Like most of the world I have been sucked into the World Cup. It's not something we Americans come to naturally, with other sports such as baseball, football and basketball baked into our childhoods. Indeed, other than the "soccer unit" that was part of the PE rotation in high school, the most first-hand exposure I had to it was when our kids were small and part of the local youth teams. My wife characterized them as the "lemming leagues:" regardless of their positions, all the kids just followed the ball around the field.
But increasingly every four years we reacquaint ourselves with a sport that the rest of the world is crazy about all the time. Add in the intermediate 2-year intervals, when the Olympics take place and the US women or men's teams make a run at the gold, and it's almost like we really care. This in spite of the fact that we Yanks generally have no real knowledge of the rules or strategies of the game.
It's not because we couldn't understand them if we wanted to. After all, we are marginally conversant in things like the infield fly rule and a false start penalty. If we can handle the convoluted rules of American baseball and football you'd think we could understand when a midfielder is offsides. But no. All we understand is that while everybody on the field is restricted to kicking the ball one guy in a different color shirt is allowed to catch it.
Yet primarily because we are the host along with our neighbors to the north and south the interest in this year's tournament seems heightened. Other factors, such as the expansion of the field to 48 teams, the appearance of generational talents such as Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland, the timing in the gap between other major sports championships, not to mention the primetime broadcast and streaming slots of the games, have all contributed to record interest. Indeed, the US team's win over Bosnia and Herzegovina drew a record American television audience, reaching more than 33 million people, placing it among the most watched television events of the year.
What has also reached new heights is the commentary. Viewers of our traditional US sports are used to relatively even, and even critical reviews of what is happening in the contest. True, there are superlatives bandied about, but generally achievements and challenges are put in the context of the game, the team and the season. Unless it's the Super Bowl or the World Series, you generally don't hear lots of GOAT references
No so with this Cup. Maybe it has something to do with the task of filling the time when not much is happening. Maybe it's the quadrennial nature of the event, a period which, in today's accelerated cycle, seems as if the next instance is not four years hence but four hundred. Maybe it is our collective lack of imagination brought on by not having to stretch to remember anything as opposed to simply looking it up on our phones. But follow along in any medium, and you would think that there will never be anything more amazing than what you are seeing.
Every scoring chance is a one-of-kind shot. Every defensive stand is the most courageous stop ever made. Headlines reflect the same: "Are we witnessing the greatest US Men's soccer team ever?" and "Harry Kane just played a game that will be talked about for decades." Sometimes it might be a legit observation, as when Alexi Lalas remarked on Cabo Verde going to toe-to-toe with Argentina, "We were nearly witnessing the greatest FIFA World Cup upset of all-time." But everywhere, all the time always the most amazing/bestest/worstest/greatest play/player? As put in "The Incredibles" by the villain Syndrome, "When everyone's super, no one will be."
When the tournament first started, due to a mix up with our account, the only way I was able to stream games was on the Spanish language network Telemundo. Not a speaker of the tongue, I turned the sound down low, let the commentary blend in with the crowd sounds, and just watched the artistry on the field. Some was truly amazing, some not so much, but it was still fun. I do confess, however, that when there was a score, I did enjoy Argentine sportscaster Andrés Cantor's call of the one over-the-top expression that sets the standard: "¡Goooooool! "
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Marc Wollin of Bedford used to play goalie because it couldn't run very fast. His column appears weekly via email and online on Substack and Blogspot as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and X.
