“Some people believe football is a matter of life or death. I can assure you, it’s much, much more important than that.”

U.S. President Donald Trump has likely never heard of Bill Shankly, the legendary manager who took control of a second-tier football club called Liverpool in the late 1950s and put it on track to eventually become a household name across the soccer universe.

Maybe if the rambunctious president had, then billions of football fanatics across the globe wouldn’t have become fervent Belgium supporters on Monday night, desperately hoping their new, temporary favourite would teach the United States’ team a bitter lesson on how to play the beautiful game.

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Because it was those famous words of Shankly’s that vividly capture the hold football has on regular people everywhere. For many of them, the simple act of kicking a ball toward a net at one end of a field can transcend the routine........

© Calgary Herald