Borderline Futbol
The world is watching. Are you? Most of the United States seems bored or perplexed by the World Cup, and most of the world thinks we are ridiculous for not succumbing to the fever of The Beautiful Game. For heaven's sake, a war was fought over soccer. And we still don't get it.I for one, am excited. I'm excited to see possibly the best American squad in the game (can you name a player? Can you name two?) in possibly our history, and to see my beloved Swiss playing, and fellow underdogs (but highly rated) Honduras. I'll cheer for any team that plays Argentina, with its kooky volatile coach/playing legend Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi, the pouty Best Player in the World, or the New York Yankees of world soccer, Brazil, who just seem to win by taking the field and intimidating all challengers. I'll return to my love/hate relationship with the unreliable English team led by Wayne Rooney, my best fantasy football player, much to my dismay. Everyone will have a soft spot for the host South Africans, Ghana and the Ivory Coast. I do like the French, who boast my favorite player, Thierry Henry. And I'll hope Cristiano Ronaldo of powerhouse Portugal does something ridiculously immature to add to his growing legend of self-love.
See, in reality, the World Cup is a big, bloated beautiful soap opera, filled with back stories and heroes and villains. In some ways, it's like the faces (good guys) and heels (bad guys) of pro wrestling, but on a more storied and fabled level.
In 1992, I got a chance to actually see the cup as it made a tour of the U.S. before the 1994 games were held here. I was in graduate school at Akron, and went with my Spanish colleague Migel Angel Candel. The cup, behind glass, was on display in a semi trailer, of all things, that housed a traveling exhibition of soccer. It was pretty small, as I remember. But as Miguel Angel stood staring, I swear the always-cool Spaniard was near tears, and he and our Costa Rican compatriot Erick were also possibly drooling. They'd seen the Holy Grail, in person. I just saw a small gold statue with a globe on top.
To understand soccer, you have to see it live. I don't care if it's Park District pee-wee soccer, or futbol in a screaming, shaking Central American stadium. I've seen three games in Costa Rica, and despite the fact that during one game at halftime, a man sold small appliances like toasters and blenders off a cart (which, in reality, added to the mystique of it all), the shouts, cheers, singing, and pre-game festivities were like nothing I've ever seen. How many playing fields INSIDE a stadium are surrounded by barbed wire fences? How many foxholes with armed guards pointing rifles at the crowds do you find behind American end zones or outfields? LeBron has security when he travels, but I doubt he or his fellow players (whatever team that may be) are surrounded by police in fatigues carrying machine guns as they swagger on to the hardwood, do they? Or, as they do in most pro clubs, walk out hand and hand with youngsters, every match, every player. Imagine if the Browns ran on to the field, accompanied at every game, holding the hands of Pop Warner football youngsters. That's not a bad thought, to connect the pros with the young, is it?
In England, through an Internet connection, I managed to sit four rows directly behind the home goal at the fabled Highbury Stadium in posh North London, and watched Arsenal legend Dennis Bergkamp, the Nonflying Dutchman, score a goal. I watched in amazement as the packed stands swayed and sang songs for 90-plus minutes, even cheering at the half-time highlights, and the two closed streets of grilling food, vendors and drunken singing fans in London's dangerous and poor White City, where I watched the Queen's Park Rangers play Manchester City, and my friend Greg, in fear, whispered at halftime, "Let's get out of here. Now. While we can."
In the muddy pitches in rural England and Scotland, I've seen youngsters playing with the same fire and fury as their heroes, debated the game's merits in the pubs, and watched on the side of a mountain in Honduras, as youngsters chased a ratty ball to a netless goal, on a perfectly marked red clay field, with the sheer cliff of a mountain behind the open goal. I've often wondered who had to go after the ball if the goalkeeper missed. In the city streets of San Jose, Costa Rica, I've seen kids kicking balls made of trash, and when grilling a group of very poor Honduran schoolchildren about who was the best team in the world, they shouted in unison, "We are!" Those are the other magical moments of soccer. Those are the moments that make it The Beautiful Game, and the only thing outside of the Olympics, which seems to have a global connection of emotion and pride.
Yes, if you watch a match on television, it probably seems boring. The same die-hard Browns fans who belittle soccer are the very same proud parents who cheer on their sons and daughters at pee-wee soccer, and have set up little cones in the backyard for the kids to dribble around. No, soccer isn't part of our heritage, and while most of us wouldn't recognize Landon Donovan or Edson Buddle if they stood right in front of us, we have a chance to embrace a global passion, and getting in synch with the rest of the world for one glorious moment isn't always a bad thing, is it?