Breaking Your World Cup Fever

It’s World Cup fever time! But don’t worry—even if you’re asymptomatic, these stories require zero functional knowledge of any foot-related sport. Much like being a soccer fan in the USA, really.

I’m telling you my two in-person soccer experiences right now, because we are in this short window of opportunity wherein they have any relevance whatsoever. Soon, we will collectively quit caring about the sport for four more years. (That is, unless you have a child between the ages of two and eighteen, who by decree must join at least three leagues at any given time. Or unless you live literally anywhere else. Including Saturn.)

So now is the time, whatever World Cup temperature you are running.

I lived in Germany for a time as a younger man. Full stop, that explains my high school student getting me drunk. But we here do not lean into such a stereotype—no, we lean into multiple such stereotypes at once. You see, he didn’t just get me drunk. He got me drunk with a wagon of beer on our way to a Bundesliga football match. It was the full Deutsch.

My teaching colleague set me up for it. His name is Wolfram, in case you needed to vet his German credentials. He very kindly gifted me a ticket to join him and some other adult-age friends for a Dortmund match. “For you to have the proper experience,” Wolfram said to me, “you will not drive with us. You will go with this student on the fan bus.”

So I hopped a train to the one-station town where we taught, and I met the student there. He was pulling a heavy-duty shopping wagon stocked with crates of Krombacher. We unloaded the crates onto the chartered fan bus. Someone gave me their black-and-yellow scarf for my first Dortmund match. And that is the last thing I remember.

Okay, not the last thing. I retained fragments, really. Pieces of the day. One is that Dortmund was playing Wolfsburg, literally “Wolf’s burgh.” Another is that German football teams don’t have mascots, because you don’t need them when your city and your populace have “wolf” right there in the name. Instead, they simply tack on some extra letters; in this case, VfL Wolfsburg, which translates literally (I am serious) to “the Wolf Town Association for Physical Education.”

(Dortmund is the better team. I am obliged to point this out because I wore the scarf. They are the better team despite having the worse name: literally, it means “the Ball Game Club of Borussia, 1909, a Registered Association of Dortmund.” This is not helped by the fact that “Dortmund” can be translated to mean “There, mouth.”)

Another piece I remember is that I spent the entire match, far up in the stadium, trying desperately to pass as anything less than obliterated. In hindsight, I realize Wolfram could not have cared less, and in fact, he knew what he had enlisted me for.

Based on this first experience, I am surprised more of my fellow Americans have not tried becoming perennial fans of the sport.

For reasons lost to me, I agreed to go early one Saturday morning to my little sister’s soccer game in a local park. This was the first time I had ever attended a soccer game in a local park. Soccer games in local parks begin early in the morning. I actually believe that soccer games in local parks are the main economic driver behind Starbucks.

Evidently the game was even too early for all the referees. I, as the lone adult present without a nine-year-old child participating in the match, was pressed into service as a replacement referee.

It is worth pointing out at this moment that:

• I have never played a game of soccer.

• The only rule of soccer I know is “no hands allowed.”

• I was not, technically, conscious for the entirety of the match between the Wolf Town Association for Physical Education and the Ball Game Club of Borussia, 1909, a Registered Association of Dortmund, and hey I just recovered a memory of Wolfram buying me more beer during the match; he definitely knew what he was doing.

• I am terrible at foosball, soccer’s basement-level cousin.

Evidently none of these things mattered to the youth soccer league. One team’s coach, who happened to be my father, gave me a dummy’s guide to the offsides rule, told me to blow my loaner whistle when the ball crossed the imaginary line on my side of the field, and handed me a flag to point in the appropriate direction.

You guessed it: I never figured out which direction was the appropriate direction.

But I will tell you that the parents of nine-year-old soccer players should not be permitted to drive through Starbucks. They are vicious. The children, not to mention the referees, would be better served if these parents stayed in bed. You’d think that these children’s college admissions decisions hinged on which direction I pointed my flag. I started pointing the flag both directions each time I blew my whistle, until I could gauge which direction would result in fewer half-caf slow-drip extra-whip venti-grande Colombo-Ecuadorian steamed-oat no-sweet extra-sugar frante-puppuccinos thrown at me.

And they say the Brits are the hooligans.

Anyway, at halftime I was relieved of my duties because, as I was told, the kids would do a better job self-refereeing on the honor system, and also because my wellbeing was not covered by the league’s insurance policy.

I fully expect that each and every one of these girls is playing for some country or another in this year’s World Cup. Never mind that it is the Men’s World Cup; a simple rule like that would never stop these parents from personally threatening the FIFA president until he left crying at halftime.

It’s a time to be proud—if not of your own country, then of someone else’s. Make memories; cheer when the ball goes into the big mesh box. Unless it goes into the wrong mesh box. Don’t ask me which is which; I’m just here for the scarves.

You do.

Thank you for subscribing to this here publication. Please keep me going into stoppage time (which is a thing, I think?) and consider upping your subscription for way, way less than the cost of a youth soccer league registration fee.

A version of this post appeared previously in the Abiquiú News.