Once every four years, the FIFA World Cup is held. This is a soccer (or as it's called in every other country, football) tournament that pits teams representing countries from every continent except Antarctica. Let's just say, it's a very big deal outside of North America, and becoming a bigger deal there, too.
This is one of those contested years. Normally it's held in June/July, but this year it's being held in November/December, to account for the fact it's being held in Qatar, one of the hottest places on earth in June/July.
[At this point, I could go on about how FIFA is an incredibly corrupt organization, and how it accepted bribes from Qatar (as it does from every host country) to agree to hold the World Cup there. It's another sportswashing attempt by a place that openly discriminates against gays and females. But I'm not actually going to go on about that.]
It's strange to see what happens to Americans during the World Cup. While the vast majority will go four years without watching so much as a minute of soccer, many of those same folks suddenly take off work to watch the U.S. team play their World Cup games.
It doesn't matter that they don't know the name of a single player, much less the rules of the game. What matters is making sure they are part of the crowd that suddenly cares about the national soccer team.
Yes, there are avid year-round fans out there too -- tens of thousands of them -- thanks to the growth of U.S. soccer at the high school, college, and professional levels. The most avid even traveled internationally to watch the games.
But that number still pales in comparison to the quadrennial jump-on-the-bandwagon group. And to those people I say, like I did ten years ago in this very blog: You are a Pretender. You're the person who doesn't watch a baseball game all year (and I don't blame you, it's even more boring than soccer) but then becomes a huge World Series fan.
For the World Cup, that might make you feel patriotic, but that doesn't make you a fan.
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