A Love Affair with the World Cup

I can’t remember whether it was ’91 or ’92 — on a Sunday morning, I sat with my father and watched a recorded Serie A match. It was Juventus versus Inter, 2:1. In that muddled, half-comprehending way of a child, I received my first baptism in football. A child’s memory is astonishing: I remembered both teams, I remembered the score, and the image of my father pumping both fists and shouting at the top of his lungs after Juve scored was frozen into a tiff file and stored forever in my brain.

Back then I fell in love with Juventus the way one falls in love for the first time — even though I had no idea that the soul of that Juventus side was the melancholy prince, Baggio.

In ’94 my father took a job in Guangdong. He scrimped and saved on everything, but when the World Cup came around he still steeled himself and bought a 24-inch Panasonic. When he brought the whole family down to Guangdong, it was right at the tail end of the tournament, and I started watching along with him — but every time I faced that television, something in me bristled. Setting football aside, I sulked and threw tantrums at him for a long time over that TV, and I even pointed at his nose and demanded to know why he’d bought Japanese goods instead of a Changhong. I was a teenager then, hot-blooded, my personality gradually becoming independent, and — being a kid who loved history, especially the history of World War II — I had always loathed Japan with a passion. To my mind, buying their products was a betrayal of history, unforgivable. Thinking about it now, it’s rather amusing: it seems every boy’s coming-of-age story is also the history of a young hothead. I still hold those values today, though I no longer force them on everyone around me.

My love for Juventus extended to a love for Serie A, and my love for Serie A extended to a love for Italy. I’m grateful to CCTV back then for broadcasting Serie A and nothing but Serie A, faithfully and without wavering — so fans in those days had no obstacles of choice. Unlike so many fans today, who feast on a rotating buffet of the big five leagues and pick whichever club or national team is strongest at the moment — Barcelona, Real Madrid, Manchester United, Bayern; Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Italy, and so on.

So for the USA World Cup, father and son alike were devoted to Italy. That tournament was something else. I learned about the Mexican wave for the first time (even though it was Mexico’s own World Cup that patented it), heard “Olé Olé Olé” for the first time, and saw for the first time that spectacular celebration of rocking an imaginary baby in one’s arms — so much so that afterward, every time I stepped onto a pitch, the first thing on my mind was that if I scored, I’d rock-a-bye-baby too. But the thought was quickly snuffed out: first, I had no baby; second, I had no gift for scoring. But that’s a story for another time.

Of course, the most indelible memory of that World Cup was the lonely, desolate silhouette of the melancholy prince after he missed his penalty.

If you want to know how long a man’s golden years last, just watch the World Cups. Baggio burst onto the scene at the ’90 World Cup, reached the peak of his life at ’94 — almost single-handedly carrying Italy into the final — but by ’98 he had been reduced to Pirlo’s—no, to Del Piero’s substitute. For attacking midfielders and forwards, the World Cup road is always short. Kaka, once so fresh-faced and handsome, now weathered by the years, played in three World Cups (though he only actually took the field in two) and now can’t even make the squad — a melancholy thing to contemplate.

So don’t look forward to the World Cup with eager anticipation: every time it arrives, we have miserably grown another four years older.

The France World Cup: back then Italy’s midfield and attack were at their zenith, not the barren talent pool of today. Del Piero — who appeared out of nowhere, a revelation — led Juventus in sweeping across Europe, restoring the long-lost trophy to the Old Lady, and the Serie A collision between Del Piero and Ronaldo was a topic everyone savored in the run-up to the World Cup. Unfortunately, Italy under old Maldini was like a genius wantonly squandering his own brilliance — they nearly came to grief in the very first group match, almost gifting the world an Andersen fairy tale courtesy of Chile’s twin Salas strikers. So Italy’s subsequent defeat by the hosts was less a matter of luck than the inevitable fate of a lost genius.

Generally speaking, once Italy is out, the World Cup has lost all savor for me — staying up late to watch becomes more of a ritual than a pleasure. I don’t remember most of the matches after that in the tournament, but Zizou’s two headers in the final were the highlight. “Conspiracy theorists” say there was something enormously fishy about that final — Brazil and Ronaldo inexplicably off form, and then after the World Cup France forgave Brazil’s three-hundred-million-dollar foreign debt, which is truly baffling (you can verify this on Baidu Baike). But I’d rather believe the ball is round, and rather place myself inside the myth of the underdog’s triumph — a person always needs something beautiful to guard.

The France World Cup had another lovely aspect: I discovered Ricky Martin and the rousing “The Cup of Life.” How many times did I try to imitate him kicking the cane on the ground up like a microphone, and fail — and on the rare occasions I succeeded, my friends always said Ricky was suave and I was just sleazy.

In high school, on days without matches, I transferred my passion for watching football to playing it. But with no height, no passing, no ball control, no shooting, and no defending, all I could be was a holding midfielder. When we played, the best players were assigned to forward, attacking midfield, and defense; a bit-part extra like me, with nothing at all, could only play holding midfield — because in kids’ games that position is relatively simple: just follow the ball. So I never got the chance to tear off my shirt in celebration, or to realize my dream of rock-a-bye-baby. Once my reckless, all-out streak kicked in and I lunged for a close-range tackle; the other guy hoofed it, and the ball smashed squarely into my glasses. For a “four-eyes” like me, playing without glasses means barely being able to find the goal — and even when you’ve fought hard to win the ball, deciding whom to pass it to is a whole branch of learning. Playing with glasses, well, that was my fate. I was fairly lucky: the lens cracked, but it didn’t shatter into shards — otherwise, if any fragment had struck my eye, the consequences don’t bear imagining.

So I could only retire in sorrow at the tender age of sixteen, and return to the television.

The Korea-Japan World Cup was a peculiar beast. Because there’s a popular joke going around about it these days:

The World Cup is almost here, so let me educate everyone on a piece of trivia. You should know: in the 84-year, nineteen-edition history of the World Cup, only three national teams have ever beaten China — Brazil, Turkey, and Costa Rica. Even a world power like Brazil has defeated China only once. And China has never lost a World Cup penalty shootout; no team has ever beaten China twice at a World Cup. From the data analysis, you can see that the World Cup has produced eight champion teams in its history, and only Brazil has ever beaten China. The European powers — Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, England, Italy, Portugal — have never beaten China at a World Cup. Moreover, China has conceded far fewer goals at World Cups than footballing nation Brazil and defensively-minded Italy: over the past 84 years, China has conceded only nine goals. Beyond that, apart from Brazil, China is the only other team in the world that dares to embroider five stars on its chest.

Absurd as this joke is, it perfectly demonstrates how unreliable any data analysis is when it hasn’t been thought through. I can cite it as supporting evidence in an article about data analysis :)

By the time this World Cup kicked off, I was already in university. China and Italy were the teams I supported — the first time in all my World Cup-watching that this had happened. Setting China aside, Italy ran into a nightmare again, except this time it wasn’t a world champion but a run-of-the-mill, no-account team. As a referee, Moreno is probably number one in the world — except that this number one is the number one crooked referee. The Koreans, with the strength of twelve men, muscled the ten-man Italy out of the tournament. But if Moreno is the world’s number one crooked ref, the Spaniards would surely take offense: two perfectly good goals disallowed, and they too lost to the Koreans. To this day I wonder why Huang Jianxiang didn’t unleash his impassioned commentary back then — “the great referee Moreno, and so on” — otherwise he could have debuted four years earlier.

That World Cup had plenty of other bizarre happenings — for instance, the defending champions went home early alongside China with the shameful record of not scoring a single goal. That’s rather splendid: we’ve been linked with the world powers once again.

At the ’06 World Cup, Brother Jianxiang finally let it roar.

The great Italian left back! He has inherited Italy’s glorious tradition. Facchetti, Cabrini, Maldini — in this moment their souls possess him! Grosso alone represents the long history and tradition of Italian football; in this moment he is not fighting alone, he is not alone!

Afterward, “he is not fighting alone” inspired hundreds of millions of people, myself included. Whenever I’m downcast, dejected, and helpless, I hear it in my ears: “You are not fighting alone”… ^_^

Most crucially, my Italy finally won — and this time what conquered the world was a team made up essentially of commoners. Many of these players, placed in Switzerland or Belgium, probably wouldn’t even make the starting eleven — but they won the championship! That is just so damn inspiring. If you don’t turn your life around like a salted fish, if you don’t pull off the underdog’s reversal, how could you ever be worthy of Italy, worthy of the World Cup!

Italy rose and fell by the same blade. France — Zizou’s France, which had sent them packing in ‘98 — this time proved worthy of its role as “the French roadblock,” and Italy reached the final almost without drawing blood, and then Zizou once again delivered a gift package more generous than Singles’ Day, and — just like Brother Jianxiang — introduced hundreds of millions of viewers to a Cantonese phrase: “Oh, damn your lungs!”

During the South Africa World Cup I was traveling around Europe. Italy’s group-stage exit was a colossal joke — in what was almost the weakest group, they couldn’t even beat New Zealand. That China didn’t make it to that World Cup is a shame; otherwise they could have racked up another badass record.

In Heidelberg, I happened to catch the England-Germany match. Löw, who had inherited Klinsmann’s mantle, drilled the young German squad to advance and retreat in perfect order, decisive in attack, exactly as the textbooks describe. As the young and the veteran players scored goal after goal, the bar boiled over again and again. As an aside: in Heidelberg’s old town, the bars where the men gathered were packed to the rafters well before kickoff, and LP and I searched the entire city before we found a bar full of women — presumably World Cup widows abandoned by their husbands or boyfriends.

In the end, Löw’s Germany routed Capello’s Three Lions 4-1. All Heidelberg boiled over; every car in the city came out, the excited males waving German flags and driving in loops around town. The police simply closed off the roads and let the parade celebrate to its heart’s content. We were on a bus at the time; it couldn’t move, and LP was getting carsick, so we hurriedly rang the bell and got off. Beneath a little tree on the way to the restroom, she finally couldn’t hold it in and threw up noisily. Ah, women — they either don’t watch the football at all, or once they do, they get so excited you’d think they were pregnant. I patted her back and teased: “Looks like we’ll have to come to Germany again. From now on, every year at this time, a ring of white mushrooms will grow under this tree. Next time we’ll come pick mushrooms.”

During the South Africa World Cup I traveled through Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic, and fell deeply in love with Germany — and with the German team as well. From then on: China number zero (there’s no help for it — even though I swear every time I’ll never watch this lousy team again, whenever a major tournament comes around I’m watching anyway, cursing all the while), Italy first, Germany second.

The Brazil World Cup is about to arrive. With those late-night matches, I’ll have to watch with my hand over my mouth — I just don’t know whether I’ll be able to keep it covered… Prandelli and Löw, are you ready?

(Dedicated to all you fellow fans whose youth has faded but whose credentials were never quite serious enough — just like me.)