World Cup Fever! Catch it! Or Not -- That's Your Right as an American!

A tongue-in-cheek (we hope) look at the world’s largest sporting event.

The World Cup starts this weekend. It runs for a month, and perhaps you’ve wondered whether getting involved in it would be fun for your family. 

Given the widespread global interest, there are many sources for solid information for those interested in following the World Cup. But there are few resources for Americans who don’t really have a clue what it’s all about – written by other Americans who also don’t have a clue! We’re here to help.

The World Cup is a soccer tournament. To the rest of the world, what we call “soccer” is known as “kickball.” Do you remember kickball from elementary school? That’s the sport other countries love so much. However, they apparently don’t do the part where you pick up the ball and throw it at someone as they run from base to base. Too bad -- that’s action!

Why do people from other lands love soccer so much? Because they don’t enjoy the scoring part of sports. They like seeing people run around and kick a ball, with reassuringly little risk of the ball going into a net. When a match ends up 0-0, soccer aficionados are euphoric! That’s because when someone does score a goal, his celebration is usually so annoying that everyone wishes he hadn’t.

On the other hand, soccer people feel differently about scoring once the game is over. Then they love seeing the ball go into the net over and over. So matches tied at the end of regulation are decided on penalty kicks, which take great skill and determination to miss. The goalkeeper (not to be confused with the goaltender in hockey – totally different, because in soccer there’s no ice) randomly picks a side to leap toward. So matches are pretty much decided by random coin flips. Which, as we all know, can be thrilling, depending on the coin. 

There is an aspect of soccer which has tended to limit the sport’s appeal here in the States, but which gives us a huge opportunity in this year’s competition. Here it is:  it’s apparently never occurred to the rest of the world to use their hands in the game. They just kick that ball around, or sometimes let it smack them upside the head. 

So this is how the U.S. can dominate the World Cup this year:  by using our skills in picking up that ball, throwing it around, running with it. Those other teams won’t know what hit them!

Of course, there are many things we Americans can learn about soccer from other countries. For example, how cool it can be for players to go by just one name. Everyone’s heard of Pele, the Brazilian star who popularized soccer here in the 1970s. (Just like David Beckham popularized soccer here in the 2000s, and a succession of other guys popularized it here in other decades. As a nation, we’ve experienced repeated soccer popularization.)

Anyway, inspired by Pele, Maradona (that’s one who did know how to use his hands, by the way), Ronaldo etc., it would be fun to hear our guys try the one-name thing:  “Herb kicks the ball… Floyd gives it a kick… oh, here comes Larry – and he kicks the ball too!”

And of course American athletes can learn from the way soccer players recover in minutes from even the most devastating, life-threatening injuries. Nothing beats seeing a man tragically struck down in his prime by an invisible blow, writhing in agony, spring up to his feet just moments later and prance away! It’s a wonder.

Part of the excitement of the World Cup is that it’s a departure from the usual way professional soccer is organized. Most of the time, the way it works is straightforward enough:  there are national leagues, and a hierarchy of multiple divisions within them (with teams moving up and down among the divisions), and seemingly a couple of champions per nation, and then international champions' leagues running at the same time with the same teams, and the occasional overlapping continent-wide championship, and then just a lot of matches that seem to fall into a ‘none of the above’ category (such as a few weeks ago here in Washington when Internazionale Milan played our local Major League Soccer team -- it worked out fine because none of the players raised those pesky ‘Wait, why are we playing each other?’ kinds of questions during the game).

All to say, soccer’s organization is normally subtle.

It’s so much simpler during the World Cup:  country vs. country. Just like the Olympics, except with no opportunities to combine shooting and cross-country skiing. It’s popular anyway, though. 

Triumph in the World Cup is interpreted as national validation, a conclusive way to demonstrate the innate superiority of one country, and every person in it, to another.

Well, except for the U.S. Here anytime one American team beats another American team playing an American sport in America, we get national validation. You can chant “USA, USA” after pretty much any game here, from roller derby to badminton, and everyone around you will join right in.

If you want to get in on the World Cup excitement and national pride, this Saturday would be the time to start. The U.S. team’s first match is against England. It’s kind of a grudge match since we, you know, threw off their yoke and all.

The English consider themselves to have invented soccer. Not sure how much inventing soccer really took, but anyway, they feel they did it. And they have been a powerhouse, with the world’s most prestigious league, and many of the best players.

They just haven’t had the best luck winning the World Cup. As in, since 1966. They’d love to win it in 2010, and they are among the favorites.

And they’d love to start winning it against the U.S. on Saturday. They lost to us back in 1950, one of the biggest upsets of all time. Going down to our upstart team this year is not part of the plan.

For Americans, winning the England match would be, how to put it… I don’t know… kind of mildly fun? It’s our team, might as well root for it to win, right? I guess? Though most of us do like England a lot too, actually.

Losing to England, on the other hand, would be our most devastating national sports defeat since, perhaps, losing the Olympic hockey final to Canada. Remember that? It was this year, if that helps. As a nation, we didn’t get over that loss until the cool stuff in the Olympic closing ceremony started a couple of hours later. If we lose this England match Saturday afternoon, it could be like that. 

So is the World Cup worth following? Well, most of the other 6-billion-plus people in the world love this game all the time. Love is a bit much to ask of us, but what the heck, let’s try to like it. 

For a month.