World Cup Fever is Back

"Four pounds?!" I did some quick calculation. I had landed in London just a few hours before, delirious from the bizarrely fortunate flight, the time change, and the excitement of my first trip to England. "That's like six bucks! Just to get into a restaurant at 2:30 in the afternoon? What the hell is going on?" But, Dan and I were hungry, had been traipsing around the financial district and the Tower of London for far too long to find a bite to eat. We handed over the money, grumbling miserably to ourselves. Then all hell broke loose.

Dan and I had recently graduated from college and had planned to take a month-long trip around Europe with our friend Justin, who would meet us a few days later. Our trip would take us to Scotland, France, Spain and Italy and back to France again. Dan had arrived in London the day before and had gotten his bearings a bit, but was still not altogether with it. I had just fastened my seat belt in my coach seat on Virgin Atlantic next to an annoying couple when a flight attendant asked me if I was indeed Craig Weiner and if I would please take my belongings and follow her to my new first class seat, where I proceeded to refuse an offer of the services of a on-board masseuse before realizing too late that I had theoretically paid $3,000 for that massage and that I would not have to pay for it. If either Dan or I had been the least bit tuned in to the world around us, we would have prepared for the obvious. When we walked in that restaurant with the four pound cover charge, we realized that it was, in fact, a pub packed to the max with fans awaiting the impending kickoff of the England-Tunisia game, the first match for both teams in the 1998 World Cup. On this day, we received an education.

Soccer was by no means foreign to me. I had attended the '94 World Cup in the U.S. I grew up playing youth soccer in Florida, following my big brother's footsteps onto the varsity soccer team in high school as a sophomore, playing for a few travel all-star teams in the off-season, and even spending one summer at a soccer camp in Michigan. I played goalkeeper. I thought I was fine at it. I taught myself how to overcome my average punting by developing a drop-kick, which I would crush 70 yards about as often as I would shank sideways out of bounds. I got a rush out of taking charge of the defense, and probably never felt more confident about anything as a teenager than I did when I was positioning my fullbacks and telling them to clear the f@&king ball out of the box. I enjoyed the game and I enjoyed being a part of a team. I hated long-distance running during practice and I hated the politics of playing time. I never played again after eleventh grade.

But, I was still a fan of the game. I knew the World Cup was in France that year, but I didn't really care about anything other than Team USA. Until that fateful late lunch in London. After getting a strange look from the bartender while trying to tip him for my beer, things went more smoothly. Kickoff was still at least an hour away, but the pre-match commentary audio was cranked up high on the large pull-down projection screen in the back of the bar, and there was plenty of chatter from the Englishmen surrounding us. Teddy Sheringham and Alan Shearer were the established strikers, but all eyes were on the young phenom Michael Owen. David Beckham was on his way to god-like status as a playmaker in the midfield. A young woman at a bar later that night told me that she had semen in her pocket, and then pulled out a photograph of David Seaman, revered goalkeeper of the national team. Songs of indeterminate lyrics were sung, and English goals were cheered with such fervor that I would not bet against the finding of semen in the pockets of many a pair of pants that afternoon. From that moment on, I was hooked on the English national team.

Saturday, the U.S. plays England in their first match of the World Cup in South Africa. There are no torn loyalties. I am a U.S. man all the way. Even though Landon Donovan strikes me as a player I would probably hate if he played for another country or a rival club team (if I had a favorite club team), even though I think our defense is suspect and even though I can't pinpoint any particular exciting playing style to our team, I'm an American and this one of the few instances in which we are an underdog anymore. If the English advance beyond the Americans, I will be rooting for them, but the match on Saturday could be a turning point for the way American soccer is perceived by the rest of the world. Even though the U.S. beat Spain on the way to a narrow championship game loss to Brazil in the Confederations Cup last summer, we won't be taken seriously until we consistently advance to the quarterfinals of the World Cup. Beating England would go a long way toward that goal, but it's not the endgame. Sure, it would be fantastic to have the respect of the English, but it's more important to advance far into the tournament and to do it again in 2014 in Brazil. Only then will the U.S. be considered a force to be reckoned with on the international soccer scene.

I watched the opening matches on Friday at home, thinking back to my experience in Orlando in '94 and Europe in '98, which included another accidental appearance at a beach viewing party on a jumbo screen of a France match in Marseilles, and the unfortunate timing of our arrival in Paris, 24 hours after France had won it all, arriving on the Champs Elysees ready for revelry, only to find it completely spent, save for a few strays, sleeping it off. I remembered the challenge of Japan/South Korea in 2002, deciding whether to wake up at 3:00 a.m. to watch a match, or to just stay up all night, and the cool beers of a warm summer afternoon, standing outside a sidewalk cafe to catch games during Germany '06.

The World Cup for me is about a melding of cultures coming together to watch the beautiful game, even if most Americans don't understand it. It's a time for us Americans to take a step back and appreciate how the rest of the world follows sports. It's a time when we Americans can admit that we are not the best at something, and observe how other nations and cultures excel. But, at least we are a part of the experience, learning how to get better, and that's an American spirit I can be proud of. And if we can do it without picking up the horrendous habit of flopping to draw a non-existent foul, so much the better.