Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Let me try to give a sense of what it’s like to live in the World Cup. This was my last week:
June 29, Boston: I trekked out to Foxborough to watch the slow death of Germany’s once great football, defeated by a mediocre Paraguay. That night in a Boston pub I saw my team, the Netherlands, get eliminated in a penalty shootout for their third World Cup running, this time by Morocco. I briefly wanted the tournament to be over. By morning the feeling had passed.
June 30, Boston and Atlanta: I was living in Boston in 1994, and covered the first US World Cup there, writing my first ever articles for the FT. That year I used to meet my friend Frank on Sunday mornings in an Italian café in the North End to watch world-beating Italian football on satellite TV over cappuccinos.
Italy don’t even qualify for World Cups any more, but the North End has survived, as have Frank and I. We watched Norway beat Ivory Coast over lunchtime pizzas together with a few old Italians cracking jokes about their missing team. It felt like old times, except that whereas in 1994 soccer was our little secret in an oblivious America, now Boston pubs are packed for matches. That evening I flew to Atlanta.
July 1, Atlanta and Miami: The stadium announcers at games here try to warm up the crowd, something never previously thought necessary at a World Cup. “MAKE SOME NOISE!” the one in Atlanta kept screaming at a stadium that was packed with fanatical England fans. When the match finally began, Harry Kane beat Congo 2-1.
I was at Atlanta airport waiting to fly to Miami while consuming a mountain of fast-food meat — the World Cup diet is deadly — when US vs Bosnia and Herzegovina kicked off. There were screens everywhere, and thousands of American travellers around me. I reckon that perhaps one in 10 watched the game even a little. That matches TV viewing figures: 33.5mn Americans watched, or a tenth of the population, the country’s record audience for soccer. Soccer here has grown since 1994 from a small to a midsized niche.
July 2, Miami: Staying with my mother-in-law — a fleeting reminder of my pre-World Cup life — I watched Portugal vs Croatia in a restaurant nearby. In Europe a place like that would have one TV. Here there were perhaps 10 screens around the bar alone. The game ended in drama: Portugal went ahead in the 94th minute, then Croatia equalised in the final seconds of injury time, only to have the goal annulled for a questionable offside. I watched the faces of the people at the bar pass through states of ecstasy, shock, horror and finally laughter at the insanity of it all. Only World Cups can do this.
July 3, Miami: I saw Argentina vs Cape Verde in a stadium packed with Argentines in Leo Messi shirts. When Messi scored the opener, the party began. But completely against script, tiny Cape Verde kept playing, wanted the ball, attacked and twice equalised. The beautiful 2-2 by the Rotterdammer Sidny Lopes Cabral was a highlight of my tournament (and probably of Cabral’s too). When Argentina won 3-2, Cape Verdeans in the stands wept.
Back home, my mother-in-law, hitherto the world’s least soccer-adjacent person, told me she’d watched the whole thing, rooting for Cape Verde. Every non-Argentine human did, except me. I know that in a just universe they would have won, but I’d spent a day preparing an article on Messi, and didn’t want to chuck it out.
July 4, Miami to Mexico City: I’d never been to Mexico before, and was aching to see it, but the World Cup means 90-hour work weeks, so my time away from football here amounted to an evening in the gorgeous Coyoacán neighbourhood. Everyone was out at the huge market, many people in Mexico shirts, and there was a vast artwork showing the “World Cup of the Dead” — a pitch with skeletons in old football shirts bearing hallowed names such as Puskás and Gento. Mexican football culture is brilliant.
July 5, Mexico City: What struck me about the 80,000-plus fanatical Mexicans in green in the Azteca stadium was how kind they were. Leaving the ground after England’s 2-3 win, people kept going up to congratulate English fans.
Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram
Credit: Source link
