It’s World Cup time again, and Americans from Bangor to Batavia don’t even bother to stifle their quadrennial yawns, while more fervent patriots are praying to the God who adjudicates sporting events that the US team flames out early, as usual.
It’s been 32 years since the World Cup first tainted American soil. The 1994 invasion was a colossal flop, despite the corporate subsidies lavished by Coca-Cola, Mastercard, and the usual suspects. The title game – oh, excuse me: match – a thrilling 0-0 tie in regulation between Brazil and Italy, did not win millions of new fans.
The indifference of Americans to the World Cup will be ascribed to our provincialism and ignorance of the wider world, but in fact it owes more to good old-fashioned American stubbornness and the vestigial resistance to homogenization that produced, for instance, the popular rejection of the metric system. No doubt there are pockets of enthusiasm for the tournament: dweebs in what my friend Jason Peters calls Silly Con Valley are likely to be extra amorous with their AI girlfriends should the USA defeat Paraguay in the home team’s opener.
Also drinking deeply from the poisoned chalice of the World Cup is President Donald Trump, the Man Who Would be King of Greenland and Ruler of Cuba, who has weighed in on behalf of the favorite sport of the Placeless Class. “This is football,” he blustered of soccer, “there’s no question about it. We have to come up with another name for the NFL. It really doesn’t make sense when you think about it.”
