What Ronaldo's Foot and Varela's Head Can Teach Us About The A-ha Moment

94:45. In a game with 90 minutes, it's a curious point at which to have your heart broken.

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Max asked me what half they were in at about the 57 minute mark. I told him the 2nd half.  He asked how many halves there were in the game. I asked him how many halves were in a whole. He said four. Let's go through this again. It's a conversation that had started in the fall during the NFL season. Quarters and halves; total minutes; teams switch sides; 60 minutes equals 3 hours. It's not easy for a youngster still trying to understand clocks to work out how the timing of a football game works.

Soccer was supposed to be different in this regard. "If you cut something in half, how many pieces are you going have?"

"Two."

"How many halves are there in a game?"

"Two." Nice. He gets it.

In the 64th minute, Jermaine Jones absolutely destroyed a shot that the Portuguese goalie couldn't see, much less stop. Max looks at me between jumps on the couch, smiling from ear to ear, and yells, "That was a great strike!" He's adorable.

As we gathered ourselves and play resumed, he noticed I was on the edge of my seat. "What's wrong, dad?"

"There's a lot of time left. Portugal is picking up the pace."

"Wait, there's a lot of time left."

"Yeah, buddy. 25 more minutes!"

"Wait, so there ARE three halves." Whoa whoa whoa. I thought we had covered this.

I look at him.  He's bigger than I remember. He walks. He runs. He talks, he writes, he builds his own Lego sets, and he rides his bike. Each of these things happened in one amazing moment that I'm sure we have pictures of, and we've documented in the right way so as to never forget.

But at the same time, none of them happened in one moment. There was training, and there was frustration, and there were changes made to the plan so that the reason we made the plan would come to fruition.

Knowing this - understanding this - made it that much easier to stomach when - at 94:45 in a game that would be blown dead at 95:35 - Cristiano Ronaldo played a beautiful cross that was struck perfectly by a diving Varela into the back of the net, snatching a draw from the jaws of what surely looked to be a loss.  It was not lucky, and it was not all in that moment, for that moment had been practiced for hours on end. The legs, still fresh enough in the stifling heat and humidity, had trained past exhaustion on occasions too numerous to count.

That's how it is with Max's learning. He gets the credit and accolades for those moments in those moments, but it's all the building that led to it that's really responsible for the growth. All the times we fail - those are the times most responsible for the time we succeed.