Bob Marley loved football. It was his second passion after the music "I love music before i love football. If i love football first maybe can be dangerous.I love music and then football after. Playing football and singing is dangerous, because the football get very violent. I sing about peace love and all of that stuff, and something might happen yunno. If a man tackle you hard it bring feelings a war (laugh), August 1980". Bob never played in club, but in school in Trenchtown. When he was young he could played football with anythings like can, an orange peel, somtetimes he came home very late in the night after a football match. A night when Bob was 15, his mother beat him with a belt because he destroyed his shoes, he was running all around the house and calling his uncle to help him. After that he cleaned the house and repaired a table to make his mother pleasure.When he was on tour the ball was never far, the wailers would play football most of the time before a concert, backstage or during the soundcheck.

When he came back to his home in Jamaica, he always made teams to play football, from the engineers to the bananas seller. He was a technical player, some of people who played with him said that you shouldn't be tackled by Marley cause he was very strong. When he loosing a match he became angry and vexed due to his little size, he couldn't accept to be defeated. He always comparing football to freedom " I need that, free..Football is freedom". His best friend Alan Cole was a professional football player. He trained Bob when they were in Jamaica, runnin on the beach, to keep a good endurance they were doing fake fight and runnin all around Hope Road (Bob's house). Bob's passion for football is a secret to no one, one of a proof is that he spent over 1,000 dollars in sports stores in Rio (a match was scheduled in the afternoon of the same day)

Favorite players of Marley were Pele, Oswaldo Ardiles, Maradonna also when he start in national team of Argentina, In 1978, the Kaya Tour was the great moment footballistic of the Bob Marley's career. All was designed to follow the World cup to Argentina, to the great displeasure of the medias. In the bus there was a tv to watch the matches, Bob watched matches without sound because he didn't like the comments. This year, the world cup was raised by Argentina. Bob was an admiror of the Latin game, the first of July 1978 a journalist interviewed Bob about the World Cup .

Ossie Ardiles was transferred on the northern side of London to Tottenham Hotspur, with Ricardo Villa. Marley was a big Ardiles supporter, Rob Partridge who was working for Island Records sent a Tee Shirt of Tottenham to Bob. Danny Baker a renowned English soccer radio and television announcer at the time, played with Marley at Battersea Park in London in 1977 and saw on him the qualities to be a professional jamaican footballer. During his musical career, Bob met many professionals footballers and played wtih them like Paolo Cesar, the Fc Nante...

But Bob's passion provoced problems for his health, in fact his big right toe as been hurt many times in 1974 during a match in Trenchtown, in 1977 in England at Battersea Park due to a tackle from Danny Baker and second time in Paris by a French journalist. The irony of fate wanted that Bob Marley died of the continuations of a badly neat wound caused at the time of a football match.

During the Uprising tour in 1980, Bob refused much interviews to play football. According to Rob Partridge, during the English part of the tour, a succession of futsal matches were played next to the ground of the Fulham team, we can noted that the 16th of July 1980 Bob played in a football match against a team led by fellow reggae artist Eddy Grant and some members of The Sons Of Jah (who were always playing with Bob when he was in England).

By considering his love for football, that seems completely normal that the greatest concert which Bob Marley & The Wailers ever done was at the San Siro Stadium in Milan. 100,000 people saw the magic show a performance. When Bob was in Brasil, he ask Paulo Ceasar to help him for a project "Before Bob went back to Jamaica, he asked me to help him with a project he had. He wanted to create a "football school" in Jamaica, but Bob got sick and unfortunately I never saw him again."

 

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