across the field brought me quiet happiness, but also a gentle thought. Had I invited her to those early morning World Cup matches, perhaps she too would have fallen in love with the game much earlier.

Age has a way of presenting such reflections — not as regrets exactly, but as small reminders that the world keeps growing wiser than we once were.

Now another World Cup has arrived.

The kick-off times in Australia demand unusual habits. I eat dinner while the afternoon is still bright, go to bed ridiculously early and rise long before dawn.

My friends smile when I tell them.

Perhaps they are right to laugh.

Yet every four years I find myself doing exactly the same thing.

When the television flickers to life in the quiet hours before sunrise, I often think of the long road football has travelled with me.

It begins with Brother Cassian placing a leather football into the hands of a shy schoolboy in Colombo.

It passes through a room full of engineers watching pictures arrive from Europe.

It lingers among expatriate friends in Dubai, in a jubilant club in Japan where an entire nation celebrated its first World Cup, beside suburban football grounds in Australia, and in peaceful mornings shared with my children.

Strange, isn’t it, that a simple game can become a thread running through an entire life?

Mine began on a dusty patch of ground in Colombo.

It has followed me across oceans, through countries, through youth, middle age and retirement.

And that is why, after all these years, I still set the alarm for a World Cup match.