My World Cup Memories

Being a native American, as opposed to a “Native American”, soccer was the fourth or fifth most important sport for me growing up. Baseball, football, basketball, then hockey and soccer.

I tried to play soccer during that post-NASL heyday. But, living in crappy Arkansas, we didn’t exactly have much of a training program for future Pele’s.

For some reason, I remember the 1986 World Cup happening in Mexico, and I even watched parts of the 1990 Cup in Italia – mostly as I had a friend that was really into it.

Like most Americans my age, the World Cup really meant something when it came to our shores in 1994. I was a 21 year old Washington, DC intern living in a hovel with three friends from Arkansas. We had the sweet Sega World Cup 94 video game (Bicycle Kick!), we played the World Cup drinking game at the Briskeller*, and we watched the games on Univision just to get the dude Andres Cantor yelling "¡GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOALLLLLLLLL!" and hear him say “Alexi LAAAAAALAAAAS!” Even though DC was a host city, I could never get tickets.

I watched the 1998 France Cup but thought it was BS that the French won that year – I guess they couldn’t find the white flags and thank God they didn’t play the Germans.

In 2002, for Japan/South Korea, I watched from Dallas sports bars in the middle of the night drinking as much as possible until 2 am, then starting again at 6 am to get around the Texas drinking laws. *Then* having to go to work with a mighty buzz.

And in 2006, I was in Australia, once again having to watch games in the middle of the night, once staying up to watch both the US and Australia lose, then walking around like a zombie the next day at the office. The US sucked and the Australian bandwagon was in full effect*.

But, in 2010, I’ll be there in person and I can’t wait. We’re adopting the Aussies (well, I should be half Aussie by then, so not really adopting) and cheering for our homeland - the USA. I’ll go for England while the others follow their own favourite Euro team.

*Will explain World Cup drinking game at a later date.

* Will explain the Australian sports bandwagon effect at a later date, or Herrmann or Hoover can explain.