A SCENE in Episode 13 of the Korean series Crash Landing on You hit hard.
The reunited Captain Ri and Se-ri, along with their North Korean soldier friends, watch a televised football match between South Korea and Japan at a packed chicken and beer restaurant.
The North Koreans and their host cheer on the South Korean team and celebrate each time they scored against Japan, with the young tycoon Se-ri offering to shoulder every single bill in the resto-bar to celebrate the win.
While the scene’s significance in highlighting the series’s overarching themes of unity and oneness did not elude me, I also could not help but feel a sudden sense of longing for the sport that I love the most.
Blame it on my prevailing Koreanovela-induced mood at that time, but I suddenly realized that fans of the sport such as myself will be missing a good deal of football for no one knows how long.
International and local football competitions have ground to a halt as a precautionary measure amid the coronavirus pandemic. Even festivals closer to home have been postponed indefinitely.
And with school shut for at least a month and with social distancing a must, student athletes, club players and weekend warriors won’t be playing any football in the following weeks.
The football community, of course, understands that it must do its part to “flatten the curve” of coronavirus infections, especially in the country.
Our collective health for the greater good, after all, is of utmost importance.
For now, we’ll have to settle with playing football on gaming consoles, laptops or mobile phones, if not watch highlights on Youtube or football documentaries on Netflix.
But nothing beats the sense of anticipation, excitement and joy the real thing brings. What distant feelings they have become.
So if you feel the pinch brought about by this loss that you can almost say “come back now” a la CLOY to the beautiful game, you are not alone.
Football sepanx is real.