Stop the World: It’s the World Cup

Memo to the leaders of Russia, China, Pakistan, Sudan, and any other country that has designs on recapturing disputed regions, islands, or principalities: If you are planning on some unwise military action, late next week would be a good time to have your forces nip in unnoticed. If you schedule your incursion for late afternoon, Eastern Standard Time, on Thursday, June 12th, you can rest assured that the eyes of the world will be elsewhere—focussed on the brand-new Arena de São Paulo, where Brazil will play Croatia in the first game of the World Cup.

For the subsequent four and a half weeks, to be sure, the world’s business will go on unabated. In this country, the Republicans will be banging on about Benghazi, the V.A., the I.R.S., and Sergeant Bergdahl. Across the pond, Nigel Farage, Jean-Marie Le Pen, and other anti-immigrant rabble-rousers will be trying to build upon their recent successes at the ballot box. In India, Narendra Modi—the Great Savior or the Great Satan, depending on your view—will be busy putting together his government. Alas (or alleluia), many people won’t be paying attention. Two or three times a day, for two hours at a time, soccer fans will be pinned to their television screens. Meanwhile, many non-soccer fans will be outside, trying to get away from what, to their eyes, is a monthlong exercise in nationalism, machismo, and boredom. Either way, there will be no escaping it: Brazil 2014 is about to begin.

Count me as one of the ones looking forward to it. In decades past, a transplant such as I might have been called upon to justify bringing up such an un-American event. Jeez, doesn’t that limey know that it’s baseball season? And what about the N.B.A./N.H.L. playoffs? Today, though, no apology is called for. Ring Lardner and Red Smith might well turn in their graves, but America has caught the soccer bug.

The early symptoms were visible back in 1994, when the United States hosted the World Cup for the first time, and Team U.S.A. advanced beyond the group stage, eventually losing to Brazil, 1–0, in a highly creditable performance. Twenty years later—can it really be that long?—soccer has, as the cliché-loving sports commentators would put it, moved to another level. According to a very useful graphic from the Americas Society and the Council of the Americas, more tickets to this year’s tournament have been sold in the United States than in soccer-mad Argentina, Germany, or Britain. Only Brazil leads the United States in ticket sales.

Some of the U.S.-based purchasers are surely foreign nationals who reside here, but by no means all of them are. Professional soccer, long regarded as a poor relation to football, baseball, basketball, and hockey, is steadily gaining in popularity. In 2012, Major League Soccer, which currently has nineteen teams, attracted more than six million spectators—not bad for an outfit that is largely staffed by players who would struggle to make it at the very top levels in Europe, or who have played there earlier in their careers and moved on. (That said, it does have a lot of talent on display, and lively competition.) Next year, two new teams will join M.L.S.: Orlando City S.C. and New York City F.C., a joint venture between Manchester City and the New York Yankees. (Yes, the Yankees are starting a soccer team. Hal Steinbrenner, George’s son, is a soccer nut.)

The American media, too, is gradually getting the religion. ABC and its sister network ESPN, who snapped up the broadcasting rights for the bargain price of a hundred million dollars back in 2005, will broadcast all sixty-four World Cup games live. (Telemundo will show the games in Spanish.) “I think you will see the most comprehensive and broadest coverage of a soccer event anywhere in the history of the sport,” ESPN’s president, John Skipper, told Sports Illustrateds Richard Deitsch. Ian Darke, a first-rate commentator, will do the play-by-play on the big games. On hand to provide wisdom and amusement will be a gallery of current and former soccer stars, including Kasey Keller, the ex-goalkeeper of Team U.S.A.; Germany’s Michael Ballack; Holland’s Ruud van Nistelrooy; Brazil’s Gilberto Silva; and England’s Steve (Macca) McManaman, a garrulous Scouser who can be assured of winning the award for wearing the tournament’s worst suit.

Fittingly for an event that engages the passions of the world, next week’s kickoff has been ushered in by a chorus of protests and scandalous allegations. In Brazil, a vast country still plagued by poverty and underdevelopment, activists, students, and trade unionists have staged a series of marches and sit-ins to object to the government spending billions of dollars on a sports tournament. Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s socialist President, remains unapologetic. “It is absurd to claim that money used for stadiums compromises education in Brazil,” she said over the weekend.

The protesters aren’t the only ones with concerns. Despite rushed jobs that have seen a number of construction workers killed, some of the new stadiums, including the one in São Paulo, reportedly aren’t finished yet. In all probability, the Brazilian authorities will somehow get things ready for June 12th, but that won’t entirely relieve the pressure on FIFA, world soccer’s organizing body, which has just been embroiled in a big corruption scandal.

A couple of days ago, the Sunday Times of London, where I started out in journalism, alleged that a senior official from Qatar made secret payments of more than five million dollars to insure that FIFA’s twenty-four-person executive committee chose the tiny desert kingdom as the site of the 2022 World Cup, over the United States, Australia, Japan, and South Korea. Ever since that decision was announced, in 2010, there have been rumors of chicanery. Qatar doesn’t have much of a history of organized sport; it has hardly any stadiums; and the temperatures there reach a hundred and twenty degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, which is hardly suitable for running around a large field for ninety minutes.

Sepp Blatter, FIFA’s dictatorial president, has consistently denied that any funny stuff took place. But the Sunday Times story, which was based on leaked documents, has placed him in an invidious position, and some British M.P.s are calling on him to resign. At least for now, there’s no prospect of that happening, although FIFA may yet decide to reopen the question of whether Qatar is really a suitable location. Blatter, who isn’t accused of any wrongdoing, has some important business to take care of in Brazil, which has long been considered soccer’s spiritual home.

England may have codified the ancient practice of kicking around an animal skin filled with compressed air. But it was Brazil, home to Pelé, Garrincha, Rivelino, Jairzinho, Zico, and numerous other mononymous artists of the turf, that turned it into “the beautiful game”—a rarefied version of the sport characterized by effortless movement, intricate dribbling skills, and spectacular goals. Brazil has won the World Cup five times, more than any other country, most recently in 2002, but it has only hosted the tournament once, in 1950. (On that occasion, Uruguay shocked the home fans by defeating Brazil in the final.)

Based on recent form and the official rankings, Brazil isn’t favored to win this year. That honor should belong to Spain, a magnificent team with a method of play all of its own, which emerged victorious from South Africa in 2010, or Germany, which looks very strong. But Brazilians are hoping that their team’s charismatic coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, who led the nation to glory in the 2002 World Cup, in Japan, can conjure up another victory. Many sports bettors also appear to have confidence in Scolari. At the British online bookmakers, Brazil is the three-to-one favorite, with Argentina in second. (If betting on these sites were legal in this country, you could get odds of two hundred and fifty to one on the United States pulling off an upset.)

The odds reflect a widespread belief that World Cups held in Latin America are unique, and favor the home teams, which is something I can attest to. In 1986, I spent three glorious weeks following England around Mexico, and taking in, along the way, some of that fine and hospitable country. The odyssey ended in Mexico City’s grand Estadio Azteca, where Diego Maradona, the troubled Argentine boy genius, punched the ball into the net—the famous Hand of God goal—and then dribbled around five English players to score again. Eleven days later, Maradona led Argentina to victory over West Germany.

This year, barring a last-minute outbreak of philanthropy among the editors of The New Yorker, I will be joining the 99.9 per cent of fans who watch the World Cup from their favorite couch or bar stool. It’s not quite the same as singing “Knees up Mother Brown” while dancing in circles outside Azteca following a three-to-nil victory over Paraguay, but it sure beats listening to Darrell Issa or John McCain criticizing the Obama Administration for this, that, or the other.

So please stop the world. It’s the World Cup.

Photograph by Ricardo Moraes/Reuters.