World Cup Fever

The Soccer World Cup, that event that makes the world insane, starts tomorrow. I have been a long time fan, watching the Minnesota Kicks of the old NASL in the early days of ESPN, and a longtime World Cup watcher.

The first World Cup I remember watching was in 1990. Wasn't televised in the U.S. much back then and I watched several games on the Spanish language station in Chicago with my roommates (strangely, all five of us spoke German to varying degrees and no one spoke Spanish...Germany won the Cup that year). In 1994, I went to a game at the Silverdome in Detroit where they played on special grass grown to survive indoors (from Michigan State University where I just finished my M.S.) Russia vs Sweeden. Still have the fancy ticket stub. On a side note, I was looking for a job and one of the hiring people at a school in Ohio I was talking to mentioned he was attending the same game. I had a preliminary job interview outside the Silverdome (didn't end up getting that job, but I think the one I finally got in Florida was a much better fit for me so it all worked out in the end).

In 1998 I was driving out to Yellowstone and was camping in the Badlands the night before the World Cup final. I got up and drove to the nearest place, Wall, South Dakota (home of Wall Drug) and found the one bar in town showing the France-Brazil final. It was a great place to watch since everyone was there to watch the game while their families were being tourists across the street at Wall Drug. Great crowd to watch the game (for the record, I went to Wall Drug after the game and ended up camping near Mount Rushmore that night).

In 2002, I was at Yerkes Observatory when the U.S. played Germany in the quarterfinals. One of the Yerkes staff let a few of us come over to her place at 6am to watch the game the next morning (after late night observing). I watched a lot of games in 2006, but no good stories as I was actually home for most of that one!

When I was teaching in Florida, the U.S. under 17 National Team was training in Bradenton. Many of the team members ended up playing high school soccer for a local school, Bradenton Academy. Several of these students are now playing on the World Cup team and I saw them play high school soccer and even chatted with them several times after games (they only played in the playoffs and big tournaments which caused lots of controversy and led to some changes in eligibility rules).

Of course, I already have planned how to catch all the U.S. games and the best of the first round matches (can't watch all of them!) and my DVR set to record ones I want to see that I can't fit my work schedule around. The U.S. games I can catch without missing work since the first one is on Saturday morning and the start time of the others is 5am here.

Who else is watching? Who will win? Is this a typical group of Americans who doesn't care or a bunch who embraces the beautiful game?