The World Cup in Kansas City
In 1986 when Ireland had a referendum on divorce I was drinking in Rathmines, and every time I went to the jax I chose a different route. That way I got to accidentally overhear every conversation in the pub. Divorce discussions in the build up to the referendum had been the usual mixture of animation and bile, but that night in Rathmines nobody was talking about divorce.
Every conversation without exception was about Diego Armando Maradona. Specifically his gravity defying goal against Belgium was the main topic. Ireland hadn’t qualified for that World Cup in 1986, but that’s what your average World Cups are like at home. In Kansas City it’s different.
As well as all 64 games live on ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC Sports - all in High Definition - Setanta also are showing live games. Some of your favourite pubs have embraced the foreign world game of Association Football, notably The Gaf in Waldo, and WJ McBride’s in KCK - though really it depends on whether you can muster enough people to deflect attention away from golf, tennis, or the Belmont Stakes.
Truth be told I struggle with American coverage, in so much as it even exists. I know I got upset four years ago. So I waited until Day 1 was over before commenting on the coverage this time.
It’s over thirty years since I haven’t watched Brazil live on the box in a World Cup. Watching them play defines the World Cup. What you feel inside as they pass the ball sideways and backwards, let alone attack - god it’s practically sexual.
Long before my Ireland ever qualified for a World Cup my sport-disinterested to the point of hate, mother, had even learned to respect certain occasions: “Oh, it’s Brazil” she would say and I was to be left unmolested in a house of females who ordinarily stopped me watching domestic English soccer, like the rest of multi-channel Ireland, in favour of Showboat, Oklahoma or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. You wouldn’t believe how much I hate musicals to this day.
And so last time, when presenters on American television of the 2002 World Cup started apologising for the sport at half-time in a Brazil match and tried to explain to the unconverted American public (who surely weren’t watching) that this really wasn’t boring, well I got upset no end. It made me want to go out and play. With Bulgarians. And Mexicans. And Nigerians. Suffice to say that one day into this German hosted affair and I am not encouraged.
Anyway, today is day 2 and England make their start against Paraguay - which hopefully will provide the great theatre of self-undoing that England excel at. But the most attractive game of today’s three, at least on paper, is surely Argentina against Ivory Coast. As every Irish Festival goer knows, the Iverians wave Irish flags - they just wave them backwards.
Given that the English football league provides more footballers at this year’s World Cup than any other nation, it means Irish people have a familiarity more than most with so many participating countries. Unless they like musicals. And with the recent explosion in the immigrant population in Ireland, this interest in other countries has now been extended further.
This is what it must be like if we discovered an advanced civilization in a neighbouring galaxy but visit there with a handful of pioneering friends when [insert something that 32.5 million beings cumulatively will watch on your home planet] takes place.
See also:
• Irish Lose: O Dear, O-dear O-dear O-dear
• Ireland & USA: Little Differences #2
• Kansas City and Boston: World Cup Traffic
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