I spent the summer of 1974 researching my dissertation in London, and a lifelong love affair began. The World Cup started in Germany shortly after I arrived, and I saw at least half of the games. The great Dutch team led by my exact contemporary Johann Cruyff captivated the world on the way to the final, only to lose 2-1 to the host country Germans, despite going ahead 1-0 in literally the first minute of play on a penalty won by Cruyff dribbling into the German box. Four years later I was visiting family in Hungary for most of the competition, saw some great matches there, and then returned in time to see the three matches that determined who would reach the final in a packed Boston movie theater, filled with international fans, which showed the matches on closed circuit. Holland, now playing without Cruyff, overcame an early own goal against favored Italy to win 2-1 on two fantastic long shots--one still probably the longest I have ever seen. Then Brazil established itself as the favorite to play the Dutch in the final again by beating Poland 3-1. The competition was happening in Argentina, however, and in the third match, the home team, needing to beat Peru by four goals in order to reach to the final, took a 2-0 lead in the first half and eventually won 6-0. Later journalistic investigations suggested that a big payment to the Peruvians--or at least some of them--had led to that result. The Dutch lost their second consecutive final to the home side, 3-1 after extra time, after their star Rob Resenbrink hit the post with the score 1-1 in the last minute of normal time.
In 1982 and 1986 Univision, with its iconic play-by-play man Andres Cantor, was televising every match of the cup, but the Pittsburgh cable provider I used would subscribe to univision. I saw much of the 1986 one on delays after a friend sent me tapes from a more friendly city, and US television did provide a few key matches, including the final, with commercial interruptions. In 1990 I rented my own satellite dish for the tournament to get Univision. Finally, by 1994 when the US hosted for the first time, US networks broadcast the whole competition without commercials, as they have done every time since this year. Meanwhile, the competition has expanded from 16 teams--yes, that was all--in 1974 and 1978 to 24 in 1982, 32 in 1998, and 48 this year. That means that the competition has grown from 38 total matches in 1974 to 103 this year (I am leaving out the meaningless third-place matches between the losing semifinalists.)
I was initially appalled by the latest expansion, but it turns out that I was wrong. For one, teams from Africa, North and Central America, and to a lesser extent Asia have improved so much that there have been very few one-sided matches this year. Incredibly, the Cape Verde Islands, expected to rank with Curacao as the weakest team, drew all three of their group games--including the first one with Spain, one of the favorites--and advanced to the second round. In 1974 Zaire represented Africa in my first World Cup and lost three matches by a combined score of 14-0; this year the same country, now the Democratic Republic of Congo, tied Portugal, beat Uzbekistan, and has advanced to the last 32. Senegal, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast have also advanced, with strong performances against some of the favorites along the way. There have been three or four games every day--sometimes more--and there will be three most days this week to whittle the field from 32 to 16, including match-ups between Holland and Morocco, two tremendous teams, and Sweden and favored France. The United States, Canada, and Mexico, who have jointly hosted, are all in the second round. The United States was one of the sensations of the first round, locking up its group in its first two games, but do not believe that their Balkan opponent now, Bosnia-Herzegovina, is a pushover. B-H eliminated Italy from the competition in a pre-tournament playoff.
Soccer had essentially no following as a spectator sport in the US when I began watching, and it has a substantial one now. I must admit I'm a snob--I am not sure I have ever watched a Major League Socce game--and until this year I found it hard to root for the US team because they never really had a chance of winning. They now face a very difficult draw, including Spain the quarterfinals, but I'm all-in for them in the meantime. The real point of this post, however, is different: to try to enlighten the millions of skeptical Americans, many of whom may be among my readers, as to what makes the sport so great, and what they need to understand to appreciate it. I will do my best.
Historically soccer is most closely related to football among the major American sports, which is why they both field eleven men at a time, but in my experience ignorant Americans tend to compare it to basketball. They immediately complain that you hardly ever get to see a basket. No, soccer features only a few goals a game, just as football in its early days, and before various rule changes, often featured only a few touchdowns, even at the highest level. It's much harder to score a touchdown or a soccer goal than to score a single basket--because the games are harder. The fields are bigger and their are more people in your way. But the biggest difference between soccer and the other two has to do with the role of the ball. In football and basketball one side has control of the ball for defined periods, and losing it is rare. In soccer, where you cannot told the ball in your hands, no the two teams are fighting for the ball for every second of the game, literally. Any player, including Lionel Messi, who simply tries to keep the ball on his own foot indefinitely is going to lose it. I could count the number of times I have seen one player dribble from one end of the field to the other and score on the fingers of one hand (although one of them, the Dutch defender Mickey van der Ven, is playing in the World Cup right now.) Teams can only control the ball by keeping it moving, and protecting it from opposing players involves ballet-like footwork and skillful feet that can move the ball out of the reach of the opponent as needed. The players you can see in the World Cup have mostly been recruited into youth academies when they were about 10 and have spent the rest of their lives developing skills like that one.
That isn't all. Kicking a soccer ball properly is a multi-faceted art, using at least three different surfaces of the foot at different times--the inside, the outside, and the instep or top. Learning to kick with both feet adds a whole new dimension, and it is mind-boggling to see Kylian Imbappe of France, in my opinion the greatest all-around forward in the tournament, score with an unstoppable 20-foot rising shot from his weaker left foot, as he did last week. And then there is the use of the head--primarily the forehead, but sometimes the temple--from which a number of goals always come, and which defenders rely on to send high balls in front of their goals to safety. Most importantly of all, all these skills must be put at the service of the player's brain, which faces much greater demands, I would argue, than those of any position on basketball court or football field except the quarterback.
When the quarterback goes back to pass, he must make a split second assessment of the field in front of him, identify someone on his team who is free to receive the ball, and throw accurately. He has the advantage of knowing where is players are supposed to be going, since they are all working according to a carefully worked out play. In soccer, every player on the field has to do that, in far more chaotic situations, every time he gets his foot on the ball, except the very rare occasions when he's in a position to try to direct the ball into his opponent's net. Every soccer player has to play the role of a football wide receiver, of a running back, and finally of a quarterback, every time he gets the ball. For a team to get from deep in its own half to scoring position requires a series of players to execute those roles successfully. While one man plays running back and then quarterback, any number of them can be playing wide receiver, and they all have opponents to contend with.
When you become aware of how much skill goes into almost every second of the game, and how every yard of the pitch is contested, the drama can become very absorbing, and tension builds any time one team gets the ball near the other team's goal. That is why, to put it bluntly, when a goal is scored, it generates what can only be described as an orgasmic response among players and fans alike. The serious fan feels tremendous excitement when it looks like the ball may go into the enemy goal, and serious terror when it looks like it might go into his own.
The most dramatic game of the tournament so far was between Ecuador, a very solid South American side, and Germany. Ecuador had very unluckily lost 1-0 to the Ivory Coast, another fine team, and had to get at least a draw against Germany, who had beaten Curacao 7-1, to have a chance to advance. And they got a terrible break after five minutes when the referee, from the US, ignored an obvious dangerous play foul by a German forward whose boot actually hit the face of an Ecuadorean defender. The referee didn't blow the whistle and the Germans scored a moment later to go ahead 1-0. But Ecuador didn't give up, and they had tied the game with a fine shot from outside the box by the end of the half. In the second half you could see them fighting harder and harder, fighting for every ball, moving without the ball, and keeping a lot of possession. And finally, with about ten minutes to go, they got a goal and won 2-1--a tremendous achievement for a mid-range country. They too beat Curacao easily in their final game and will not face Mexico in the next round. The Mexicans will be playing before their home crowd but Ecuador could certainly beat them.
The 48-team format is producing an unprecedented stream of at least three matches a day, and now every one of them is a battle for life and death, fought by players who know that what they do on this quadrennial stage will never be forgotten. Nations like Germany, France, England, Spain, Brazil and Argentina are fighting to win the trophy once again, while smaller nations--to say nothing of the United States--have a chance to put themselves on the soccer map as never before. If you haven't experienced it, give it a try!
I shall shortly resume my more normal kind of commentary but I take this subject very seriously too. The reason was beautifully stated by the late Chief Justice Earl Warren many decades ago, in a quote that has found its way onto the frontispiece of two of my books. "I turn to the sports pages first," he reportedly said, "because there I find a record of man's achievements, while on the front page I find only a record of his failures." Amen.
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