Link to the audio version of this post is HERE
Once every 4 years…it’s basically the plot to Mortal Kombat, but on a huge scale
I’m going to do something I basically never do in this blog and talk about sports. If you came here hoping to tune into another deep dive analysis of a piece of media you may not know about, don’t worry. Regularly scheduled service will resume later this week, this is just a bonus. Light summer fun is just a few days away. But amidst global chaos, a group of nations has assembled squads to come together at the epicenter of that chaos for the first time since 1994 and play a game. But somehow through this assembly of 22 men running up and down a patch of grass, so many compelling storylines emerge that go beyond just the nations’ pride. It’s the biggest event in world football and perhaps the biggest event in sport. And yes, I’m going to call it football throughout; as someone who wakes up early 38 weekends a year to watch the English Premier League, the terminology has stuck. So lace up your boots and get on the pitch, I’m putting on the armband to lead you through this. Let’s get into the World Cup.
Defending champions Argentina and their talisman Lionel Messi are back for more [photo from last World Cup]
It’s a new format for the once-every-four-year football tournament, but I’m not going to bore you with the details of how the tournament is organized. There are plenty of sports outlets who are more than capable of explaining all that to you and more about who’s in it. They’ll undoubtedly talk about the controversies, from astronomical ticket prices to ICE presence at the stadiums (well, maybe the sports outlets might ignore this part), to the use of video-assisted refereeing (VAR, or replay review), to the water breaks. I won’t go into any of those either, that’s a conversation I want to have, but right now I want to focus on the positive. I don’t even want to talk about the usual poor choice of commentators by Fox, bringing people who try to make it sound like a hockey game (no offense to hockey, but you guys have your own sport; and if I’m being honest, most of the commentators have been pretty good so far). But I will say that water breaks are fantastic and necessary for the health and safety of the players, but the way they’ve been implemented in this World Cup is disgraceful. Only in America has it been turned into a commercial break, that’s far longer than necessary, for the good of the advertisers and broadcasting companies only. And if you want a real deep dive of the emotional conflict of being a football fan during the World Cup, I will direct you to John Oliver’s segments about it, because he’s done it the best and I sign on to just about every word he says about FIFA. And I’ve gone pretty deep into the crimes of FIFA; I even wrote a paper about FIFA corruption and the World Cup in law school. But this isn’t about FIFA. It’s about football and the stories that make it what it is.
Raul Jimenez scored his first goal for Mexico in a truly touching moment
In 2020, Mexican striker Raul Jimenez was on top of the world. An underrated striker, in my opinion, he had just signed a new contract, a four year deal, with Wolverhampton Wanderers, at the time a Prem side. But shortly after, in a clash with Arsenal’s David Luiz, he split his skull open and had to be stretchered off for life-saving surgery. His road to recovery was long and never fully complete, as he still has to wear protective headgear to play. Jimenez is 35-years-old, ancient in footballing terms, especially for a striker. And on the opening night of this tournament, he scored his first World Cup goal. This in itself was a joyous moment, one that I was happy to have witnessed. I always rated Jimenez and he seemed likable, at least from his on-the-pitch persona. So it felt great to see that for him. The opening match was held in Mexico, in front of a crowd of 80,000 people (more than half the population of Curaçao, the smallest nation to ever be in the World Cup), all screaming and cheering and chanting for him as he not only scored his first World Cup goal, he also became Mexico’s joint second highest ever goalscorer. And then legendary player and now-commentator Thierry Henry (Ted Lasso) pointed out that when Jimenez scored, he looked straight to the stands. And when he didn’t see the person he wanted to see there, he looked up to the sky in tears. Henry was in tears himself as he explained this and shortly after, so was I. Jimenez was looking for his father. His biggest fan. But his father passed away three months ago at just 62-years-old. What a moment of pure humanity. The unleashing of emotions, the feeling of joy tempered by the pain of joy not shared with the ones who are gone. It was a moment that made me call my mom, just to talk.
Robbo’s always a goofball who gives everything. How can you not love that?
I need to take you back to England now, but we’ll end up in Scotland (well, Boston) in a moment. I found a player in FIFA, a left back playing for Hull City. I needed a backup, so I got him. And he was good. And then I started talking about him. About how Liverpool (the club in the Premier League that I support) needed to go and get him in real life because I thought he had incredible potential. Then in July of 2017, Liverpool did exactly that and signed Andy Robertson for a paltry £8m. That seems like a lot, but in the world of club football, that’s pocket change for a top team. Over the years at the club, he rose to not only be arguably the best left back in the world in his prime, but also one of my favorite players. He was a leader on the pitch and goofball off it and he always played with more passion for the game and the club and the fans than I can comprehend. He’s left the club now, but that doesn’t change how I feel about him. He’s Scotland’s captain. Liverpool’s former vice captain.
And a little under a year ago, teammate Diogo Jota died in a car accident with his brother. Robbo, as we affectionately call him, was incredibly close to Jota. Liverpool retired Jota’s number. Robbo tried to play on. I know he thinks about Jota every time his boots touch a blade of grass because he’s said as much in interviews. The club struggled all season for a number of reasons and he eventually departed at the end of the season. But on Saturday he took to pitch once again, this time wearing the captain’s armband for his nation as he led them to their first World Cup in 28 years. They have never advanced beyond the group stage. And like he always did in a Liverpool shirt, Andy Robertson ran up and down every blade of grass on that pitch as he and his teammates won their opening match 1-0 against a marauding Haiti. I don’t know if Scotland will make it past the group stage this year, it’s a tough group they’re in. But when that scrappy John McGinn shot went into the back of the net for Scotland, I painted my face blue and white and screamed and swung a giant sword around like goddamn Braveheart.
Curaçao lost 7-1 to Germany, but they came out like the riders of Rohan
And as I’m writing this right now, I’ve just watched World Cup giants Germany handily dispatch of Curaçao, a nation that has had a baseball player get to the Hall of Fame before they, as a nation, got to the World Cup. Germany has outclassed them on almost every level, as to be expected. But Curaçao did something nobody expected them to do, certainly something I never expected them to do. They scored a goal. People like to rag on football for being low scoring and that can be fair sometimes when two teams come out and the whole game plan is to just not concede a goal. But that’s not what this match was. It was two attacking teams, two teams representing their homes who came to play on the biggest stage they’ve ever seen.
The Curaçao squad is nearly 0.02% of the nation’s population
During the match, one of the commentators mentioned that since arriving in the United States, some of the Curaçao players have seen freeways for the first time. And they stepped into the ring with heavyweights and punched them in the nose. Sure, they lost the fight. But they stood up and took the fight to the four time World Cup winners and they drew blood. It’s further proof that succeeding is nowhere near as important as trying and Curaçao put on an inspirational fight against insurmountable odds and unlike the movies, they lost. There was no miracle for them like the US hockey team. They didn’t beat 5000-to-1 odds like Leicester did when they won the Premier League. But they took to the pitch with heads held high and they didn’t let the size of the spectacle freeze them in place. They didn’t let the quality and talent of the German opposition put them in their shell. They fought. From the first whistle to the last. For 17 amazing minutes, they held the line. 1-1. And for the rest, they stood up. And if that doesn’t make you want to do the same, well, I’m not sure what to tell you. But if ever I can say, in the face of defeat, that I fought from the first moment to the last, then I will count myself proud. As should every single player who wears the shirt for Curaçao and the roughly 155,000 people from this tiny nation. Because the scoreline didn’t matter in this match. Not Germany’s half, anyway. But that little “1” next to Curaçao on the scoreboard, well, that matters a great deal. It’s that little “1” that makes football great.
Flo Balogun, no relation to Flo from the Progressive Insurance ads
And even here, in this nation now steeped in turmoil, when many seek to divide and build UFC octagons where there used to be no UFC octagons, a young man called Folarin Balogun scored a brace in the US’s opening match. Two goals. Flo, as they call him, was born in the United States to Nigerian parents and grew up in London. The way eligibility works, Balogun could have played for the United States, England, or Nigeria. But he decided to commit to the United States, a nation of immigrants and their children. And in doing so, at this World Cup, in front of fans paying exorbitant prices for tickets and $6 a gallon for gas, a populace more divided than ever in my lifetime, this birthright citizen became the first American to score more than one goal in a World Cup match since 1930. Nearly a century since an American scored a brace and it was this young man, with family all over the world, who has faced racial abuse from so-called USMNT fans, who did it. For those with a sense of history, 1930 was the first World Cup. So from the first one until now, it hasn’t been done. Until this child of three nations came here and did it. He was assisted by Malik Tillman, an American player, born and raised in Germany to an American serviceman and a German mother. Also assisted by Christian Pulisic, USMNT’s golden boy from the home of American chocolate, Hershey, Pennsylvania. My own backyard, the place where I went on my first rollercoaster. A testament to the power of sport to unite even in the face of truly insidious divisive acts.
Balogun and his teammates celebrate history being made on the laces of his boots
Look, it’s true that I’m slightly embarrassed by much I love football and the World Cup, but I do love it. It matters to me, it’s special to me for some reason, the same way the Olympics are special to people. Maybe it was ambitious to set out and try to get some of you to love football the way I do. But I love movies and shows because the stories they tell are so human and so real, even though they’re fake. They remind us that what it means to be human has nothing to do with our jobs, our income, how tall we are, or any of the other inconsequential and meaningless things we value too much in the world. There’s so much beauty in film because ultimately, the movies are about us and we can be pretty damn beautiful to each other when we try. And here, on the grandest sporting stage in the world, there are compelling stories of humanity everywhere you look. If you’re already a football fan, you know what I’m talking about. If you’re not, it’s my sincere hope that this turns you into one, though I admit that’s a very long shot. That’s aiming for the moon with a paper airplane, I know. But if I can’t do that, then I hope you at least give the World Cup a try. Watch it with friends or alone, watch it at a bar, watch it in a hotel lobby in Bucharest like I did once. But let yourself feel what they’re feeling; the players, the fans. Soak it all in. Because there’s a lot of beauty here too. And when you really let yourself experience it, it’s a wonderful feeling.
And while writing this, Japan, my home away from home, came back to get an unlikely draw against the Netherlands.
Also, while I’m here, since I may never talk about sports again in this blog, congratulations to the New York Knicks for winning their first NBA title in 53 years. From me to all you New Yorkers out there, that’s quite an accomplishment. I’ll be checking the headlines to see if you party as hard as we do when the Eagles win though.
Seriously, Thierry Henry. Stop making me cry.