Far out East

A bleary-eyed look at a 'most mercurial World'

By S.L. Price, Sports Illustrated

Forget the Jules Rimet trophy. Sleep is the true prize of every World Cup, the thing everyone wants and no one gets. Players and coaches miss out on it because they toss and turn knowing their lives have been one long climb to this very peak. Soccer officials miss out because they work overtime producing snafus like the one at this year's tournament that resulted in thousands of empty seats but no way for people to buy tickets. And fans miss out because they've traveled thousands of miles and bunked on floors to glimpse their heroes; because they must drink, argue, complain and embrace; and because they know they'll never live this intensely again.

This is no complaint. This is just a way of explaining why Japan and Korea are the perfect places to hold the 2002 World Cup. Purists have been shuddering at the thought for the last six years -- much as they shuddered over the tournament being held in the U.S. in 1994 -- but the lack of a deep soccer culture here means far less than what has shaped up as the right psychological match between event and host. Welcome to the land of fatigue. In both countries, subway cars are filled with people dozing away, evidence that, national symbols be damned, millions of overworked souls awaken daily with a curse for the rising sun. Who can blame them? With too many faces, too many signs, too many cars, life in Asia is a constant assault on the senses. Now, suddenly, into this amazingly polite mayhem drops the most complicated sporting event in history, played at more stadiums than ever before, across two nations incapable of agreeing on anything.

It is madness. It is genius. The World Cup, after all, electrifies every waking minute, and trying to absorb it all is more than any one brain can handle. No event -- not even the Olympic Games -- comes close to matching the impact of what is, in effect, the staging of three Super Bowls every day for the 15 days that constitute only the tournament's first round. Every act is magnified beyond reason. Nearly every match comes weighted with issues bigger than sports. Senegal takes on its former colonial master, France, in the opener and produces one of the sport's greatest shockers. England's Swedish coach tries to beat Sweden, Cameroon's German coach tries to beat Germany, and Ireland's English coach tries to keep his team from beating itself. Two games involved nations that once went to war with each other -- Argentina-England and Russia-Japan -- and the entire event is built on a relationship keyed by the brutal subjugation of Korea by Japan in the decades before World War II.

All of it could flare up in a flash, but instead something strange is happening. With Asia's first World Cup being held amid talk about Asia's first nuclear war, the only sport known to start a conflict, the one most prone to fan violence and most bloodied by a history of fan fatalities, keeps piling up days of peace. Faced with daily logistical nightmares, fueled by vending-machine beer, jostling cheek-by-jowl with the enemy, hundreds of thousands of fans ride the rails daily -- and behave. At airports that one might expect to degenerate into the last days of Saigon, the foreigners mostly follow the local example, lining up and waiting their turn. News filters in from North Korea, as if from the moon, that the regime has allowed some World Cup games to be televised. A few days later North Korea agrees to play a soccer game against South Korea for the first time in 12 years.

The World Cup is turning out to be more fever dream than sporting event. Did I hug that Argie? Did I take off my shirt in that bar? Did you see Beckham/Rivaldo/Totti/ Rodriguez? Did you see that call, that shot, those Red Devils fans? Don't you want to be there for every last bit of it?

It is nearly 10:30 p.m. Sunday when the earthquake hits. A shock ripples through the streets, and a society built on the bedrock of public reserve cracks wide open. In a place where public displays of affection never happen, men hug and leap on each other's backs. In a place where no one jaywalks and no one shouts outside, people swarm into the road. The usual waiting lines at Shin-Yokohama train station collapse. Men come singing in packs, slicing the night with the chant, "Nip-pon!"

Japan prepared itself meticulously for this World Cup, but it never counted on soccer changing the national character. For it's soccer, not baseball, that provokes the most passionate nationalism from its fans, and it's soccer that this evening sent 66,000 Japanese howling into the night. Japan had defeated Russia 1-0, adding yet another mood swing to the most mercurial World Cup in history, nailing down the point that the game's future will happen here. Now its history has begun.

It is V-J day, Victory for Japan. The trains are filled with people grinning, talking of Japan winning its group outright, moving into the second round and maybe doing some damage there. Some plan to hit the bars until daylight. "No sleeping, not tonight," say 20-year old Ryota Inagaki and his pack of friends.

Poor souls. They have no idea what they've gotten themselves into.

Sports Illustrated senior writer S.L. Price is covering the World Cup for the magazine.