(or, How I Stopped Worrying About Sports and Came to Love Soccer)
He doesn’t comment on all of my World Cup posts, however. He never says anything when I use online translators to post something in German while they are playing, he has no comment when I use my rusty French to cheer on Les Bleus, nor does he say one word about any other game-related post (“and the Dutch pull ahead!”). There was nary a peep from him when I re-posted my four-year-old World Cup blog.
I've had well over a dozen soccer-related posts since the World Cup started, and slightly more than that on my Twitter feed. You'd think he'd "get it" by now: I obviously like the game. More likely, he’s just being deliberately silly and needling me whenever he can. So, just to needle him back (bwahahahaha), allow me to explain my history with sports in general.
Remember middle school, or as some places call it, Junior High? Yeah, that cesspool of hormones that bridged the gap between grade school and high school. Remember gym class during that time? Those were the years when we graduated from dodgeball and ruffling parachutes to playing actual team sports. Those were also the years when teachers demonstrated remarkably sadistic tendencies and introduced us to… ::shudder::.... Picking Our Own Teams!
This is probably the single most important reason why I don’t like sports in general. Picking teams is one of the worst childhood experiences ever, esp. since it was mandatory. Two members of the class (usually a couple of the "popular" kids) were chosen by the teachers as captains, and they would then alternate choosing classmates to fill out their teams. The choosing of team members usually followed a very strict pattern: friends first, decent players second, nerds and other socially awkward kids last. I was invariably chosen last.
The only reason I was chosen at all was because everybody had to be involved, no one was left out. Whether they sucked at the sport or not wasn’t important, everyone had to participate, everyone was included. That’s right, this torture was mandatory for the entire class. While including everyone may have had noble intentions, there were plenty of times I would have been just fine not being forced to play a sport I totally sucked at.
And I really, truly sucked at team sports. I was okay with individual sports (swimming, bicycling), but team sports? Forget it. It didn't even matter which one it was: baseball, basketball, field hockey, volleyball, "flag" football (AKA the kid-friendly, no-tackle, completely lame version of American football)....I was flat-out awful for every single one.
Except soccer.
Soccer was the only team sport I was ever any good at. Why, I have no idea. I just took to it naturally, I guess. I loved it! It was fun! And, since I was kind of meek and didn't want to be in the spotlight, I let the massively competitive kids handle the goals. True sportsmanship, right? To be honest, that was more politically motivated. This was the only time in gym class where my teammates weren't constantly glaring at me. Helping them get a goal was loads better than hearing them groan because I’d missed making a basket for the umpteenth time. They were happy for scoring, and I was happy just to help.
When we played soccer was also the only time I was ever amongst the first kids picked for the teams. I distinctly remember one soccer-choosing-session where someone pointed at me and said “Pick her, she’s good.” That never happened for any other sport. Naturally, that would lead me to feeling very positive towards soccer. I was the type who was good at dribbling and good at passing; I probably would have made a really good defender or midfielder. I would have, that is, if the schools I attended had soccer teams. They didn’t.
This was before soccer started catching on in the US, so the only time I ever got to play it was during gym class in middle school. In the time and place where I grew up, there were no grade school or middle school teams of any type, and no high school soccer teams. Plus, nobody ever wanted to play pick up games of soccer after school. If they played any at all it was traditional American sports – baseball, football, etc., so of course I never took part. Why would I? I was terrible at it.
We never saw soccer on TV either, so we never talked about it at school. Soccer was something the rest of the world cared about. That was a bombshell to me. Why does the rest of the world love this sport but the US does not? I was intrigued, and once I played it (and thoroughly enjoyed the experience), it made me wonder what else was out there that the US was ignoring. Clearly, the world does not begin and end with the US border.
But, having literally no support for soccer when I was little, I never got to see it much until cable TV came around and even then it was hard to find. The Spanish-language channels would always carry it, but since I never took Spanish I couldn't understand the commentators, let alone the schedule. Having weird working hours that continuously changed did not help. Late night cable channel-surfing would occasionally find an international league game with British announcers, but these gems were few and far between.
Until 1994.
This was the year the World Cup was held in the good ole U S of A. How they won the bid to host the World Cup is a mystery to me, esp. when you consider that soccer at that time was still mostly a kids’ game for the majority of the US population, but kudos to them for doing it. Even good college players in the US went overseas to play soccer professionally because there wasn't a league for them here. The MLS (Major League Soccer) had literally just been formed the year before, and the exposure of the World Cup gave it a huge boost.
I was living in Chicago in 1994, which was one of the host cities, and I scraped together just enough money to get a single ticket to one of the games; I attended the Germany vs. Belgium Second Round match. It didn't matter that I knew none of the players’ names, it didn't matter that I didn't know any of the European leagues or clubs. I was a spectator at a sporting event that I had always enjoyed, and being surrounded by extremely vocal German fans made me truly feel like I was part of something much bigger. This was something that people the whole world over got excited about. It was glorious; I loved every minute of it.
Since then I have watched every single World Cup tournament. As it’s actually aired on US television now, watching it is much easier to do. When I didn’t have cable I’d catch whatever broadcast channel had it, or flip on Univision or Telemundo. Not understanding Spanish was no longer an issue, I could follow the action, and just hearing them yell “Gooooooooaaaaallll!” was worth it. I even got up in the wee hours of the morning in 2002 to watch the live final from Japan.
The World Cup is the only team sport tournament I ever get excited about. It rivals only the Olympics in amount of time I spend in front of the television watching sports. I do not regularly watch league games, but at least now I am familiar with some of them. I do not obsess over statistics and coaching strategies, you’ll never catch me following a player draft, and I still do not know the names of most of the players, so in that regard I am not a superfan of the sport. Frankly, most of that stuff doesn't appeal to me at all; I am not that obsessive. But soccer is a sport, and it is one I have always liked, even if I don’t talk about it all that often. Everything else is just meh.
I am still in the minority of Americans who like futbol. Big deal. I love the World Cup, and I have plenty of company. I have never forgotten that the world does not end with the US border.