“There was a moment during the semifinals of Euro 2008 when a lightning bolt knocked out the international television feed from the game and several hundred million people suddenly found themselves not watching soccer. Not watching soccer was, of course, in this case, something completely different from the run-of-the-mill not watching soccer that we all do every day. Germany and Turkey were tied 1-1 in the second half of a terrific game, and we—those millions—had been raptly following to see who would make the final. Everything was fine, and then, with no warning, static, confusion, and if you lived in the United States, a quick cut to an apologetic Rece Davis.
Not watching soccer, in other words, is something you do individually and unconsciously, while you’re waiting in traffic or buying a carton of milk; not watching soccer was something we all did together and were all utterly aware of. I remember thinking, after the signal went out and I’d jumped to feet in dismay, that some meaningful percentage of the population of the earth had jumped to its feet at the exact same moment I did. What had been me watching a game in my living room suddenly felt like a shared experience on a massive scale.
And that’s one thing the World Cup means to me, because whatever you make of the mysterious unifying power sport can exert simply by holding a lot of people’s attention at once, the World Cup is its full moon. In America, the touchstones for “where were you when” are the moon landing and the Kennedy assassination, but unimaginably more people saw the Zidane headbutt: an event whose significance is in fact largely confined to the fact that so many people watched it happen. That’s an amazing thing to think about, and it’s one reason why, for all the reasons it gives us to be cynical, the game can still create legends. It means something because it means something to everyone.
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