To Be a Fan

"It's going to get a lot tighter before it gets any looser."
-GP, 2 June 06

"I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve. I just want to go to sleep now so I can wake up sooner."
-DT, 8 June 06

In the vernacular of my Boston friends "tight" means very good. The second quote needs less explanation. Both were spontaneous, without guile or irony.

One of my favorite effects of the World Cup on personality is the loss of sarcasm and superiority. In the first five minutes of Poland-Ecuador I laughed when the camera showed the Ecuadoran keeper Mora. He had painted his face like a sophmore at a high school pep rally. That's uncool, I thought. He looks like a geek. 90 minutes later he had shut out Poland. Ecuador was suddenly a very realistic candidate for the 2nd round. An excellent reminder in just the second of sixty-four games: do you want to be cool or do you want to be good?

American fans don't know as much about the game as our South American and European counterparts. In turn, they don't know as much as the journalists who know less than the coaches. And the coaches routinely make wrong predictions and bad strategic and tactical decisions. As Arena hinted before the Portugal game in 02, nobody knows how the game is going to end. But as a globe, we're about to find out.

For the next 31 days we're just fans. We can cheer and admire and suffer and that's all.