The Penalty Kick
The Penalty Kick
A short story about childhood imagination and World Cup finals.
Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly.—Langston Hughes
Note: This story was updated to its book version in October 2023.
Just as I do today, I spent a lot of my time as a boy wandering through daydreams. For anyone who grows up in a family of sports lovers, it’s common for one of these dreams to be of some heroic moment achieved on the world’s biggest stage. Mine was scoring a World Cup–winning penalty kick. I wrote the script for it while lying with my eyes closed in bed or walking to 16th Street Park with a ball tucked under my arm.
Like the other 8 billion people on the planet, I could not have foreseen when I wrote a fictionalized version of my heroic moment and published it online on May 2, 2018, that four years later the final of the men’s World Cup in Qatar would come down to a penalty kick.
As a lifelong Argentina supporter, I hoped dearly that it wouldn’t. But God has a sense of humor. As this was my first big-headed delusion, I think it makes for an appropriate opener to this collection of stories.
Jacob Costa gathered the ball from the back of the net and carried it 12 paces toward a spot he had picked out in the dirt in front of the goal.
He dug his toe in and stamped the ground hard. Jacob didn’t want the ball to budge once he had set it. Satisfied, he leaned over and placed the ball gently into the dirt pocket. He examined it for a second, then lifted it about a foot from the ground and spun it carefully in his hands before placing it back onto the dirt. Jacob’s dad had taught him to always set the ball down this way. “Never let the referee do it for you,” he had told him one afternoon as they practiced before a big game. “It’s your penalty kick—not theirs.”
Every day for three weeks, Jacob had watched World Cup games on TV with his grandfather. At the final whistle, he would sprint to the basement, grab a black-and-white soccer ball, then march down to the small park behind his parents’ house to kick the ball until the floodlights came on. The lights signaled to Jacob that soon the adults would show up and that he had to go home. After rushing through dinner, Jacob spent the hour before sunset on the porch with the ball in his hands, watching curiously as older men hopped the yellow brick wall at the end of his street on their way to play soccer with their friends. They were mostly laborers from Mexico and Central America, and they wore jerseys Jacob recognized from the TV broadcasts: the dark green of Mexico, luminescent yellow of Brazil, and deep red of Spain.
The sun on his back in the stifling mid-July heat, Jacob took a step away from the ball and lifted his eyes toward the goal. The once-white net was now a dusty gray and hanging sadly, full of holes. After taking a deep breath, he lifted his gaze to the sky and made the sign of the cross.
“It all comes down to this,” he heard the voice of the British commentator Ian Darke say. “Jacob Costa is going to be the last man to the spot for Argentina.” (In his head, he always played for Argentina. It was the team his dad and grandfather cheered for when they watched together in the kitchen.)
Standing behind the ball, Jacob lowered his gaze. He calculated: three steps back and another to the left. With each movement, he felt as if he was stepping backward in time, transported to the Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro on the eve of the 1950 World Cup final between Brazil and Uruguay. Jacob turned his back and stared into the distance, imagining 200,000 people in the stands. That day, Uruguay miraculously came from behind to beat the hosts 2–1 in their backyard. His grandfather had told him the story many times. Supposedly, the Brazilian fans threw themselves to their deaths after losing the final. Across the country, the news reported heart attacks and suicides after the final whistle.
Jacob inhaled through his nose, exhaled hard, and turned to face the goal again.
“Costa has been Argentina’s most consistent penalty taker. He hasn’t missed from the spot all year. But can he do it on the big stage here? Millions around the world are watching, asking themselves the same question: Will Jacob Costa be the hero for Argentina?”
Jacob scowled; his eyes narrowed. He was meters from the most fearsome goalkeeper he could imagine. A Frankenstein-esque creation—a mix of Gianluigi Buffon, Edwin van der Sar, and Hugo Lloris—returned the glare. Jacob ran his left hand through his hair, which was drenched in sweat, and stared into the imaginary stands brimming with hordes of fans tensely awaiting his next move.
Filling his lungs with air, Jacob focused his gaze on the goalkeeper in his mind. He was bouncing around, taunting him, like a boxer dancing in the corner before throwing the first punch. Jacob smirked. He strode toward the ball, planted his left foot beside it, then drove a powerful shot that curved just inside the top right corner of the goal and through a hole in the net. Immediately, Jacob collapsed to his knees in the dirt. He raised his fists to heaven and buried his head in his hands, crying real tears.
“He’s done it! Jacob Costa has done it! He’s won the World Cup for Argentina with the very last kick of the match!”
The floodlights came on as Jacob kneeled in the dirt, imagining his teammates surrounding him. He felt their phantom embrace and heard the reverberations from the delirious throbbing of the people shouting in the stands. The ball was 20 yards away in a ditch beside the trees. It was time to go home.
Moments are powerful.
We collect them from the time we’re children to get lost in when we’re older and the distance grows between the experiences of our old selves and our current realities.
When I was a boy, I spent a lot of time in the park behind my parents’ house in Bayonne. It was in that park that my dad taught me how to play soccer (it’s the same park from “My Dad and the Soccer Ball”). For years, starting in eighth grade, I’d head to that park alone or with my friends to play picados. I have never been a very good soccer player, but I’ve been obsessed with the game for as long as I can remember. Through college, I’d watch or play from sun up to sundown most weekends. When I drove in the car with Nono, he’d never let me listen to the radio, so instead we talked about Argentina’s national team. It was on one of those car rides to the pet cemetery in Old Bridge, where he had buried his dog, that he told me all about Riquelme and El Conejo Saviola.
Even though I was born in the United States, I never watched U.S. soccer growing up. My dad, grandpa, uncles, and all the other men in my family watched Argentina, so I did, too. My first hero was Gabriel Batistuta. I wrote about him for Mrs. Squittieri in eighth grade when she assigned us a book report about one of our childhood heroes. Many of the other students thought it was Jesus when they saw Batistuta’s picture on the cover.
Read my story about Batistuta.
I imagine there are millions of boys and girls around the world—maybe even every boy and girl who has ever kicked a soccer ball—who imagine themselves as Messi, Ronaldo, Zlatan, Mia Hamm, Marta, and Alex Morgan when they’re playing with the ball. It is what drives us to keep going. We want to be like the players we admire. We want to celebrate. We want to be loved. And, for many of us, it doesn’t start in some rigid club system on perfectly manicured turf fields. It starts in our backyard. It starts in a vacant lot across the street. It starts on a dusty soccer field where no one is watching. Or, maybe, everyone in the world is watching. It all depends on how you see it.
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