All three of my kids have done soccer as a sport in primary school, but aside from knowing they needed to kick the ball towards the goal, I wasn’t aware of any other rules of the game, and neither were they. The offside rule? Forget about it. As it turned out, my kids lost interest in playing the sport, and so we didn’t talk much about soccer again. All this changed when the World Cup started this year.
My kids are now at an age where they can pay attention to what is happening during the biggest sporting event in the world. Four years ago they were too young to understand. Now they are informing me about player stats, group standings and knockout rounds. They are getting up early to watch the games, they are supporting teams from countries they’d hardly heard of, they are even being allowed on occasion to stay up to watch the games, and I’ve gone along with it, smiling encouragingly as they talked to me, not realising that their passion was contagious.
Previous World Cups passed me by. I may have watched an occasional game with fleeting interest, but didn’t really care what the outcome was. Now, for some reason, I find myself invested in teams I have no connection to.
I wept when South Korea beat Portugal and progressed to the round of 16 – the emotions of the players and the crowd being hard not to respond to. I cheered when the overwhelming underdogs Morocco beat Spain in a tense penalty shootout to advance to the quarterfinals, making history as they did.
Who had I turned into? Was I steps away from painting my face in the colours of my favourite team like some kind of fevered fan?
And let’s not forget the impact of the Socceroos. Like many Aussies, my family and I set our alarms far too early on a Sunday morning to watch the Socceroos put up a brave fight against Argentina in the round of 16 – ultimately losing the match.
What really confirmed to me that I had caught World Cup fever when I found myself deep diving into the beef between , which, as I later found out, stemmed from a handball the Uruguay player Luis Suarez made in the 2010 World Cup. As I emerged from 45 minutes of reading various articles about this, I wondered what was going on. Who had I turned into? Was I steps away from painting my face in the colours of my favourite team like some kind of fevered fan?
And then it occurred to me: I was into the World Cup because my children were and this was my way of connecting with something that interested them. But, while it may have started like that, there is something special about this sporting event that sucks you in and makes you lose yourself in the ups and downs of teams from around the world.
Hardcore fans of the sport will not consider me to be much of a World Cup fan at all. I’m someone who has just discovered the beauty of this sport and will probably only renew my interest every four years when it’s on.
But for my children, perhaps, the tournament this year has more significance. They will most likely always remember this as the first World Cup they paid attention to. My six-year-old is now re-enacting World Cup matches in the playground at school. In case you were wondering, they played the finals today and Morocco miraculously won the whole tournament.
My son has also expressed an interest in continuing with soccer next year, even though previously he had gone off it. Even if he doesn’t actually play the game, this event is something we as a family will come back to at least every four years.
The World Cup for us isn’t about soccer or the intricacies of the game, rather it’s about the feeling and the passion that brings so many nations together, and – as was the case for us – families, too.
But I am still yet to figure out the offside rule.
