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June 09, 2006

Take me out to the ball game

Today, all around the world, billions of people are united. They are putting aside their petty differences (sort of) and taking time out of their day to pause for something that, across national, continental, racial, and economic boundaries (most of the time) brings us all together in a common human activity. They are going to watch a soccer game.


In the 2002 World Cup, Korea was voted the Most Entertaining Team. Photo from FIFA website.

That’s right, today is the first day of the World Cup. It happens every four years and people from diverse countries all over the world do whatever it takes to be near a TV to watch it. According to its governing body, the Federation Internationale de Football Association, or FIFA, over 28 billion people watched the last World Cup in 2002. The 2006 World Cup kicks off today and lasts for about a month.

Why sound you care about a soccer tournament—excuse me, football, as it is known to the rest of the world—when the sport is not terribly popular in the U.S.? For one thing, football, deemed “the beautiful game” is wonderfully simple. The concept of offsides is the only relatively complicated rule that a viewer would want to learn, and even that is not necessary to understand what’s going on. Just pick a team to root for and watch them struggle to put the ball in the other team’s net, using any body part except their hands. While football does not employ the intense strategizing of say, “American football,” anyone can enjoy it. And fans can take pleasure in watching the way a team can employ an offensive strategy to neutralize the other team’s defense or the breathtaking way a seemingly-impossible backwards bicycle kick clinches a crucial goal.

And football is a social experience. Whole nations are united in euphoria with an announcer’s “GOOOOOOOL!” Even a game between the two least important teams can unite spectators in an emotional rollercoaster of faith, joy, loss, and adrenaline. In a recent game I watched between two Mexican clubs, with both teams’ hopes of advancing to a tournament on the line, fans were literally sobbing in the stands. The camera kept zooming in on the losing team’s supporters’ tear-streaked faces as they cried and prayed. Then, in the final seconds of the game, the entire losing team rushed the opposite goal, and it was the goalkeeper who scored the crucial goal. The fans’ tears erupted into screams of joy, and the other team’s fans burst into tears. And like any sport, one team’s story of triumph or defeat is composed of the individual stories of its players, the majority of whom have overcome obstacles to get to where they are today, and who can be charming or infuriating, heroes or villains.

And it can unite or divide. You don’t have to root for your national team if you don’t want to. If you watch the World Cup in a large group, in a restaurant or a sports bar, you can pick favorites between whatever two nations make it to the final game and spend the entire game arguing with the other half of the room.