
Despite hailing from the cricket-loving Jamaica, Bob Marley played football almost as much as he played music and was never far from a ball and a kickabout with his friends.

Many photos remain of the rastafarian icon with a football, including ones of him in Battersea Park, London, his home in the mid 1970s. Although a famous Pan-Africanist, his father was actually a white Jamaican of English stock with his roots in Sussex.
Coming from Jamaica to England was thus in a sense returning to half of his roots, as well as to the homeland of the sport he loved so much.

When asked why he said of football, "I need it", he replied simply, "freedom - because football is freedom."
Tragically, the global phenomenon that was Bob Marley came to an end in 1981, when he fell ill with malignant melanoma. Flying home to Jamaica after unsuccessful cancer treatment in Germany, Marley died in Miami, aged only 36.
The loss to Jamaica, reggae, black identity and the world was immense, though his message of love and music of happiness remains, in football as elsewhere.
What a shame he did not live to see Jamaica reach their first ever World Cup, at France 1998.
No doubt had he lived, Bob would have been there in person to serenade the Reggae Boyz' finest hour as they won their first ever finals match, against Japan.
-Sean O'Conor & Soccerphile
Tags
Euro 2012 football
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