For the past month, my wife, my daughter, and my VCR (remember those?) have endured my quadrennial sports infatuation, the World Cup. I have put housework and work-work to the side in order to watch as many games as possible. I have taken early lunches and late lunches that would coincide with game-watching. I have checked the Italian and English papers online to see what real soccer journalists have to say about the games. I have read two soccer books and multiple soccer-related magazine articles, enjoying the growing selection of soccer sociology titles out there. And I have been rewarded with some fantastic games, some captivating finishes, and a final involving my two favorite non-US teams, Italy and France. (Here would be a good place to write something about the disappointing American team, but I will resist the temptation to comment on a team that could not find its pulse in Germany despite probably being the best team the US has ever had – OK, I couldn’t resist. On to 2010, I suppose)
There is much cliché that accompanies the World Cup. Every four years, we are told how the World Cup is the most popular sporting event in the world or how the games are so important in every other country that employers give employees days off to watch their teams play. This year, we learned that the civil war in the Ivory Coast ceased while the Ivorians were in the tournament – sadly, they went out after the first round. And anyone who has paid attention to the World Cup has heard ad nauseum about the importance of the Cup as a national source of pride for the host country, Germany, still not quite unified nearly two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Even the American apathy toward the Cup, and to soccer in general, is cliché – it is to the point that there are more stories about Americans not watching the World Cup than about the World Cup itself, perhaps the most attention ever given to not paying attention.
But since there is so much cliché already out there, it will not do too much harm for me to add my own: watching soccer, especially during the World Cup, is good for the soul.
The character traits required to live through the World Cup are good preparation for life. There is patience and focus – goals and game-changing plays don’t happen every minute, so the soccer watcher must be willing to focus for 45 minutes at a time and wait for the moments, if any, to justify his time. There is persistence as there are no commercials to disrupt the soccer watcher’s engagement. Even a trip to the bathroom risks missing a big moment and making watching all the previous and unimportant moments in vain.
The American soccer watcher must further possess a willingness and strength to stand alone, the confidence to do the unpopular thing. Perhaps even more important, the American soccer watcher must be creative and adaptable, figuring out different ways to keep up with a sport ESPN hardly cares about.
Writing from Paris after the 1998 World Cup was won by the French, Adam Gopnick wrote: “Soccer was not meant to be enjoyed. It was meant to be experienced. The World Cup is a festival of fate: man accepting his hard circumstances, the near certainty of failure.”
I could not agree more with the first point – watching soccer is an experience. For the past month, my emotions have been tied to various ninety minute matches happening halfway around the world, usually between countries I am not a citizen of. But I think Gopnick sells soccer short by describing it as “man accepting his hard circumstances.” Neither on the pitch nor in the stands nor in front of the television is anything accepted. For ninety minutes at a time, players struggle with all their skill to avoid the fate of failure or the dreaded zero on the scoreboard. For ninety minutes at a time, soccer watchers must put their soul into the match, taking a leap of faith that it will be worth it in the end. (This time around, no game was more worth it than the Germany-Italy semi-final match decided in the final minutes of overtime after nearly two hours of scorelessness – what an unbelievable rush!).
And more often than not, it is worth it in the end. The World Cup is, as Gopnick wrote, a festival of fate. However, it is not about accepting the near certainty of failure, but about engaging with the world and enjoying the ride in spite of the near certainty of failure. And that is precisely the type of thing that is good for the soul.
2 comments:
That's a real swell article and all, but allow me to tell you why soccer sucks. I have patiently tried to watch the world cup and get into it, and i'm not a reactionary american who hates anything foreign (i think that much
should be obvious), but i have been pretty annoyed. Here is why
1. The referreing is the worst i have seen in any major sport. What
compounds this is that the referee has soooo much control over the game. The netherlands v portugal match was a complete farce. The penalties are, in a word, or two, too penal. The guy dives in the box yesterday and gets a goal out of it. If you flop in a basketball game you might get two free throws. We need instant replay or something to get the calls right if they are that important. Then, the yellow and red cards seem completely
arbitrary, it's just a mess, and needs to be corrected.
2. If you go up 2-0, the game is over, you just back up everyone and it's going to basically be impossible to come back.
3. Teams get tied and they go into a shell and play for penalty kicks.
Penalty kicks are the most ridiculous way to end a sporting event i think i've ever seen. It would be like ending a bball game with a free throw shooting contest, or a baseball game with a homerun derby, what a joke.
4. The substitutions, i think they should allow more, and you should be able to come back in the game. This makes no sense to me, by overtime everyone is dead, why don't they allow as many subsitutions as you like? Then we
could get fresh legs in for overtime and it might actually be something to watch instead of watching both teams praying for penalty kicks.
There are moments of great beauty in the game and watching good teams and players play the game well was enjoyable, but there is too much wrong with the game, it's really flawed.
Last week, I wrote about the joys of watching the World Cup. Less than 48 hours after the column posted, what had been a pleasant tournament was marred by a vicious head butt issued by France’s Zinedine Zidane into an Italian defender’s chest. The Zidane head butt, his ejection from the game, and France’s subsequent defeat, will undoubtedly be the most memorable story of the World Cup and it is certainly not a moment worthy of the lavish praise I threw on soccer-watching in my column. The head butt deflated the remainder of the game and made watching the World Cup final awkward and sad rather than good for the soul. I am sorry that it happened.
Post a Comment