T minus a few hours until the World Cup 2006 edition starts. The coverage on SBS starts at midnight, and the first game, Germany vs Costa Rica, kicks off at approximately 2am. And then it will be wall to wall footy for the next month, and have a huge smile on my face at the prospect.
I don't know what it is about the World Cup, but maybe it is the fact that it is the biggest event in the world. Yeah, I took a while to complete that sentence, and can see how ridiculous it looks now - perhaps the biggest event focussed on only one thing.
The Olympics are great, but once the opening ceremony is over, you can pretty well cherry pick what you want to see - gymnastics, swimming, athletics, ice hockey in the winter - and can give the lesser sports, such as curling, tae kwan do, wrestling the flick if you want to. The World Cup is only about footy, 100% of the time, and it is great.
I first noticed international soccer at the time of Italia 90, at my grandparent's place as my family were trying to find a house after moving back to New Zealand. The early morning games, the fact that England lost to West Germany (yes, it was still West Germany back then), can't remember too much of the final though.
Whereas with USA 94, I watched a lot of the games, because I religiously put the scores into my diary back then, but basically can only remember Roberto Baggio missing the penalty that gave Brazil the Cup in the final. A nice fine sunny day in Los Angeles if I remember correctly, whereas my memory of Italia 90 was endless huge stadiums with barely a hint of sunlight throughout the entire tournament.
We will leave aside the Euro Champs for now, apart from mentioning the musical crime that is Three Lions that was resurrected for France 98. By this stage, I had discovered that alcohol made the whole experience of communal sports better, and I was in World Cup Hysteria Central, aka England. In the pools I picked Romania to beat England, and I was at a mate's place when watching it, but I kept very very quiet about it when the loss did happen.
And then the match against the Argentinians - we went out to a pub to watch it. Now I thought I had seen passion in the qualifying matches, when I was working behind a bar, but to see a sudden death match, and Beckham being sent off for a petulant kick while on the ground, and the chants for Michael Owen - to the theme of The Great Escape.
And then to go to a penalty shoot out, and lose that way - as they did to the Germans in 1990 - and the utter sense of loss, despair - it's the most powerful downward emotion I have ever experienced to a sporting event, I was going to say feel, but that would be a personal myself kind of thing, but just the atmosphere completely sucked any energy out of the bar. And yes, that does include Rugby World Cup losses the All Blacks had in 1995 and 1999.
And then, because I was living in England, it was expected that when they went out, I was to turn off all interest altogether to anything footy related until the start of the Premier League season. I hear that France won the final that year?
Japan Korea 2002 was perfectly placed, timezone wise, because I was back in New Zealand. The early games would start about 2pm, the late games would end about midnight. Saw a lot of the games at the pubs that tournament - and it is always interesting how your interest levels ultimately begin to wane, so that Slovenia v Togo during the group stages seems like the perfect game to sandwich between France v Italy and Ukraine v Korea, but by the time the big games during the semi finals, say Germany v Holland or Brazil v err England, you are a bit over it all.
Will be interesting to see how my err interest level holds up this time around, what with the sucky timezone situation - the early games start at 11pm this time around, and the late games finish at 8am or so.
In conclusion it is just the uncertainty of it all that I think holds the most excitement - Brazil, Italy, Germany may be the favourites, but the possibility of Senegal beating France, Argentina going out in the first round, England losing on penalties, just whets the appetite...
But I think it will be a bit much to expect Costa Rica to upset Germany, Ballackless or not. And let's see how tired I am at 2am to start with - England v Paraguay is the big game tomorrow night though :)
Pauly
I don't know what it is about the World Cup, but maybe it is the fact that it is the biggest event in the world. Yeah, I took a while to complete that sentence, and can see how ridiculous it looks now - perhaps the biggest event focussed on only one thing.
The Olympics are great, but once the opening ceremony is over, you can pretty well cherry pick what you want to see - gymnastics, swimming, athletics, ice hockey in the winter - and can give the lesser sports, such as curling, tae kwan do, wrestling the flick if you want to. The World Cup is only about footy, 100% of the time, and it is great.
I first noticed international soccer at the time of Italia 90, at my grandparent's place as my family were trying to find a house after moving back to New Zealand. The early morning games, the fact that England lost to West Germany (yes, it was still West Germany back then), can't remember too much of the final though.
Whereas with USA 94, I watched a lot of the games, because I religiously put the scores into my diary back then, but basically can only remember Roberto Baggio missing the penalty that gave Brazil the Cup in the final. A nice fine sunny day in Los Angeles if I remember correctly, whereas my memory of Italia 90 was endless huge stadiums with barely a hint of sunlight throughout the entire tournament.
We will leave aside the Euro Champs for now, apart from mentioning the musical crime that is Three Lions that was resurrected for France 98. By this stage, I had discovered that alcohol made the whole experience of communal sports better, and I was in World Cup Hysteria Central, aka England. In the pools I picked Romania to beat England, and I was at a mate's place when watching it, but I kept very very quiet about it when the loss did happen.
And then the match against the Argentinians - we went out to a pub to watch it. Now I thought I had seen passion in the qualifying matches, when I was working behind a bar, but to see a sudden death match, and Beckham being sent off for a petulant kick while on the ground, and the chants for Michael Owen - to the theme of The Great Escape.
And then to go to a penalty shoot out, and lose that way - as they did to the Germans in 1990 - and the utter sense of loss, despair - it's the most powerful downward emotion I have ever experienced to a sporting event, I was going to say feel, but that would be a personal myself kind of thing, but just the atmosphere completely sucked any energy out of the bar. And yes, that does include Rugby World Cup losses the All Blacks had in 1995 and 1999.
And then, because I was living in England, it was expected that when they went out, I was to turn off all interest altogether to anything footy related until the start of the Premier League season. I hear that France won the final that year?
Japan Korea 2002 was perfectly placed, timezone wise, because I was back in New Zealand. The early games would start about 2pm, the late games would end about midnight. Saw a lot of the games at the pubs that tournament - and it is always interesting how your interest levels ultimately begin to wane, so that Slovenia v Togo during the group stages seems like the perfect game to sandwich between France v Italy and Ukraine v Korea, but by the time the big games during the semi finals, say Germany v Holland or Brazil v err England, you are a bit over it all.
Will be interesting to see how my err interest level holds up this time around, what with the sucky timezone situation - the early games start at 11pm this time around, and the late games finish at 8am or so.
In conclusion it is just the uncertainty of it all that I think holds the most excitement - Brazil, Italy, Germany may be the favourites, but the possibility of Senegal beating France, Argentina going out in the first round, England losing on penalties, just whets the appetite...
But I think it will be a bit much to expect Costa Rica to upset Germany, Ballackless or not. And let's see how tired I am at 2am to start with - England v Paraguay is the big game tomorrow night though :)
Pauly
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