You wake up nervous. Try the comfort of a lucky shirt, maybe the same one you were wearing last time your team won. Grimace and nod through meetings; your eye is on the clock. Finally it’s kick off. Ugh. The dread only rises. Wait a second — was the World Cup supposed to be fun?
As Argentina and Spain prepare to face off for the championship title this Sunday, supporters on both sides are going through it.
“I’ve been trembling for a few days now honestly,” 23-year-old Bárbara Laura told CNN in central Madrid, ahead of the match. “If they lose, then I’ll cry on the curb. I won’t have any choice but to open a bottle of rum, drink it straight and cry.”
“So much is at stake, so much of one’s mood is on the line,” says Pablo Nigro, president of the Argentine Sport Psychology Association. “It’s like we all feel we are playing, and that raises our expectations. The team doesn’t just lose; we all lose, and we lose in a way that is, I would say, raw and painful.”
Angst is part of the World Cup experience for true fans, even beyond game day. As Freud put it, “We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love.”
