World Cup doesn't score with would-be fan

by Beth Teitell
Wednesday, June 12, 2002

The World Cup seems like the perfect sporting event. It strikes only once every four years. The games are usually played in countries so inconveniently located (from a time-zone perspective) that no reasonable person can be expected to watch. And if for some reason you do have to watch, or, more likely, pretend to do so at a party, it's pretty easy to follow.

Actually, make that seemed like the perfect sporting event. The cup is not even at the midpoint, and already I'm nostalgic for the Super Bowl. It's true what they say. You never realize how good you have it until it's gone. Not only does the Super Bowl accommodate non-sports fans with its ads and a half-time show, but if you don't want to watch at all, you can call a boycott on feminist grounds, or complain that the level of play doesn't meet your standards.

But you can't claim the high ground if you're not following the World Cup. In fact the opposite is true. Your ignorance paints you as an isolationist, a person who wouldn't go see a film with subtitles and atonal music, or eat in a restaurant that uses cumin. A jerk.

I want to watch the games, become passionate at 3 a.m. and strike up new friendships with my fellow citizens of the world, but it's not that easy.

Just when I had learned that France was more concerned about Zizou's injured left thigh than parliamentary elections, the team goes and gets knocked out of competition - or so I've heard.

Like the sun during an eclipse, the sports pages are not something I look at directly. I pick up news from that distant world secondhand, or a friend who speaks my language cues me in.

``It serves the French right,'' one of my personal sportscasters told me yesterday. ``They're better dressed and skinnier than we are.''

From that I understood her to mean that Denmark had trounced the French 2-0, or ``nil,'' as we aficionados say, and that France's performance was the worst by a defending world champion since World Cup competition began in Uruguay in 1930.

There's another problem with the cup. Unlike other games played to determine ``world'' champions - i.e. the World Series and the Super Bowl - the World Cup actually involves the world.

It's like a pop quiz on geography, politics and sports all rolled into one.

Not only are you supposed to know who Argentina is playing tomorrow, but that the country is suffering from its worst ever social and economic crisis, and really needs a victory over Sweden to boost morale.

``It's asking too much of people,'' said a friend who's trying to follow the cup.

``I hope the soccer craze never really catches on here,'' she added. ``It's June, and they're still playing hockey, still playing basketball and the football camps start in a month. And there's baseball of course.''

And to think the World Series used to seem like a chore. At least those games are played in prime time.