BOB MARLEY, THE KING OF REGGAE AND HIS LOVE OF FOOTBALL

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Bob Marley was not exactly an Ajax fan as some might think. That is just an urban legend that caught on at some point. But one thing is very certain - the legendary Jamaican singer had a visceral, pure and deep passion for soccer that accompanied him throughout his life.

Can you imagine young Bob with his braids in the wind chasing a battered ball through the narrow streets of Kingston? The “greatest game in the world” was an integral part of the Jamaican culture in which he grew up, a constant source of joy and creative freedom. As his musical career began to take off with the Wailing Wailers, that sacred fire for soccer never went out. He simply missed no opportunity to organize impromptu little games, even involving the band members in away games.

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Some of Marley's closest friendships were born on those makeshift pitches. Peter Tosh, another reggae icon, was among his soccer buddies in the pioneering era. When Bob moved to London, he even founded his own team - the House of Dread Football Club - putting together musicians from the Wailers and Jamaican talent like Allan 'Skill' Cole. This ramshackle troop even managed to take on Nantes, a French professional team, unexpectedly winning 4-3!

For Marley, so deeply spiritual, soccer was not just a pastime. He saw it as a unifying force that could break down barriers and inequalities. He sponsored youth clubs in Jamaica to spread the word of football. And he paid tribute to his idols like Pelé and the Brazilian phenomena with a ruthless quote in “Belly Full”-“Tostão passed to Pelé.”

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Tragedy has it that the very game he loved so intensely and viscerally may have contributed to his untimely death from cancer at only 36 years old. Some speculate that a toe infection contracted while playing barefoot may have caused the melanoma that eventually devoured him. A cruel twist of fate for someone who embraced soccer with all the naive passion of a child.

Yet it is this same irrepressible passion that created, years later, the surprising but beautiful bond between Marley and Dutch Ajax. His joyous anthem “Three Little Birds” became for some obscure reason a popular song for Ajax fans. The club reciprocated this adopted partnership by making special Rastafarian-inspired third uniforms with Marley's little birds on the collar.

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In 2018, his son Ky-Mani ideally closed the circle by performing “Three Little Birds” at halftime of an Ajax game-a symbolic passing of the baton that honored his father's dual love of music and soccer. Although Bob himself had no particular sympathy for Ajax, their shared spirit and the song's message of hope created an unlikely but unbreakable bond.

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So the reggae icon may never have truly embraced the colors of Ajax, but there will forever exist a thread that intertwines his joy-filled musical milestones and the unifying, uniting capacity of the world's most popular sport. For Marley's rebellious tunes were destined from the beginning to be the definitive anthems for the greatest team of all - all of humanity.

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