It's our world, but their World
Cup
Posted: Wed May 20,
1998
We are now about to enter that strange quadrennial phase,
when, all of a sudden, the United States of America, the
world's only superpower, finds itself on the dark side of
the moon ... while the rest of the planet Earth goes
bonkers over the World Cup.
That's soccer, the bizarre sport you purposely play without
the use of your
hands—the very devices that raised humankind above lesser beasts.
And you wonder why we're the world's only
superpower.
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While the rest of the world flips for soccer, the U.S. stays happily detached.
(Ben Radford)
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Already, mad fan disease is sweeping the globe. The usual
riots in South America. In England, a poll of young men
found that 95% of them would rather watch a World Cup
game—even on television—than make love to
"the woman of their dreams." And you
thought they were nutty in Green
Bay.
And, as much as all the world points its toes for the
Germans and the Brazilians, perennial powers on the soccer
pitch, for now all the antipathy is directed at the French,
who are hosting the Cup this time around. Four years ago,
in a unsuccessful
effort to stir up interest in heathen America, the World Cup was
played here, in our huge football stadiums, with minimum
domestic interest. But now, in France, the stadiums are
petite and the European ticket demand is sky-high. When the
French finally put
some ducats on sale for the rest of the world, it became
impossible even to get through to the box office on the
telephone.
In fact, it is approximately as difficult to buy a World
Cup seat this year as to score a goal in a typical World
Cup game (which is, invariably, one-nil). Europe went
apoplectic, growing even angrier at the French than under
normal, everyday
circumstances. In typical British tabloid understatement,
The Daily Star
declared: "A good kicking on their Gallic derriere is
the only language the greedy frogs understand."
The French have promised to try to be nicer. The government
has dispensed a booklet, entitled "Bonjour '98,"
which encourages French cab drivers and
maitre
d's and the like not to get too angry if visiting fans don't,
for example, pronounce
futbol with a perfect accent. Isn't it wonderful? When the World
Cup is on, nobody even thinks to complain about
Americans.
I think, in fact, the best part of the Cup is that, for
once, we in the United States are basically out of it. In
everything else, we are up to our ears, out front, in
keeping the peace, threatening war, enforcing agreements,
financing, pontificating,
making movies, winning gold medals. But for once we can be
just like Sweden or
Switzerland.
Oh, we do have a team in the World Cup, in a first-round
group with Germany, Iran and Yugoslavia. It sounds like a
typical week with Sylvia Pajoli of National Public Radio,
doesn't it? But the only people in the U.S. who care about
soccer are those
odd, disparate extremes of rich suburbanites and newly arrived
immigrants. What a wonderful sitcom it would
make—maybe even replace
Seinfeld!—as the Junior League blonde just out of Wellesley
falls for the uneducated young Caribbean immigrant ... at a
soccer game. It's the '90s version of
Abie's Irish
Rose.
In the meantime, though, soccer belongs to the rest of the
world, and we are the only sane people around, using our
hands and our minds together, as God intended, so that we
might regain the world as soon as the madness finally ends
in France in
July.
These commentaries, which appear each Wednesday on National
Public Radio's Morning Edition, are posted weekly by
CNN/SI.
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