I did something Sunday afternoon I wouldn't normally do, and that is sit through an entire soccer match. Not just any game of course, but the UEFA Euro 2008 championship. Spain vs. Germany. Spain won, 1-0. Look at that score, 1 point to no points. I suppose if we look at it from the American point of view, the Spanish barely beat Germany by 1 point, whereas I imagine a European sees it as the Spanish being 100% better then the Germans. Now, for reasons that are obvious to people who know me, I've recently had to start paying attention to things that most Americans don't give a crap about. Soccer, among many other things, is one of those things. A couple of years ago I was in Barcelona with Yulia for about 5 days. Imagine, an American, admittedly of Cuban Heritage, with a Russian, walking the streets of Catalonia Barcelona, Spain. At resort towns like Lloret de Mar, the seaside pubs that cater to holiday makers from the UK, the flat screen TV's had huge groups of people surrounding them, beers in hand, cigarettes in fingers, cheering their respective countries on with all the color and pagentry that one might expect at any college football game on a crisp Autumn day in the USA.
The question I ask myself, is why do Europeans love "football" so much? I know I'm not the first red blooded American to express a sense of perplexity about the appeal of Soccer, after all, after 90 minutes, or more, or less, or however the extra time thingy works, after 90 minutes of these guys are running around, kicking, passing, kicking, passing, shooting, almost, so close, so close, running, kicking, GOOOOOOAL! After all that effort, scores like 1-0 are the norm. The answer I arrive at is not why do Europeans like Soccer, but just that they do, and that's all that matters. In Europe, from the Irish Sea to the Bosporus straits, and from the Canary Islands to (and the Russians hate to admit that they might be European) the Volga River, these people are mad about the sport.
In a place where cultural identity for more than a millennium could be completely different over the next hill, or on the other side of a river, these people now find themselves sharing the same currency and crossing former border checkpoints as easily as we go from Pennsylvania to Delaware to Maryland to Virginia. Globalization and Global Corporations tend to blur the lines even further. Now I understand that these people have loved the sport since long before the EU and the Euro came about, but now days, if it weren't for one's own home country's "football team", what makes a Spaniard any different than a Dutchman? They all seem to be universally on board with the whole Green Conservation thing, driving smaller cars, and hating George Bush, so is Soccer the one thing left that they can hold on to that carries on their cultural identity? Do rabid Philadelphia Eagles fans prove they can spell "E-A-G-L-E-S" at the top of their lungs because in an age of Telecommuting and business relocations to cities like Phoenix, Charlotte, and Jacksonville it is an obnoxious and annoying expression of a desire to hold on to their waning cultural identity? I'm famous for missing the point, but I kind of think it's something along those lines that explain the sheer joy the Spaniards are experiencing right about now.
