It's dated, and you're probably sick of hearing about it, but I don't care.
The World Cup this summer was the best sporting event since the Boston Red Sox won the World Series, and to be honest, if I wasn't a Boston fan, it might even top that.
Forget the Olympics and the World Baseball Classic. This was a true international event. What's more, the World Cup single-handedly accomplished something that not even a war could do-get the attention of the American people focused on (wait for it) the rest of the world. For one glorious month, the Ivory Coast wasn't just an impoverished Third World nation, but a country postponing its civil war to play for national pride. For one month, there was actually debate about whether or not you hated France.
And for one all-too-short month, a humbled America learned that while it may be the world's superpower, it had better pray the UN never decides to start solving international conflicts on the soccer field.
My foray into soccer, or football as our kooky foreign friends call it, was inauspicious at best. I read Franklin Foer's insightful book "How Soccer Explains the World," a few weeks before the World Cup this summer and spent countless hours playing FIFA 2006 on XBox. I quickly learned the rosters of Arsenal and Barcelona, and the voices of Andy Gray and Clive Tyldesley filled my dreams. "You can't stop moving in this game, and he isn't" became the summer mantra.
The Beautiful Game had always been the Incredibly Slow and Tedious Game to me prior to the World Cup. After watching Ronaldinho weave in and out of defenders, and witnessing even out of shape (Ronaldo) and gangly (Peter Crouch) players strike masterful crosses, I realized it wasn't soccer that was boring...just American soccer.
Before you call me a terrorist and start bugging my phone, I'm not saying I wanted to see America lose, far from it. Some of my more Bolshevik-inclined friends actively rooted against the Stars and Stripes, and any First World country, in the hopes that an underdeveloped nation might upset the world's great powers on sport's biggest stage, in turn upsetting the geopolitical forces and causing a massive hegemonic shift. I told them they hate freedom.
Seriously, though. American soccer sucks. Case in point. Last week my roommates and I, devoid of ESPN, watched the random French language channel on Tufts' cable line-up. For over an hour we watched teams from Lyon and Nantes place unbelievable headers past lunging keepers, and strikers sprint up and down the field, juggling the ball to the cheers of insane Parisian fans. Se magnifique!
Two days later, we watched the closing minutes of the New England Revolution-D.C. United game. By the 87th minute, with the score tied 1-1, the players lumbered around the pitch like a bunch of middle school players, exhausted and seemingly disinterested. The stadium was bare except for a dozen or so fans littered in the front rows, who lingered until the whistle mercifully marked the end.
And we wonder why America didn't even make it out of its opening draw.
Now, I am a patriot, and as such hoped America would go far in its World Cup run. But it was another scheme of red, white and blue that I backed during the summer.
The French. Les Bleus. Probably the most un-American choice I could have made. But I fell in love with Thierry Henry and Zinedine Zidane, no matter how many Italians he may cranially impale. I hate bandwagon fans, but I made my choice a few days before the Cup started, and although I didn't exactly go out on a limb picking France, I never faltered, even when it looked like they might be heading home early. The day it was all over, I still proudly wore my French t-shirt.
So congratulations, soccer. You won me over. You had me at "GOOOAAALLL!!!"
As for America, at least we know we could totally invade Ghana whenever we wanted to. That takes some of the sting out of the 2-1 loss they handed us.
Andrew Bauld is a senior majoring in English and political science. He can be reached at andrew.bauld@tufts.edu.
