Down. Set. Hut. Hut. Hut. Wait, what? It’s not that kind of football? Oh. Then what?
Hey everyone! I’m Dana and you’re watching Wanted an Adventure Living Abroad.
Everyone around me is getting super excited, super geared up because the FIFA World Cup
is coming on June 12. Yeah! Everyone is just so excited for it. Yeah! It's starting
in Brazil. Woohoo!
So, I decided that with all of that pumped up all around me, I should go ahead and make
a video about it.
Let's start by discussing the name. Why do Americans call it soccer whereas pretty much
everyone else calls it football?
According to my very trusty source, Wikipedia, 43 out of the 45 national FIFA affiliates
that speak English as either their primary language or their official language, refer
to the sport as football. So who are those two nations that call it soccer? I’ll give
you a hint: one is the place that I’m from and the other one rhymes with Fanada.
It's America and Canada.
So what is the World Cup and why should we care?
The World Cup is an international men’s soccer/football association whose prize trophy
is fought for in different places around the world once every 4 years.
While the preliminary qualifying competitions involve 204 countries and the main tournament
involves 32 countries, there are only 8 countries that have taken home the prize trophy in the
past 19 tournaments. Brazil’s taken it 5 times; Italy's taken it 4 times; Germany took
it 3 times; Argentina and Uruguay each won twice; and Spain, England, and France each
won once.
That still leaves the question, why should we care?
According to the FIFA World Cup website, the World Cup is the biggest single-event sporting
competition in the world. And it's also the most widely viewed sporting competition.
The final match in 2006 alone netted just about, oh you know, an estimated 715 million viewers.
I wasn’t in Europe in 2006 when the World Cup was held in Germany, but I’ve seen pictures
and I've heard stories. What I'm wearing here, this is tame compared to what a lot of the
Germans ran around wearing during the World Cup. At one point during the 2010 World Cup
tournament, I worked at a medical trade show, that just happened to fall on one of the German
game days. It was the Germany versus England game, and it took place in the middle of the
afternoon. The medical trade show was going, going; I was working, everyone was working,
and then all of a sudden, the game came on and everything came to a standstill.
People turned on the TVs in their booths, pulled up chairs; everyone just started hanging out!
I was standing there like, uh, aren't I supposed to be doing work or something?
No, no, the game's on. We gotta watch the game. People started opening sparkling wine,
beers; I didn't even know we had beer--someone opened the refrigerator, well of course we
have beer, I knew there was a game today! So I guess they came to the trade show planning
to stop working at 2:00 p.m., or whatever time the game started.
Okay, so it's clear that around the world people are really into soccer. And in Germany--that's
definitely no exception.
But so then why is it, that regardless of the vast number of people that are so into
soccer/football, why isn't America into it?
I was interested in getting to the bottom of this question. So I typed into Google,
"Why don’t Americans like soccer?” And from what I could find, it seems like people think
that Americans think that not enough goals are scored in soccer, that the game is too
slow, that the players cry little crocodile tears every time they stub their little toe,
that there are no cheerleaders, aka sexy women for the guys to gaze upon.
There were a few other possibilities tossed around online about why Americans don't like
soccer. But in the book “Offside: Soccer and American Exceptionalism,” Andrei Markovits
and Steven Hellerman go into great detail explaining the ins and outs of this question.
But according to Murithi Mutiga in his aptly titled blog post, "Why American’s Don’t
Like Soccer," he says that the authors argue that, just cutting through all of the other reasons,
the one big reason is because the Americans don't win. According to the authors, if America
started winning, then Americans would start liking soccer.
Regardless of what I'm wearing here today, when it does come time for America to play
on July 16, I will, of course, be cheering my countrymen along, even if I'm not actually
watching the game, because I'll probably be doing something else. Because even though
I live in Germany, I'm still one of those many Americans who is just, not all that into
soccer/football.
What do you think? To the Americans out there: do you like soccer? Why or why not?
And my question to everyone is: who’s going to win this year? Is it going to be Spain like in 2010?
Italy like in 2006, or is Brazil going to pull it, the hosts of the event? Or someone else.
Let me know in the comments below.
And there are linky-links in the description to everything that I’ve talked about today.
And thanks for watching this edition of Wanted an Adventure Living Abroad. Be sure to subscribe
and hit that like button.
Yeah, go Germany. Woohooo! Woohooo! Go Germany!
Eh, who am I kidding? I don't care.