Writing about sports when there are no sports is pretty challenging. I have to give a lot of credit to Louisville City’s social media team for getting so creative at generating content every day to keep fans and followers engaged. The massive contraction of activity due to COVID-19 is bad, and the virus and its impact on families and healthcare workers is far worse.

However, I think that there are lots of things that will come out of all of this mess even stronger. Social media teams have had to be super nimble to a) keep themselves busy and b) justify their jobs, to be honest. Lots of people aren’t making money. We’re learning more and more about the people in our community that are really important: public health officials, healthcare workers, grocery store employees, and teachers, among others.

I’m also learning how much I miss soccer. I miss a lot of things, but I think so many of those are wrapped up in that game. Community. Collective emotional swings. Moments of brilliance and idiocy. Justice and injustice. Euphoria and whatever the opposite of euphoria is. Boredom and excitement. Angst and relief. A whole palette of emotion and feeling can get wrapped up in that 90 minutes. I think that’s true for many other sports, too, but I probably feel it more with soccer than anything else.

Watching old games on TV helps, but it’s definitely not the same. I wonder if folks working for leagues and clubs realize that. TV money is great and provides tons of opportunity to invest in your club and product, make no mistake. There’s almost no one that would turn it down. But gearing the game day experience away from the fans actually in attendance and toward the ones watching on TV removes so much of that emotion from the whole enterprise, I think. There’s a lot of difference between watching a game in your living room or even at a bar and actually being there with thousands of other people and feeling the same things at exactly the same time.

Times like these help me remember why I fell in love with soccer to begin with, too. It’s a global game, with a global language. There aren’t many places on earth that you could go and not find a soccer game to watch or join in on. Well, at least that was the case before the mandatory six-foot rule. And I hope someday soon it’ll be the universal sport and universal language again.

When it is, I can’t wait to be in Lynn Family Stadium celebrating it with thousands of you. VAMOS MORADOS.