Great end to an excellent Cup, though not a fan of determining by penalty kicks. The French played consistently best/great in the tournament, but the Argentinians came on strong the last couple games. Messi is a great player, Mbappe too. Once again the South comes out on top. Don't they ever tire of global domination?
I watched the match in a crowded Turkish bar in a small coastal town, most rooting for Argentina. I thought about my past World Cup watching experiences. In 1982, I was in Boston's North End when the Italians won. In '94, in a packed Brazilian bar downtown San Diego as the Brazilians won. Bali in '02, at a preliminary meeting for the 2002 UN World Summit on Sustainable Development, I watched with people from across the globe. Especially remember Saudi Arabia vs Germany game, which the Germans won 8-0 or 8-1 – a blitzkrieg. Watched that match with some people from the Caribbean and Pakistan, all environmentalists. I distinctly remember the shaking heads, any good environmentalist well understands a good beat down.
Always loved the World Cup, despite FIFA being the rotten to the core organization it is. Long an outlier in America with soccer, I can blame my older brother. He attended Quigley South, at that point one of the very few high schools in Chicago that played soccer. I used to ride my bike or take a bus down 79th street to watch his games — for you Nigerians, that’s same time Bola Tinubu was attending Richard J. Daley Community College, then known as Bogan Junior College. I may very well sat on CTA bus next to the eventual Governor of Lagos, current APC presidential nominee, though he never tried to sell me any smack – ho ho, that's a free one for the PDP.
The last World Cup, I watched at my sister’s house in southern Michigan. Over the course of the tournament, fifty or more people passed through that house, not one watching any game for more than a couple minutes. For the last fifty-years, soccer's popularity in the US has been like viable fusion power, it will be here in ten years – don't bet on it.
For some reason, I'm not sure why, maybe because my early interest in wildlife and space, I've always been a globalist. The World Cup is a truly internationally celebrated event. Because the US is never any good, as an American you can watch without the usual surrounding toxicity of knee-jerk jingoist nationalism polluting most other world events.
A few weeks ago, I watched in Athens with a room full of desperate Germans as Germany was dispatched. A young German asked me about the US having gotten through the tournament’s weakest group, I said, “They're not going anywhere.”
He looked surprised and replied, “All Americans I've spoken with all start chanting, U-S-A! U-S-A!”
I replied, “Americans don't know anything about football.”
In the US to watch with actual football fans, you more or less have to dig up a Mexican, Brit, German, or even South African, though outside certain neighborhoods in Los Angeles they're pretty rare. The tournament has a certain purity of global spirit lacking almost everywhere else.
The only disappointment this tournament was the Brazilians out by their own negligence. Their team was good and when the Brazilians are good, they bring a certain beauty to the game. Maybe because in Brazil there's a melting together of humanity unmatched anywhere else on this small planet.
Congrats to the Argentinians. Unfortunately, we now have to wait another four years.
We don’t have to wait that long, Women’s World Cup is next year. Go U.S.A.! We’re awesome!