The World Cup

I've tried to get into soccer (for north americans) or football (for everyone else) and really not been able to make it stick. Still, I've been enjoying watching world cup games, especially with friends from various countries. I just love trying to see things through the eyes of people who are passionate about them, and if that means sitting through a football game, that's okay.

One thing I do like about, at least, is at the start of each match, the teams come onto the pitch with children - one boy or girl for each player, holding hands with their player and standing with them for the national anthem. I don't know where this originated (maybe to keep any fights from breaking out before the whistle? or does that just happen in hockey?) but it is wonderful.

I saw one match with England where they had done up the children's hair to match their player... corn rows, fauxhawk, the whole bit. I don't know if football is supposed to be cute - I'm guessing not - but that was really cute. Now if we could just get them to score a little more often.

Since that only covers the first three minutes of a match, I've come up with a new strategy for who I choose to cheer for. To understand why this would matter, there are three things you need to know:

1. Geneva is a very multi-cultural city, but there are still more people from some parts of the world than others.
2. Many (but not all) cultures celebrate a sporting win by driving up and down a main street while honking their horns and waving flags from their windows. For hours.
3. I live on a busy central street.

Now, I could understand if I lived in, say, Portugal and I wanted to go out and celebrate on the street when my team won... after all, it would be everyone's team! But why I would choose to do this when living in another country is beyond me. At best, most other people will be indifferent about my team's win. At the worst, they are from the country that just lost, and will be really, really unhappy about it. Likely, they'll just be a bit pissed-off about having some idiot driving up and down the street with his hand on the horn.

Anyway, I'm now choosing who to cheer for based on their approximate population in Geneva (or, at least, in my neighbourhood) and the amount of noise that is culturally acceptable to them. For example: the game on now is Portugal vs The Netherlands. There are a lot of Portuguese people in my neighbourhood (I heard recently that Geneva is the largest community of Portuguese outside of Portugal), and they are an enthusiastic bunch... an endearing quality, unless I'm trying to sleep.

The Dutch, on the other hand, are few and far between here. And, as far as I can tell, they are not very noisy. I find it a little pompous that they need to have "The" in front of the name of their capital city, but other than that I don't see much to complain about. So, tonight I'm pulling for The Netherlands. Besides, the orange uniforms are very cool.

Unfortunately, Portugal scored as I've been writing. Still almost an hour left though, so there is hope! My overall pick, Korea, appears to have been eliminated. Maybe next time...