Towards Footie Enlightenment

Last time the World Cup came around, I thought of buying a soccer ball. Walking past the garden today, I had the similar idea. As a kid I did get my fair share of soccer, mostly at the summer rec camp I participated in for a few years. This wasn’t very competitive, nothing at all like today’s AYSO, but they did teach fundamentals of ball handling, and I enjoyed it. But soccer was not a sport I grew up watching. Unlike Pica, who followed the fortunes of both England and Spain while growing up and every four years goes on a World Cup football binge. In 2002 the World Cup was of course in South Korea and Japan, which meant the matches were at ungodly hours in the morning here, and I wasn’t able to see many of them.

This time around the matches have all fallen conveniently between 6 in the morning and noon, and I’ve been able to watch bits and pieces of many of them, and a few complete games. Saturday we went to Little Prague for the Portugal-England match. This is the Czech restaurant in town that has been serving a breakfast of scrambled eggs and dumplings to all who come in to watch the World Cup. There were about a hundred people in there, mostly rooting for England, but there was a vocal Portugal contingent near the big screen. Having had enough of a sports bar scene for the day, we borrowed the 3-inch telly from Pica’s workplace and watched France-Brazil at home. In my short history as a soccer spectator, this was the best match I have ever seen—there was the biggest sense of story about it, with the two teams having met in ‘98 with many of the same players, and with this being Zidane’s final hurrah. It’s been good this past couple of weeks—I’m really starting to understand the game.