The World Cup officially begins tomorrow, Friday, June 11. It hasn't been going on for a few weeks or even for the last few months. Everything up till now has been preparations for the 32 teams already qualified.
I write this because I live in the United States, it's my adopted country and I feel practically American in every sense of the word, except that I'm not. Here, it's not uncommon to have to constantly somehow adorably justify your love of the game to casual fans who only 'like' soccer when the World Cup comes around every 4 years. The rest of the time they could give two craps about the sport. That or the US doesn't make it out of group play and they go back to, 'why we shouldn't play this sport in the first place'.
It's annoying to a degree because it's incessant but otherwise it's a necessary evil.
I was born in South America (Uruguay) and soccer is in our DNA, though I didn't know this until I returned to my country of birth when I was 12. I knew as a child I wasn't American but I felt as though I was because I was too young to remember my origins, I had no relevant memories of my country except for my parents who spoke spanish to us and kept traditions alive we had no clues about.
I wasn't athletic but my first sport was softball, despite my dad's efforts to get me to embrace soccer. I couldn't even play softball, I was just trying to get on a team and get a t-shirt. I had no clue what it meant or how it was played it was just important to me to be on a team of some sort.
So when I was 12 and returned to my country for the next 4 years, I personally discovered 'futbol' (soccer) and the athlete within me because the sport and the atmosphere of the sport was so full of life and energy, I had to have it!
It wasn't a passing phase but a newly discovered way of life. Sure, some of the emotions seemed extreme at first but then I realized how much influence the sport had on the country and the world itself. Not just my country but my neighbors, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, etc. The rest of the world too. Except of course, the US.
Since that year (1976), I have been transfused with soccer and it's taken on the importance of another limb to me and I realize to billions of others as well, except for most Americans.
When I returned to the states in 1980, it took me a while to grasp this concept but I already knew Americans knew jack about soccer so I estimated it would take a generation or two to drop the ignorant hatred for the sport I so dearly loved.
I mean some of the things I've heard said about soccer, not just in social settings but on TV as well, would shock and call for the head of whoever spoke these words had they been racially motivated. In other words, we had become so PC about everything except for soccer!
You couldn't say anything that might offend a particular race, group or gender, but soccer has never had that buffer or protection barrier.
So forgive me if every four years when the World Cup rolls around I don't have a chip on my shoulder.
It's not just bandwagon stuff either but how everyone steps forward and spouts how much they know about the sport and yet are always just covering the basics as if they're explaining nuclear physics in laymen's terms.
Suddenly, the jerseys come out and everyone embraces their ancestral past. No one is American anymore, everyone's part Italian or Greek, or even half Brazilian.
This is the necessary evil.
I won't compare the civil rights movement, or genocide to soccer struggling for acceptance and due respect but that statement should highlight the frustrations I've endured for the better part of my adult life.
Soccer, screw it, Football (no, not the American version), is a global sport. It's basically simple to understand. Any sport has it's confusing rules but it's really no where near as complicated as every so-called American sport. In any team sport the object is to score more points than your opponent. Soccer doesn't award points for every goal scored like American football does. You score one goal, you get one goal. Not one point! If at the end of the game you have 2 goals to their 1, you win. It's that simple.
imagine if baseball gave points for runs. Sacrilege! So why is soccer held to a different standard?
Enjoy the WORLD Cup (that's right, WORLD!). Just be honest with yourself, you like it, you just don't want to admit it.
