Cup Fever

All of England has gone mad. For the past few weeks, there has been nothing in the news except the upcoming World Cup which starts tomorrow. This is quite a shock for someone from a country where soccer is accorded only the smallest bit of attention in the media. It seems like I’ve always known names like Sven, Rooney, Becks and Ronaldinho. Actually the parallels to Philadelphia in the run-up to the Super Bowl are striking: a key player goes down with an injury towards the end of the regular season and is questionable to play, people hold an unrealistic expectation of what the team can actually accomplish, team colours are everywhere, kids are all wearing jerseys and people have those silly flags sticking out of the back windows of their cars. I find all of this new and exciting and I’m glad my year in England coincided with thet World Cup. And yes, I’ll be cheering for England more than the USA. The way I see it is that a World Cup win would mean much less to America than a victory for England, Iran, Mexico or the super-underdog Trinidad and Tobago. The rest of the world lives on soccer and the World Cup is a great equaliser, where smaller countries have just as much of a chance as big ones.

My predictions: England will definitely go beyond the first round and will probably get stopped in the quarter-finals. The USA will have a tough time getting past the first round, having to play teams like Italy and the Czech Republic, but if they do, they could ride the momentum to the quarter-finals. My money is on Germany to win it all, since they have a good team and home-field advantage. Brazil will finish second. Place your bets!