You Call it Corn?

The typical question is whether I have been watching the Men’s World Cup. While a congenital fear of heat, queuing, and heavy expenditure has kept me away from in-person games—er, matches—I’ve devised a Green Eggs and Ham-esque number of watching schemes. 

I’ve stayed up into the wee hours in France and eavesdropped on my cab driver’s stream in Queens. I’ve lingered after landing at LaGuardia. I’ve canceled two Fox One trials. I’ve sat for a good Sunday afternoon at a Chicago bar, and I’ve sat for a better Saturday afternoon at a Park Slope bar, squatting ahead of Knicks game 5. I’ve walked one Burj Khalifa’s worth of steps on the stair master while watching at the gym, I’ve signed up for Tubi and, in panic, canceled to sign up for Fubo instead.

I have learned that to watch soccer in this day and age is to experience something akin to staying at a fancy friend’s ski house. It’s something to get excited about, something that some group of people are eager to relate about but which another group of people want absolutely nothing to do with. Moreover, it’s full of rules that hardly make sense and signifiers that feel exclusionary or at least embarrassingly unoriginal. These rules and cliches are in turn wrapped in a constant, inescapable conversation about how people could possibly not think it’s awesome. 

Upon arrival, we might be told to make ourselves at home, with one rule. In Telluride, it’s no ski boots inside, while in soccer, it’s no hands. From there, though, everything you’ve learned about sports and etiquette disintegrates. The first evening, it’s fun—a big steak, some bourbon after two mandatory glasses of water (to adjust to the altitude), and early to bed. In the morning, though, a closer eye reveals an incomprehensible coffee machine (imported from Europe) and a regime obsessed with putting the wrong kinds of protections in the wrong places. Does a glass table require coasters? Here it does. You think putting knives in the dishwasher dulls them? We don’t. 

None of the fields are the same size, but there are strict rules about the grass. A onetime soccer teammate of mine, in ninth grade, said that the leaves on our field, inevitable during the New England autumn, made it unacceptable by FIFA standards. Nothing that could impact the conduct of the game is permitted on the field. Nevermind the field itself impacting the conduct of the game.

Late in the first half of the England/Argentina semifinal, the Argentines kicked the ball out. The England player walked out of his way, took a detour, to grab a backup ball, perched on a tidy little tee. These presumably ensure players don’t waste time on the running clock chasing down an errant ball. On the way back to the—charitably advanced—spot for the throw-in, the guy kicked the original ball off to the side because it was in his way. This has zero bearing on the rivalries at play, the greatness from the top players, or any of that; the free stay gives you access to one of the most fun things on earth. But. But! How can you not be annoyed when the only frying pan suitable for scrambled eggs for eight sits beneath a precarious pile of 1970s appliances. Once you discover irrationality in somebody else’s home, it’s hard to stop noticing it.

The running clock makes time precious enough to require that there be extra balls available, but every penalty comes with minutes of debate and disagreement without stoppage. This is the point where I, an American, will complain about the flopping. To be clear, I hate this in the NBA, too, but my god a stiff breeze or perhaps the cosmic vibrations triggered by a player’s proximity send a player to the turf, grasping his leg almost regardless of where the contact took place. The pain, too, disappears the next play when the same player notices the referee looking away and wraps both arms around his opponent to move him off the ball. 

The NBA has lately introduced the notion of a flagrant foul, which approximates a yellow card, but nobody ever explains it that simply when asked. Two in a game is an ejection, and there are other rules that get increasingly arcane. Where I get hung up is, obviously, semantics. Flagrant is supposed to mean obvious, in-your-face, and yet these things always come with a long, detailed video review. Similarly, I won’t get into it, but the video review assigning cards that were less obvious on the field to me raises questions about whether cards are assigned because players disrupt play and endanger one another or because players cross invisible red lines during the course of play. Think about breaking a dish in the kitchen without repercussion but stepping into the formal dining room at the wrong time, in the wrong attire triggering a speech about just how delicate the imitation Remington is.

All through the review, the complaining, the rolling in agony, the clock ticks up. This is partially because there is no end time, but not the way there is no end for baseball. At the end of the 45 minutes in the first half, the referee will decide some number of minutes to add to compensate for all the wasted time, and at some point after that stoppage time has elapsed, he will whistle the end after 48 or 51 or however many minutes. Halftime, it is required, cannot exceed fifteen minutes, unless FIFA wants to put on a halftime show with Madonna, Justin Bieber, and others. 

Come the second half, the clock will start back at 45, erasing from the historical record those extra minutes, but not any goals or cards that happened during that time. The stoppage time recurs at the end of the game, and so 9 extra minutes becomes 12, the 90 minutes dilates to 120 just as the group’s departure time drifts from first chair steadily back to 10 and then 10:30, even with an 11:00 AM lunch reservation at the top of the gondola.

Growing up, throw-ins required the most attention. Exactly where the ball went out, two feet on the ground, ball all the way behind your head then released all the way in front. It seemed there were a thousand ways to get called for a foul throw, and none of these apply at the professional or international level. This could be a phenomenon akin to how no NBA player ever gets called for a carry. During the first US Men’s game of the tournament, I watched players lift a foot, run up to gain some fifteen or twenty yards from where the ball went out, or not bring it far enough back so often that I walked right into a Google commercial and looked up the rules. 

The comfort with which people from the rest of the world accept these micro abrasions feels like an Adam-and-Eve-don’t-know-they’re-naked situation rather than a Jake’s-takes-are-incorrect situation. Of course, the rest of the world will complain about FIFA being corrupt, because I guess it’s not meant to be a business in the way the NBA is. US viewers are comfortable with for-profit sports and well-acquainted with ponying up gobs and gobs of taxpayer dollars to subsidize them. While legitimate, the corruption gripe doesn’t seem to bother people here.  

I played soccer just a little bit past the everybody-swarm-the-ball level, but not enough to understand how exactly there were strategies. Certainly that the game is beautiful was at odds with my lived experience. Playing on the seconds team during my junior year abroad, I would mumble incredulously as aspirant members of parliament debated whether New College warranted a 4-3-3 or Teddy Hall should get a 4-4-2 and Jesus a 4-5-1. In my mind, don’t leave the other team alone on defense, and try to find empty space on offense. Also, swarm the ball. Why grouse isn’t just turkey is a question best answered by the waiter at Snake River Grill. The small fork is for your salad, the big one for your main. That there is a fork with two tines, a knife with a blade that is offset and dull, and a pointy spoon at dinner feels like a distraction.

By now, I’ve begun to watch enough games and read enough analysis that the formation subtleties, and how they play to each team’s strengths and weaknesses, make as much sense as a fish knife. That said, much of that analysis comes written in the Queen’s English. It ignores the existence of collective nouns: France are the most talented team, rather than Morocco is the best African team. They use the word tie to mean an upcoming game, not an ongoing or recently concluded one where each team has the same score. There are lots of words that don’t sound like they mean “score a goal” but do in fact mean “score a goal.” 

We pedestrian American readers are left with a weird taste in our mouths. When people pronounce Budapest like Budap-esht, they might feel condescending, but they’re correct. Here, English English is not the objectively correct varietal. They might have invented the game, but they showed against Argentina that they are no longer its rulers, nor even its stewards. These publications, therefore, have the same try-hardy weirdness as the drunken American stumbling onto fourteenth street in the middle of the day to celebrate Arsenal’s winning the premiership by yelling, “come on, Arsenal!” He yells with the same not-quite-right cadence and upward-inflected last syllable like they did when they shouted “come on, Exon!”. They can’t hear you! It’s a Tuesday! You’re opposite the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary! Referring to it as Ajax and not Aspen Mountain does not a homeowner make. But the Dutch club is in fact Ajax.

All throughout, the same people who ignore the contradictions and pander to the British with their pretentious word selection will pull their hair out wondering whether this is in fact the year the game really takes off in the US. The conversation is tired, and with the number of 30-year olds who grew up playing, it’s outdated. In some circles, nowadays, not watching the World Cup reads vaguely as a xenophobic dogwhistle, but the pitch—argument, not field—just isn’t there. 

I mean, just as I was getting excited about how there are so many fewer commercials than the big four US sports, they brought back the water breaks I last saw at age nine. More commercials, more disruption, more technicalities, more elitism in the commentary, it’s like soccer and American sports keep shaking hands and exchanging bad lessons. Soccer is supposed to be a game for the people, the most popular game on earth, but watching it here feels like exposing myself to accusations of not really getting it. If only I was there when they used to bury martini shakers under trees at Taos.

Regardless of how delayed and discomfited, though, the group gets out the door, the last forgotten glove is remembered, and the skiing begins. The late goals come in, or the defense withstands attack after attack, and it really is fun to watch. Even if I watch it on a boat, even if I root against the GOAT, the soccer sends my heart rate up, because I really can’t but watch World Cup.