My son and I were fortunate to be at Wembley Stadium last night to watch a very exciting and skilful game of football. Unfortunately for England fans the skill was mainly with the French players, who played to use the French word with "elan". This is one of those words that does not translate very well in to English, but perhaps the nearest words would be dash or spirit.
They were passing the ball accurately and finding their team-mates, they always looked as though something was about to happen, whereas the English players showed hesitation and lack of confidence. We were seated near the French fans and they were also much more enthusiastic, sang the Marseilles with verve, but all in fun. Many, many families were there out of 85,000 in the gate and there was no bad temper or hooliganism anywhere. A great credit all together to the game of football.
By the way I just remembered the Hebrew word for elan, dash, spirit- it is MERETZ!!!!