Five Reasons to Watch the World Cup
by Michael Penn

It's time for the World Cup, that great quadrennial contest that grabs intense world attention and sends Americans for the remote. This time, most won't even have to bother. Rather than push aside our beloved baseball and NASCAR truck racing, the World Cup is being played, from the American perspective, in the middle of the night, when it competes only against infomercials and the infinite array of "Star Trek" spinoffs. Most games will air at something like 2 a.m., when the only people awake are convenience mart attendants and breast-feeding mothers.

Still, we live in a diverse world of many backgrounds and creeds. You may find yourself in a position where, to foster international diplomacy or avoid getting thrown in jail by a ticked off Turkish immigrations official, you may actually need to pretend you know something about soccer (known, in most other countries, as "stop calling it soccer").

In that spirit, here are five good reasons to watch the World Cup:

1. The sheer geopolitics of it

The Cup creates geographically implausible matchups that seem straight out of an episode of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?" This year's first round features such atlas-bending pairings as Japan against Belgium, Croatia against Mexico, the Germans taking on Saudi Arabia and the Slovenians against Paraguay. Sometimes the clash of cultures is fascinating or full of political subtext, as when England and Argentina square off this time around (winner gets the Falklands).

You think Senegal didn't relish beating France in the Cup opener? If it may not be fully possible to pay someone back for a legacy of colonialism with a slide tackle, but the Cup offers the rare chance.

2. The joy of pop life

Anyone who says soccer lacks star power hasn't been watching their Univision. The best players are like supermodels fame-wise, and they've got the one-name-says-it-all mettle to prove it. The Brazilian team, with the singularly named players Marcos, Cafu, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho, Ronaldo and Lucio, has more shinpads than surnames. England's David Beckham may have the name and the demeanor of a capable insurance agent, but he's married to a Spice Girl. Eat your heart out, Kobe Bryant.

3. France doesn't suck

It's been a bad century for the French. They got creamed in World War I and surrendered to Hitler before he even got to see the Louvre. As a result, French leaders practically blow ligaments to get out of the way of any global conflict, and it shows in international competitions, where the French are, well, just not very competitive. It takes the fun out of making fun of them.

But it's not true in soccer. France won the 1998 World Cup, making them, ostensibly, a favorite this time around. And that means we can relish it all the more when they lose.

4. Something to do with your post-9/11 flag supply

Americans have had their tanks stoked with jingoistic pride since Sept. 11, but there's been nowhere to invest it. Curling in Salt Lake City just didn't cut it, patriotically. Nor has getting fired up by the increasingly paranoid John Ashcroft or the increasingly vampiric Donald Rumsfeld.

But if ever an event were made for flag waving, it's the World Cup. Watch an international soccer competition, and you realize just how far behind the United States is in its deployment of national symbols. World Cup crowds make it look like the gods threw up in primary colors. If you're truly American, you won't stand for being out-gaudied by any nation.

5. Because it's not as deep as your pretentious friends insist

Yeah, sure, we all have some buddy who did a study-abroad program in Gdansk and now waxes pedantically about "futbol" like he's a swarthy version of George Will. Some people think the real reason Americans don't watch soccer has nothing to do with the game, but with the pinheads who insist it's "pure" compared to American sports. These are the people who will tell you that you soccer is some kind of transcendent expression of the will of the working class, or other such donkey spit.

Soccer is as literary and magical as cockroach racing. It's a game, and a pretty basic one, at that. To paraphrase Bull Durham, you kick the ball, you chase after the ball, you knee the other guy in the nads and hope the ref isn't looking.

Let's be honest. Soccer is full of long stretches where nothing appears to be happening. A team that gains an early 1-0 lead may choose to pretty much pack it in for the next 88 minutes. The trick is to accept this as part and parcel of the game, just as baseball has the irrelevancies of pitch-outs, infield flies and the Milwaukee Brewers. You can come to appreciate the lulls in soccer — even acknowledge the important role they play. Opportunities in soccer arise unexpectedly, and often after long stretches of essentially even play. Suddenly, one team finds a crease, and often the game boils down to what happens in the next few seconds. Things go from a dead heat to a death knell very quickly, and that can be pretty compelling. You just have to keep paying attention to see it.

And if that doesn't happen, there's always the tradition almost as old as the World Cup: insane hooliganism. Just don't try it while breast feeding.

E-mail Michael Penn at mpenn@facstaff.wisc.edu.