How the World Cup Made Me an Obsessive

When you are 11 years old, the word “gay” has a very spe­cific mean­ing.  It has noth­ing to do with homo­sex­u­al­ity.  It is all-purpose adjec­tive that refers to some activ­ity or event that no self-respecting 11 year old boy would want any­thing to do with.  Clas­si­cal music was gay.  Pic­nics with egg salad sand­wiches were gay.  The “It’s a Small World” ride at Dis­ney­land was gay.

When I was 11, I thought soc­cer was gay.

How could it not be?  Sports was an activ­ity broad­cast on net­work tele­vi­sion with pro­duc­tion val­ues and drunken announc­ers like Howard Cosell.  Soc­cer was (at least in Los Ange­les) a grainy, week-old, video of a Bun­desliga game broad­cast on PBS (which in itself is gay) nar­rated by some guy with a British accent.  I played Lit­tle League and bas­ket­ball, and one year my mom signed me up for soc­cer because she thought it was Euro­pean, and thus cul­tural (i.e. gay).  Our team name was The Lep­rechauns (how gay is that?) because some kid’s Irish dad was the coach.  No thanks to my skills, we ended up win­ning our league, and I hid that tro­phy way back in the closet where nobody would ever see it and told my mom that I never wanted to play that dumb sport again.

That opin­ion about soc­cer pretty much stayed unchanged until 1994.  To be spe­cific, June 28, 1994.  I was liv­ing in Wash­ing­ton DC, and a friend had invited me to see Italy play Mex­ico in the World Cup at RFK Sta­dium.  I under­stood that the World Cup was a big deal, and that a lot of peo­ple were into it.  Hav­ing been in Los Ange­les for the Olympics a decade before, I learned that you could go to sport­ing events for which you had no inter­est (I saw West Ger­many beat Roma­nia in Team Hand­ball!) and still have a good time, so I went. 

That game was like noth­ing I have ever seen.  The Olympics were filled with singing and danc­ing and that stu­pid flag and lots of polite cheer­ing.  In fact, if I was 11 at the time, I would have called the Olympics gay.  This, on the other hand, was about naked nation­al­ism, unbri­dled pas­sion, and an unal­loyed desire to see your team tri­umph.  When the Ital­ians scored just after half­time, their fans were in ecstasy.  Kirk Gib­son home run ecstasy.  The Mex­i­can fans emo­tion­ally crum­bled.  When Mex­ico scored 10 min­utes later, the emo­tions reversed.  The game ended in a 1–1 draw, and even though cyn­i­cal Amer­i­can sports fans were sup­posed to feel unsat­is­fied at a draw, I was enrap­tured.  Totally hooked.  And, even­tu­ally, obsessed.

It is an obses­sion that has never really slacked.  Some­one gave me Fever Pitch and I became an Arse­nal fan.   The MLS started and I became a Galaxy fan.  Every four sum­mers I devoted myself to what I came to accept as the great­est piece of sport­ing enter­tain­ment that existed.  I read about soc­cer.  I surf the net about soc­cer.  And, if you are read­ing this, you will know that I write about soccer. 

I still like base­ball and love col­lege foot­ball and bas­ket­ball, but soc­cer is my chief obses­sion.  I try not to be evan­gel­i­cal about soc­cer with my friends.  Peo­ple who harp about how great the sport is often come off as sound­ing a lit­tle snooty to the unini­ti­ated.  Nev­er­the­less, I try to lasso at least a few peo­ple every World Cup into fol­low­ing the tour­na­ment.  “Watch a few games, and I bet you will not be able to let it go.”  Those that I can con­vince end up lov­ing the tour­na­ment, and though not all become fanat­ics about the sport, at least they can appre­ci­ate what I see in it.

So, that is my advice to you, the Amer­i­can reader of World Cup Buzz.  Don’t jump on a soap­box about the World Cup.  Don’t preach to the world about “The Beau­ti­ful Game.”  Don’t get into inane argu­ments with peo­ple who par­rot Jim Rome’s non­sense.  Just get a cou­ple of close friends to com­mit to watch­ing the World Cup this sum­mer.  Let them soak in the expe­ri­ence.  In all like­li­hood, you will cre­ate a soc­cer fan.

And, per­haps, a soc­cer obsessive.

Tagged as: FIFA, United States, World Cup, World Cup 2010