The World Cup is about to start, and soccer (football, as you insist on calling it) seems so important to you folks over here. My wife tells me, paraphrasing TS Eliot, her life was measured in World Cups. She’s not alone in looking forward to the four-yearly festival of football that the whole world, except for my native US, stops for. How is it affecting us back home in the United States? I’m sorry to say that, despite the World Cup being played in the Americas, we still don’t particularly care.
We do have sport in America, rather too much of it. Baseball, basketball, American football, ice hockey, NASCAR, golf, and tennis are all popular. But in terms of major sporting events, soccer ranks in popularity somewhere between pickleball and competitive eating. Americans like clear victories in the game they bought a ticket for, not excruciating nil-nil draws settled by playing an entirely different game called “penalty shootout”.
In Britain, sport is both physical and deeply personal. Every couple of years, in the Euros or World Cup, I watch you clutch your stomachs in agony. And you love the agony.
Football unites England – in misery
Last month, my son Benjamin and I watched the Champions League final between Arsenal and PSG. Benjamin turned to me after the penalty shootout and said “none of that made me feel good”.
