One Game Changes Everything
April 13, 2007
The anticipation was almost too much to bear. As I boarded the German Express train in Munich, all I could see down the platform was a throng of red, white and blue. The morning skies were blue, the weather warm and refreshing. The day had a lot of promise. The day had a lot at stake.
As I sat down in the club car with my friends, I thought of some of the memories my nine days in Germany had brought me. After a few minutes, there were chills running up and down my spine.
I was a Red Sox fan at Fenway Park, Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS against the Yankees. I was a Patriots fan watching the referee making the now infamous “tuck rule” call during the Patriots’ miraculous Snow Bowl in Foxboro Stadium. I was even that blue-collar Celtics fan in the 1960s watching John Havlicek stealing the ball. Put all these together, and you might have an idea of what I was feeling the day I took the German ICE to Nuremberg to watch the United States take on Ghana in the final match of the group stage of the 2006 FIFA World Cup.
That day marked my second-to-last in Germany. The first seven provided me with a plethora of special memories and, as cliché as it sounds, a few life lessons. As a passionate soccer fan, I knew I was going to watch the sport at its biggest stage.
I had been to a few MLS games. I’ve even watched a few European teams play. But for any person who knows anything about the beautiful game, there is nothing bigger or more special than La Copa Mundial.
The week and a half preceding my trip was possible one of the most anxious times of my life. Sitting in my friend’s living room I watched German left-back Philip Lahm fire in the first goal of the competition. For 12 more days, whether it is at a Shisha café, a friend’s house, or a restaurant, I experienced the joy and excitement that surrounds the world’s most popular sporting event. By the time I boarded my flight to Munich, I couldn’t sit still.
After literally dropping my bags in the hotel lobby, my friends and I quickly took about to exploring the town and right away, we felt what can only be described as “World Cup fever.” Every person who was in the city was there for the same reason, and as a result, a sense of camaraderie and companionship filled the air. It didn’t matter where you were from, it just mattered that you were there for the same reason that millions of other tourists were. Nearly every other person donned a jersey, a flag, a shirt, or anything that bared the colors and crest of their respective country or favorite team. Everyone was smiling; everyone was happy.
The thing that makes the World Cup such a unique and special event is the fact that you don’t have to have a ticket to experience the game. If you think that the atmosphere inside a stadium is intense, just take a stroll through the hundreds of surrounding bars or even more importantly the ‘fan fests’—possibly the most integral part of the host country’s attractions.
The ‘fanfests’ were in all of the 12 cities that were hosting games. They are large open areas where stadium-like stands are set up and enormous jumbo-trons are assembled. From here, thousands of fans—for free—could meet up and watch the games together, creating an atmosphere that only the feeling inside an actual stadium could rival.
However, the ‘fanfests’ were more than just an imitation of the stadiums. Each ‘fan fest’ boasted a global village where every one of the 32 participating countries set up a large tent with culturally distinct food, music, and attractions. This is where I got the true taste of the World Cup. Literally, from the liters of beer to the schnitzels, sushi, and kebabs at hand, the ‘fanfests’ proved to be heaven for any culture-loving aficionado.
While the ‘fanfests’ filled my stomach with 32 flavors of the world—not to mention a whole lot of barley—the real fun was in the games themselves. My second day involved a 6:00 a.m. wake-up a call and a three-hour train ride to Kaiserslautern, the location of the USA-Italy match-up. While major venues like Berlin and Munich proved to be the most popular destinations for fans, I feel that the smaller towns proved to be the best hosts. Kaiserslautern most definitely fit the bill.
While the ‘fanfests’ in the major cities were often outside the center of town, the ‘fanfest’ in ‘K-town’ was the whole city itself. Boasting less than 100,000 residents, Kaiserslautern featured more tourists than residents on the day of the USA-Italy match. The stadium itself fit half the population, and the surrounding area was filled with at least four times that capacity.
The second I walked out of the train, I felt overwhelmed. A sea of blue greeted me, contrasting the familiar red, white, and blue. I was excited, I was pumped, and I was ready to lose my voice screaming for the team I wanted to win. However, on a bit of humiliating note, I was also a bit naïve about my knowledge of soccer chants. When I noticed a large group of Italians in the distance, I proceeded to put my thumbs in a downward motion and boo (lame, I know). What I was treated to next was a boisterous battle chant that suddenly erupted from a group of at least a 50 Italian supporters. Don’t worry; I got the hang of it as the night went on.
The hours preceding the match were tense and competitive. Each group of fans tried to outdo the other with a series of chants and cries that would bounce back and forth amongst the narrow alleys of the small German town. However, as intense an atmosphere as it was, the moments following the game were those of peace and tranquility. There were no fights, no traces of crazy soccer hooligans, and no disrespect. The Italians in the bar turned towards me, shook my hand, smiled and said “good game.” The World Cup, as I quickly realized, succeeded at doing what several major European leagues couldn’t: erase violence, racism, and hatred from the game.
In the next few days, I bounced from city to city, experiencing the joy of the game firsthand. I watched as people from opposing countries taunted each other before the match, but shared a pint in good spirit after that. I walked down the riverbanks in Frankfurt and saw 50,000 Germans cheer their team as they watched their games on a giant television screen placed in the middle of the river. I watched hundreds of Argentineans stand outside a hotel in 90-degree weather for four hours, singing an array of cheers that had been passed down from generation to generation, just to get a glimpse of their heroes as the team walked from the lobby to the bus and took the short journey to the stadium for their much anticipated first-round encounter with Holland.
While the scenery and people often changed, the theme of the week did not. Whether it was taking a picture with a bunch of crazy, drunk English supporters, or having a drink with a group of people who were stranded in the same train station we were at four o’clock in the morning, every experience I embarked on was outlined with the official World Cup slogan, “A time to make friends.”
I saw a man from Acapulco near tears after Mexico’s elimination at the hand of Argentina. I met an Englishmen who had left his wife at the hotel because she didn’t understand his craze for the game. I saw hundreds of Germans wade through a dirty creek in a desperate attempt to get into the Munich ‘fanfest’ and watch them play Sweden in the round of 16.
I heard chants like “Come on England” and “Italia, Italia, Italia” make the ground rumble. I saw German cities such as Cologne become a suburb of London in a heartbeat, all decked out with St. George’s flags. For 10 days in June, I saw games that Bono of U2 describe as doing, “things the politicians could only dream about.”
The beautiful game isn’t a perfect game, but it’s a powerful game. You can say a lot of things about soccer. It might not have as much scoring as the NBA. It might not be as physically brutal as the NFL. It might not be as statistical as baseball. But any game that has the power to make one in every six humans on the entire planet, tune in for 90 minutes just to watch a ball get kicked around, is a game that we can all appreciate and respect. Just ask Laurent Gbagbo, the president of the Ivory Coast, who saw his country, after three years of brutal war, declare a ceasefire because they qualified for the World Cup.
One game really does change everything.