Confession: I am devotedly following the World Cup

Go ahead, call me a Euro-lover: I have become a soccer-watching fiend (quick aside: that sentence was spontaneous but reminds me of my favorite palindrome: "go hang a salami: I am a lasagna hog." Try not double-checking that by reading it backwards. Ten bucks you can't. Second note: long asides like these make me really wish blogger allowed footnotes. That is all. Back to the blog) So much so, that on this day, essentially my second day of vacation (I have to take one more test in a few hours), I find myself waking up by seven-thirty so I can catch the first World Cup match of the day. Which is between Serbia and Germany. Which, given a map of Europe, I think that I would fail miserably at identifying one of those two (because U.S. Americans tend to struggle with geography. And complete sentences).

I am not going to give credit solely to a newfound appeal of the game, but a perfect alignment of the stars between a loosening of my schedule and a plethora of soccer to watch. Just four years ago, I tried to get into the Cup but found the incessant dives and whining players intolerable.

Now, however, I am able to look past those marked flaws in soccer (I think the biggest barrier for most male sports fans to commit to the game). I now recognize that an NBA game provides nearly as much complaining and diving (which I could note is corresponding to an influx of European players, but Rasheed Wallace provides enough of a counterpoint to that argument).

I don’t plan on feigning an interest in the New York Red Bulls or Columbus Crew after this experience, but I will probably commit to catching as many World Cup matches as I can in four years as well (which is quite a commitment because in order to watch a full soccer match one must prepare to pay attention for 90-plus minutes for three seconds of excitement). Much like the Olympics, I love the continuous nature of the event and am partial to events I can remain engaged in for extended time periods (this is also the reason I enjoy having four-day golf tournaments on in the background).

However, I will stop short of blind soccer passion. I will never submit to using the term football to mean anything else than the sport Barry Sanders played throughout my youth. I especially won’t say futball like a jack-ass and act indignant because “that’s what the rest of the world calls it.” Congratulations, you are in America. And I won’t tolerate the argument that “its what it should be called because its played with your foot.” I think we all should be beyond Piaget’s concrete stage of reasoning by 11 years old (note: if I was having this argument with a second grader, then I could let it slide). By that logic you should have a panic attack every time you pull into a stop on a driveway or pull out onto a park-way. Not that I am bitter.

So therein lies the rub. As much as I am enjoying this years World Cup, I think the primary reason is because I am enjoying it with casual fans, not the hyper-defensive I-wish-I-was-a-European-so-then-I-wouldn’t-look-so-goofy-in-these-pointy-diesel-canvas-shoes type individuals. And as a casual fan, this years World Cup matches have been a joy to watch. All ninety minutes of them.