FARMINGTON – In less than a week, the World Cup trophy will be hoisted among throngs of passionate fans, bringing an end to the largest single-sport event in the world.
Sunday’s championship match, to be played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, will be the final chapter of the tournament, which, for some reason, seems to bring out both the best and worst in many of us.
I’ll admit, I’ve tried to watch a match here and there. I really tried, from start to finish, to watch a match on the first day of the tournament’s “knockout phase.”
It took seven minutes before I specifically recall dozing off. I tried shaking it off, and before I knew it, three people were talking on my television screen about what an exciting first half we’d all been watching.
Maybe it makes me a bad soccer fan. The reality is I was never trying to be a good soccer fan, so I’ll wear that badge just fine.
I’d like to think of myself as a relatively intelligent consumer of sporting events. If the game has an interest to me — of any kind — I’ll give it a look when it’s presented.
But I just do not care. I never did. I never had a rooting interest in a team. I never found myself wrapped up in the spectacle, the pageantry or the national hype of the event.
Last week, the U.S. team, made up primarily of players I’d never heard of before the start of the tournament, faced off against Belgium, another team I knew next to nothing about.
There was some hype about a U.S. player being red-carded the match before and thus being ineligible to play against the Belgian team, but that decision was reversed by the sport’s governing body.
I don’t care how it happened or who made it happen. I only know when decisions like that are reversed, there’s going to be an equal amount of happiness and anger depending on the outcome.
Before the U.S. match against Belgium, “noted” soccer analyst Robert Griffin III, best known to stateside sports fans as a former NFL quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner, posted on social media that anything less than full-throated support by U.S. citizens for the U.S. team was not an option.
“If you are a US Citizen and you aren’t rooting for USA against Belgium, you are a traitor. No other way to put it. You can’t be trusted if you are rooting against your own country in the World Cup,” Griffin posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.
By that rationale, I was a traitor when I cheered for Manny Pacquiao to beat Floyd Mayweather, Jr. when they finally met in the boxing ring for a much-hyped clash in 2015.
Never mind that Mayweather was convicted four times on various domestic violence or assault charges prior to the match. He was a bad guy and Pacquiao wasn’t, no matter where he was from.
I’m aware of the differences, not only in the sport but the people involved. None of the U.S. players in the World Cup, to my knowledge, have a checkered past, but the idea that my rooting interest in an athlete or a team is somehow dependent on where I live is insulting.
Being a sports fan is a private matter. Who I cheer for and why I don’t cheer for a team or an athlete doesn’t require the approval of a man who made millions of dollars playing a sport for a living.
If I cheer for any of the seven Canadian teams over an American team in the NHL Stanley Cup final, does that also make me a traitor?
And for all the hype around watching the underdog U.S. men’s soccer team try to create history by winning the World Cup for the first time in nearly a century, it’s important to note that no Canadian NHL team has won the Stanley Cup in more than 30 years. I haven’t seen a lot of jingoistic finger-wagging at our neighbors to the north.
Was I a better American when I cheered for the Dodgers to beat Toronto in last year’s World Series?
The Blue Jays have won the World Series twice and came just inches away from winning its third last October. I don’t think fans of the sport would have come undone if Los Angeles had come up short.
In fact, many baseball fans would have cheered as it has been made abundantly clear that the Dodgers and their spending habits are “ruining baseball.”
Shouldn’t that kind of talk be traitorous?
These discussions, thankfully, will subside in less than a week’s time. Many casual and intelligent sports fans will go back to treating the World Cup with little more than a passing curiosity.
And if you’re a true soccer fan, you’ll know where the 2030 World Cup is being held without having to do a Google search. Because I didn’t know, and I don’t feel like less of a citizen for admitting my lack of knowledge in that matter.
I’ll spare you the search. The 2030 World Cup will be co-hosted across six countries and three continents. The main hosts will be Morocco, Portugal, and Spain.
I’ll mark my calendar.
That’s all.