Soccer It to Me
The winner of the Academy Award for Overacting is:
The 2026 FIFA World Cup Final.
Professional basketball players like to exaggerate their “injuries.” However, watching the soccer players in the final was beyond belief.
If a butterfly landed on a player’s shoulder, that shoulder would probably dislocate.
Let me preface this post by saying, I watched my daughter play soccer in grade school. Besides that, this year's final game is the only other soccer game that I have watched (on purpose).
Spain vs. Argentina
I don’t have a dog in the fight. But I was rooting for Spain. Here’s why.
The morning of the final, I went to get a bagel and coffee. There is a very pretty woman who works there (Ashley). Ashley always greets me with a smile. She is always upbeat when I see her, and she is a soccer fan (she wore jerseys throughout the World Cup). I asked her who she wanted to win the final.
She said, “Spain.”
So let’s go Spain.
Let me put it another way. If World War II depended on me not divulging secrets, we’d all be speaking German today.
The day of the game, I went to a local bar (Willie McBride’s) with my friend Joe. He knows soccer, so he was my source of information. He was, until he left at halftime. Then I was on my own.
Sometimes being on your own is not a bad thing.
Soccer fans to the left of me, soccer fans to the right. Soccer fans in front of me.
I’ll be fine.
Had something to drink, and something to eat.
I learned one thing about soccer that nobody had to tell me. It is a very long game before anything really happens.
A lot of passing. A lot of running. A lot of waiting for a player to stop rolling around in pain after he tripped over a bug.
Or, as my artist friend Maria said to me, “Too much foreplay.”
And for ninety-six minutes the crowd was pretty quiet. A scattering of oohs and aahs when a goal was almost scored.
But at the ninety-seventh minute, in unison, half the room exploded.
Spain scored.
And in the time it takes to pop a balloon, that same half of the room fell silent.
The goal was disallowed.
That ignited the other half of the room.
I went to the young man at the table in front of me. He wore a Spain jersey, and was my go-to guy after Joe left.
I asked him what just happened.
He turned to me, head in hands. A genuine look of anguish on his face.
“I don’t know.”
At one-hundred-and-six minutes, another goal by Spain.
The bar exploded. Tables were jostled, drinks were spilled, and utensils dropped to the floor.
Nobody noticed, and this time I joined in.
I was surprised to learn they add time to the end of the game. So the game doesn’t end at the end of the game (does that make sense?).
It’s called extra time. And in that time Spain scored.
Half the room (me included) exploded.
And once again the room fell silent a moment later when that goal was disallowed.
Offside.
Now I rose and fell with the crowd as the game continued. When the clock reached one-hundred-and-twenty minutes, people cheered. I asked anyone within earshot if the game was over.
Some said yes. Some said no.
The nos had it.
They added another five minutes to the clock.
My stomach was now in knots. That was an unexpected reaction to a game I never liked.
After ninety-six minutes of foreplay and twenty-nine minutes of anticipation, Spain won.
I high-fived strangers while half the bar left in defeat. There was no animosity, just the sadness of a lost game.
I didn’t leave right away. I continued to talk to strangers as if I’d known them longer than the extra time of a soccer game.
The question is, am I now a soccer fan after just one game?
I don’t know.
Come back to me in four years and we’ll both find out.
