the state we're in

I played soccer for the first time when I was 5.  My team, the Blue Angels, won nearly every game, if memory serves me.  (… and after each game, my coach would give each player a pack of Garbage Pail Kids cards as a congratulatory gift.  Mine were summarily thrown away and replaced with baseball cards from Circle K, which was my foot in the door to loving another beautiful game, but that’s neither here nor there.)

The Blue Angels were good—really good.  At the tender age of 6, I joined my next team—the Bears.  The Bears lost every game and were an utter mess, and it didn’t take more than a few games before we saw the humor in it and gave ourselves another moniker.

If anyone would have swept soccer under the rug and moved on to something else, it would have been a member of the Bad News Bears.  But not this kid.  My love of the beautiful game has been mercurial at times, but like a long strip of toilet paper on the bottom of an unwitting shoe, soccer has stuck to me ever since.

Since J and I don’t have cable—much less the special sports tier on which I could follow my favorite European teams—it can be a bit tough to keep up with things in the soccer world.  Reading online about a low header that hits the back of the net off of a beautifully curving corner kick just doesn’t have the same allure as actually seeing it in the context of the game.  Fortunately, the more I think about it, the more our lack of cable may contribute to the poorly-throttled excitement and exhilaration I feel every fourth summer when the World Cup is around the corner.

With that exhilaration in mind, and with the World Cup less than a day away, I wanted to recap some of my memories from the last several World Cups.

1994: “My salad days, when I was green in judgment…”  The US hosted the Cup, made it to the Round of 16 and was ousted by Brazil.  That we were eliminated on the 4th of July—while my cousins and I ran back and forth between a swimming pool and the broadcast—just added insult to injury.  The national team’s uniforms were a disgrace (see below).  Alexi Lalas’s hair and goatee were decidedly not a disgrace (see below).  I watched the final between Brazil and Italy at Gran’s, and Brazil won on penalty kicks (letdown).  A couple of my friends got really lucky and were able to see Spain and South Korea play at the Cotton Bowl early on in the Cup, and I envied them for it… especially the one that wasn’t even a soccer fan!

1998: France hosted the World Cup in ‘98, which was convenient because I spent much of the summer of ‘98 in France through a short-term exchange program.  I didn’t get to attend any of the games since none were being played in Normandy, but the experience of watching games in French with 6 to 10 crazed Frenchmen and women was one I’ll never forget.  France won the Cup that year, of course, on the shoulders of an epic performance in the final by Zinedine Zidane.  As fate would have it, my exchange partner and I watched the final in English in Texas with 6 to 10 Americans.  It wasn’t quite the same experience.

2002: With the Cup being played in Japan & South Korea, games routinely kicked off between 2 and 4 am.  Additionally, my roommates and I didn’t have ESPN.  Obviously, the only sane solution was to wake up in the middle of the night and drive across town to a friend’s apartment to watch the games.  It was worth it, since the US beat a once-in-a-generation Portugal team that many picked to win the Cup.  Thanks to a second Portugal loss at the hands of South Korea, the US squeaked into the Round of 16 to face Mexico.  Our glory in shutting out El Tri was short-lived, however, as we were snuffed out by Germany in the quarterfinals.  Reigning champs France self-destructed completely and were eliminated without scoring a single goal!

2006: J and I got married in the summer of 2006, and the World Cup started while we were on our honeymoon.  Naturally I wasn’t able to see many games during the group stages.  We honeymooned in a tiny village in northern Italy, and with the Azzuri fielding a strong team (if not a boring one), there was a lot of excitement around.  On a night halfway through the group stage, we walked into the town square to find a big projection screen set up with a couple hundred frenzied soccer fans watching a broadcast—I felt like I had been cast 50 years back in time, and I still grin ear-to-ear when I think of it.  I also recall taking a day trip to Verona, where we saw a bunch of US fans draped in US flags, sitting at a cafe gathered around a television, while they were ribbed & heckled by the other 95% of the crowd.  The back-and-forth between the US fans and everyone else was good-natured and really funny.

2010: There are a lot of good players out with injuries, but this year still has me feeling all tingly.  Obviously Spain is poised to go deep in the tournament, if not win it outright.  They have blazing speed and rare talent at nearly every position.  Their midfield is All-Universe (Xavi, Andrés Iniesta, Cesc Fàbregas) and they have two of the best strikers in Europe (Fernando Torres and David Villa).

One of my favorite players and in my opinion the best striker in the world is Argentinean Lionel Messi.  Check out this video and try and tell me this guy won’t have a strong Cup.  I would say 40% of the goals in this clip were literally undefendable.

If you’re feeling uninterested in the Cup, or overwhelmed at the number of players you know nothing about, or disconnected because soccer isn’t popular in the US, I urge you to simply consider the drama.  Spain is a powerhouse, but they are beatable—even by a good-but-not-great US team, who defeated them last year in the Confederations Cup.  I dare you to watch the highlights of that game below and not get sucked into the drama…

… and remember that games with this much drama, tension, and excitement occur almost daily during the World Cup.