World Cup Day 13: Pubs and Underdogs

There are times when one can feel lonely in a huge crowd. I had such a moment today.

This morning was a very profitable time for English and Irish pubs across the US, as they unfurled their big screens for both the England and the US World Cup games.

Many 7AM Bloody Marys were sold to those willing to endure the consequences of highly understaffed pubs. As I carried four drinks from the bar through the dense crowd to our table I prayed that the US would not score during my elbowing journey and my $21-round would not be spilled all over the floor. As it was, it was not a spill-free moment.

England and the USA also squeezed through today. Into the final group of 16 games starting Saturday.

I personally, was the lone individual not jumping up and down at the Irish Bank pub in San Francisco as the US scored in the 91st minute of their game to finally clinch the win against Algeria. I got up briefly, simply to check if I was the only one sitting down. I was. All my buddies were high-fiving and losing their voices. All I could think was: what if the Arab peoples had one national team, instead of 21 national teams. Mmmm. Would the US then be the underdog? The other thing, as time stood still - me sitting down, the entire world bouncing up and down, dancing and yelling to the tune of the USA goal for what seemed like several minutes – was the damage of the din on my ear drums. They are still ringing five hours later.

Two people in attendance at the USA-Algeria game in South Africa caught my eye on the big screen. One was Bill Clinton. I shared my thoughts with my buddies: that guy has his finger in as many pies as he can. There’s old Bill schmoozing. This game was a business opportunity. Being an ex-President of the US may be the biggest business opportunity on the planet.

The other person I noticed in attendance in South Africa was the retired French soccer star Zinedine Zidane. He and I were rooting for the underdog in this game. Him in the luxury of his box seat, me boxed into a small room with a hundred sweaty US soccer fans. Zidane, one of the world’s best players in the last two decades, was there to root for the home country of his parents: Algeria.

I thought about globalization, the great exodus of peoples from the poorer South to the richer North, like Zidane’s parents. How had this huge, fairly recent wave of immigration affected soccer? If Zidane’s parents had not made it to Marseille, France, would Zidane have become Zidane? Maybe he would have been “discovered” by a European league team from the big four European soccer nations. Like oil, or gold, or some other valuable asset from a poorer nation, he would have been bought, to then be resold, and resold in the big business that is soccer.

The World Cup embodies the promise of everything beautiful and ugly in the world.

In the final minutes of the game as the goal-less game went on and on and on, you could feel the tension rise in everyone’s chests. I offered to my friends that I’d yell out “Go Algeria” for five bucks. “You guys’d cover my back, right?” I got nervous smiles but no takers on that one.

And then in the last seconds of the game the well-deserved US goal set off a pub earthquake which I sat and watched unfold. The USA-USA chanting wasn’t so bad, but then one idiot behind us made anti-Arab insult. Incapable of restraint, I yelled my “Go Algeria!”as loudly as I could. And, well, I survived to write this.

The other side of the experience is that earlier in the game a friend asked where Algeria was. She busily googled and wikied. And came back with the population, the geography and the unemployment rate. “Thirty-five percent unemployment! Can you believe that?” she shared, with one eye on the game and one on her i-phone. Now isn’t that what the World Cup is really about. Discovering the world and our commonality. Small steps in breaking out of national isolation. Global integration: albeit in a weird, sports-based and uneven way.

As we walked out into the daylight of the streets of San Francisco a partially-unemployed musician friend had to ask me again, “Why were you supporting Algeria? Just because they were the underdogs?” Yes, I explained. Just because they were the underdogs.

And as our eyes adjusted to the outdoor light, I figured maybe we were the underdogs: forced to head out to our boring jobs. But every dog has it’s day: ours was going to a pub in the wee hours and watching some great football.