World Cup Conversation

Four years ago, my husband and I were in Italy during the World Cup festivities.  To be precise, we were in Lucca, a charming Tuscan town that was transformed during the world cup madness.  We were sitting in the town square on July 4 when the Italian team bested Germany and the place went wild.   I mean WILD.  The restaurants had already shut down so that all the wait staff could watch the match.  In fact all the shops and eating places (except for my favorite gelato shop that sells the best pistachio gelato in the world, I swear) were closed.  Everyone and anyone, from the youngest to the most infirm, was caught up in World Cup fever.

 

We all watched--thousands of us--on the big screens strung up across the town square.  The biggest was several stories high and made the game seem even larger than life. 

When Italy won that match, they moved up to the finals, between France and Italy 4 days later.  It was the only thing everyone talked about for those four days, whether native or tourist.  It was World Cup-itis and we all caught it bad. It was about Italy as a country and how important it was to Italy to win that game.

On the finals night of July 8, the fever rose to almost unbearable heights.  Now everyone--no matter their nationality--was Italian for that night.  We were all connected that night.  Except for the French, of course, but I never saw any there that evening.  Perhaps they were in hiding. 

When Italy won, the noise of the cheering crowd was deafening.  And the partying continued for hours, as young people rode in death defying speeds on motorcycles and Vespas, going way too fast for conditions on those teeny narrow streets.  And they were all screaming with the thrill of the Italian win.  It was a cultural victory.  Not just about soccer, it was also about the Italian culture having done something extraordinarily important for all the world to see.  We talked about it for days afterward.

 

Flash forward four years to last week when I sat with my extended family in the Dancing Bears restaurant in Lake Placid to watch, yes, the World Cup match between the US and Algerians.  It was a thrilling pull-it-out-of-a-hat win and the place erupted in cheers.  But it was not so much a cultural event as a sporting event.  People were not talking about the thrill of being American as they watched the game.  They felt no connection to people at adjacent tables.  And when we went back for the next game, which the US lost to Ghana, the disappointment among US fans did not have a cultural ring to it.  It was a great match but it wasn't an important societal event for the Americans.  When we drove back to our cottage, the game wasn't mentioned at all in our half hour drive. 

Can soccer ever take on the importance to Americans that it inspires in citizens of other countries across the globe?  I hope so.  It's a great spectator sport and with the internet, is destined to take on even more fans.

But how do we raise America's interest to become a culturally important one?   What is the soccer conversation that needs to be initiated--and spread virally--in order for us to feel a national interest in this game?