On Catching World Cup Fever

I confess: I’m not a big sports fan at all. I don’t memorize useless facts about what player got traded to what team and what their scoring average is, how many injuries they’ve endured. And while I’m in the confessing mood, I’m also not into other “guy” things like memorizing the model of every single car ever made by Mercedes. I can tell you what Jordan’s GDP is but I can’t tell the difference between two cars other than the obvious (colour). I’m more into movies, music and books, probably more so than the average male. I think its one hemisphere of my brain compensating for the other.

But when it comes to sports I never found them all that interesting or entertaining. So I only watch the “big games”, the last four teams or so. I get caught up in the social spirit of sports, like when Jordan won the Arab cup and people went crazy in the streets. Events which bring about some sort of, I guess national pride is the term Iâ??m looking for. The whole get into cars waving flags and honking horns around town; things of that nature. But everything in between feels less than entertaining. This isn’t something a guy is supposed to admit, especially an Arab guy when it comes to football.

Football for the Arab male is the center of the universe. That round burning object the Earth revolves around is not a Sun but a giant football.

The fact that I grew up in Canada doesn’t help either. People over here just don’t get “soccer”. The round burning object the Earth revolves around is not a Sun but a giant hockey puck.

The irony of my life is when I moved to Jordan at a young age I was slowly converted by my friends and society at large from hockey, a game I played for practically everyday of my life between the ages of 7 and 12, to football. And slowly, over the years, I forgot about any other sport. When I moved back here I was converted back to hockey and football became less appealing. This indicates of course that I have little faith in sports and also the environment plays a big role on my belief systems.

I can understand why North Americans are not really â??diggingâ?? football. This is a game where a bunch of people run across a long stretch of land, chasing a ball for the longest time imaginable, ending the game sometimes without a single point. For penalty shots they put the ball right there, just a few meters away. It’s like saying “I dare you NOT to score”. And injuries are basically a guy falling down. Either he trips on the ball or on an evenly cut blade of grass. In hockey the player gets rammed into the side of the wall, breaks an arm, chips a tooth, takes off his gloves and beats the crap out of the other guy. And everyone’s on skates so the game appears to be much faster.

I’m not comparing both sports; I’m not a huge fan of watching sports all together. I just think that every point in football should equal 2. And if you make the shot from center field then it should be considered a 3 pointer; anything for the sake of not ending (what feels like) a 5 hour match with 1-0.

Another strange thing that happens in Jordan is that everyone cheers for an Arab team. And once that team loses, everyone who supported it will support the other Arab team thatâ??s left. Until eventually no Arab teams are left and everyone starts cheering for Brazil or Italy.

I do like watching the World Cup with friends in Jordan, which is something I’m going to miss this year. But I don’t like when people sit there and scream statistics to me during the game. Perhaps I donâ??t like people pointing out my ineptness, especially when I couldnâ??t care less.

There must be a term that refers to a person like me who watches only the big games. To some (the fanatics) it’s considered betrayal. You can’t watch a game or a series without supporting a certain team and that support involves knowing all the stats and being there right from the beginning and wearing the jersey’s and the colours, et cetera. You’re not allowed to just come in out of the blue and watch a match. Heaven forbid one would want to watch just for the sake of, I don’t know, being entertained perhaps?

On another note, I hate sport analogies and sport metaphors that people keep using all the time. And I hate it when they dress their babies in team apparel and uniforms so they look like miniature mascots.

Anyways, I doubt I’ll ever catch the World Cup Fever. I guess I’ll go read a book or catch a movie or something.