Pretty excited for the World Cup to start, as I am every four years. No sporting event gets me more worked up. The only thing better would be if Dick Enberg broadcast the games for American TV, instead of Bob Ley. But I digress. (Is it possible to digress in only the first paragraph?)
I don't really care how the home team does. For me it's more about the best of the best in the world getting together for a month to hack each other down in hopes of getting to the final.
The first WC I really followed was in 1986. The Hand of God. Platini booting his penalty kick over the bar. The Mexican player's scissor-kick goal. Awesome stuff.
I was 16 and playing competitively. That summer, while the World Cup was going on, my select team traveled to Sweden to compete in the Gothia Cup, then billed as the world's largest youth soccer tournament. There were teams there from Iraq and Iran, Brazil, Italy, everywhere. This was at the height of the Reagan years/Cold War. We were there for two weeks; the first week we stayed with families in Helsingborg (two words: topless beaches) while training with Swedish coaches, the second week we stayed in a school dormitory in Gothenburg with teams from all over the world. There was a Polish team staying down the hall from us. Rumor was they weren't allowed to talk to us, and the looks on their faces seemed to prove that. This was while Poland was still behind the Iron Curtain.
We had people at our games booing us because we were American. We were just kids, with a small coaching staff and a few parents along for support. It was sometimes scary, but also really exciting. We ended up going pretty far in the tournament, and drawing large crowds, which surprised a lot of people because we weren't given much credit. (In fact, the few other American teams that competed that year lost most of their games.) In a small way, I was part of the generation of young American soccer players that laid the foundation for the U.S.'s international respect today.
Anyway, the World Cup, for me, is forever tied with my own brief international playing experience, and the good memories and feelings I have of meeting new people and seeing new places at such an impressionable age.
Oh and one more thing, go Brazil.
