My first proper world cup, where I followed every game, and even collected an album with all the players, was 20 years ago, with Korea and Japan in 2002.
My dad woke me up to watch Brazil against England, they were playing in the quarter-finals, and it started with Owen, my favorite player at the time scoring an amazing goal. I’ll never forget that match. It was at 3:00 AM, and England, the team I was rooting for, ended up losing spectacularly, thank you, Ronaldinho… He then went to FC Barcelona to delight us all with his technical ability and creativity, and despite him playing for the biggest rival of the team I like, I got to enjoy it too.
The world cup is beautiful, outside of the politics of it all, for all the small and large dramatic moments it presents within the month it’s played.
There are 32 countries trying to win the tournament, after a long, and often dramatic qualifying process. A fact that I always like to remind myself, is that the winner needs to win 7 matches at the most, Spain won in 2010 by winning only 6 games. It sounds easy, but it’s not, there’s no room for mistakes, as one little mistake could take you out of the race even if you’re the favorite to win it.
Perfection is required. Drama is ever present, even in matches where countries without a big soccer tradition or famous players face each other, you’ll find beautiful moments of sadness, fear, anger, surprise, disgust, and happiness.
If you like to experience raw human emotion, but hate soccer, or don’t even understand it, I’d encourage you to watch the world cup, just pick a side, on any random game, and see how you react to near goals or goals against, even to smaller things, like losing a ball, or the referee not seeing a clear foul.
Our beautiful game of soccer has remained almost unchanged for many years when it comes to rules. The offside rule is the only one that’s not intuitive to understand for those who don’t watch or follow the game regularly.
I’m not going to try to explain it to you, but instead, I’d encourage you to google it, as it’s the most important defensive concept teams can exploit in their favor, but I guarantee you that your understanding or lack of it will not affect your enjoyment of the game, at times you’ll even feel frustrated because a goal was called off after an offside, and that’s part of the beauty of it all.
I look forward to continuing watching this world cup, every game I’ve watched has been exciting in its own little way. The drama in the world cup is unmatched in sports in my opinion, regardless of the quality of play that a match might present.
On the weekends or weekdays that I watch soccer I’m looking for quality of play, richness in tactics, and technical prowess, none of that matters in the world cup, it’s all about the drama of winning and losing, regardless of how they do it. For that, it’s the best introduction to the beautiful game of soccer, so please give yourself that opportunity.