They once called him King Kazu. Now he is something different, a man who challenges time with the same stubborn elegance with which he defends an ancient love. Kazuyoshi Miura he will enter his 41st season as a professional footballer. The years will become 59 in February. He will still have a shirt to wear, other buses to catch, other Sundays to wait for.
But perhaps this time it has nothing to do with the stubborn perseverance with which Valentino Rossi sought his tenth title and eternal revenge on Marc Marquez, this time it has nothing to do with the fear of the dark confessed by Francesco Totti after his last kick of a ball, nor even LeBron James’ desire to be joined by his son. In Miura’s border between the joy of playing and the inability to imagine oneself elsewhere, perhaps the culture of Japan and the concept of ikigai have more to do with it, the one for which the profound reason for our existence is worth living.
The idea of completely retiring to private life after a certain age is less rooted than in the West. Dedication to one’s craft, to a passion, has a long term or not at all. Elders are eternal guardians of wisdom and mastery. They maintain a role in the community, they give themselves a purpose that combats loneliness.
The football field is Miura’s ikigai. His perseverance is regarded with admiration, not with puzzlement, because the elderly are the moral center of the country. But football doesn’t forgive, it measures kilometers and lungs, it measures the speed with which an idea becomes a cut or an own goal. Miura still moves the ball like a flame that must not go out. “My passion never changes,” he said.
That never is the word that sparks the debate. On the one hand there is tenderness for those who do not betray the child they once were, on the other the feeling that to remain special one must not become a walking monument. Longevity in sport seems to have become a superior form of storytelling. If you don’t last you are not. There is something touching about a body that doesn’t give up, but there is also something cruel. Because every minute on the pitch is a negotiation with the present. If it’s true that happiness is a continuous escape towards something, then it’s right to run as long as your legs can hold up, like Miura does. Who can blame him. Even without ikigai, we are full of people for whom the past does not pass, and who don’t want to give the ball to those who are waiting for the future to arrive.
