After a month of games — countless, wonderful, inspiring, addictive, all-consuming soccer games — the World Cup has come to an end. I must have watched the bulk of all but maybe a couple. And I’ve learned a few things along the way:
• Excessive World Cup viewing can cause saddle sores. This is a little known fact, and not something that has been talked about in the media. But if you sat and watched as many games as I did, you are in a world of misery right now.
• I have a daughter. Thanks to too much soccer watching, I completely forgot this. Well, until I was served with papers for gross neglect and becoming (as she called it in her affidavit) an “undeniably boring soccer boob!”
• You can’t explain soccer to people who don’t understand it. The passion. The intensity. The funky rules. When someone says, “Dude I just don’t get what the big deal is,” simply reply, “That’s OK. It’s for higher mammals.”
• Tour de France is little consolation when you’re craving major sporting events. I mean, they just ride bikes!
• Don’t try to relive your high school soccer glory days. I realized this at a World Cup warm-up game for Team USA in Jacksonville. Two buddies (and their beers) tried to execute tricky soccer moves and nearly executed themselves. Both have required tailbone replacement surgery. Leave it to the professionals … and the sober.
• If an important work meeting is scheduled at the same time as a key U.S. game, don’t show up draped in the American flag. Don’t break into “I believe that we will win!” chants. Don’t boo inane comments. And definitely don’t scream toward the end, “Come on ref! Isn’t injury time over yet?!?”
• If an important work meeting is scheduled at the same time as a key U.S. game, call in sick with “Goalus Disease.” Not only will it work, but it’s funny as hell.
• Never hold any kind of meaningful conversation during a soccer game. If people are discussing the crisis in Ukraine, ignore them. Know that the minute you pipe in with, “Yeah, but the problem with Putin …” is the exact moment when the greatest goal EVER will be scored. You will be forever known as “the Putin moron who missed it.”
• My high school soccer team was mediocre. But we were still better than Brazil.
• Soccer takes patience, both to play it and to view it. You might wait more than an hour to glimpse a goal. You have to love that suspense. That agony. That anticipation for something great to happen. Now it’s going to take a world of patience to wait 4 more years for the next World Cup. And I can do it. I’m confident. It will give me just enough time to heal these soccer-watching saddle sores.