The Full Cycle of World Cup

By | April 15, 2016

— by Derek Wei

Growing up in a city that has one of the best professional basketball teams in China, I naturally developed a strong passion to the game of basketball. Whenever I could get away from school work, I would either go play pickup games in an outdoor court nearby my home, or watch whatever basketball game that was airing at the time, or even just read basketball magazines such as the “Slam Dunk”. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that my childhood memory is largely affiliated with basketball. And yet, when people ask me: “what is the most remembered/impressive sports events in your memory?” I answer has always been – the Word Cup.

To some extends, I myself is also kind of surprised by this answer, especially since my time spent on following soccer is much less than the time I devoted to basketball. And yet, whenever I close my eyes and take a walk down the memory lane, Word Cups are just like some shining connection dots, linking the memory of my life together, every four years, again and over again.

It all started the early summer of 2002 – a June that was unusually hot. It was during my last few weeks of class in the 2nd grade, so every afternoon after classes finished, we were required to stay in the classroom and do work until 6pm (so that we could be better prepared for the coming final exams). And there’s one typical afternoon, while all of us were sitting in the classroom and doing our homework, the school officials turned on the small-screened TVs in every classrooms. Thought it’s going to be some educational broadcasting (as usual), we didn’t even bother to raise our head. But soon eyes pop out of head when we saw the TV was actually airing a live soccer game! Had always been taught by our teachers or parents that soccer is a very rude game and only kids with very bad grades would play it, we were completely shocked by the fact that the school officials are letting us to watch a soccer game, at school!

After watching the game for 10 minutes, I figured that it was probably our national team playing against some sort of foreign team. There were lots of people running here and there on the field, chasing a ball that was hard to see especially due to the small TV screen. Lots of people were yelling in the background and it was very noisy. “Ahh this is so stupid”. I said to myself and went back to do work. It was literally my first experience of watching a live soccer game, and I was told two years later that, it was actually China National Soccer Team’s last game (3rd of its 3) in 2002 World Cup. Or to be more accurate, it was Team China’ last World Cup appearance even until today. So here we go – my first ever encounter with World Cup.

_38072302_sas300  China’s last appearance in World Cup

Fast forward to 2006, by then I’ve had a much more solid understanding about soccer than I did 4 years ago. I had started to follow Serie A and Premier League, and already knew about most of the famous players around the world then. Extremely excited for the World Cup, I even tried to switch my body schedule to German Time Zone one month prior the game actually started. Also, since the World Cup took place before my Middle-School-Entrance exam, which was very competitive and essentially would determine what levels of middle school I could get in. My parent of course didn’t really support my enthusiasm for World Cup during this critical time period, but somehow I was able to persuade them to let my stay up late and watch at least 2 games every week. That made mLucky enough, I was able to caught most of the great/controversial games in that World Cup –the amazing 4 -2 opening match between Germany and Costa Rica, the three yellow cards at Australia vs Croatia’s game, the last minute penalty call that allowed the 10-men-Italy to defeat Australia and to advance into quarterfinals, and of course, Zidane’s headbutt against Materazzi. (I would never forget the moment when Zidane was sent off the field– he walked right past the World Cup Trophy before he went into the player’s tunnel. But he didn’t stop to glimpse it even for a second. He just calmly went past it, like all of those surroundings were irrelevant to him..) That was definitely one of my favorite and most remembered World Cup.

Zidane's Last Moment as a Player Probably not the most ideal way to say goodbye

Another 4 years later, I was a high school kid facing one of the most difficult decision in my life – whether I should stay in China or go aboard for college education. Stressed due to the unknowingness of future and the pressure of heavy school work, I was happy to find the 2010 World Cup as an outlet. But I couldn’t stop feeling nostalgic as I found out that lots of the star players that I grew up watching, didn’t make to the roster of this World Cup – Brazil didn’t pick Ronaldo, Ronaldinho and Adriano; Riquelmen and Cambiasso didn’t make to Argentina’s final list; Totti, Nesta and Cassano passed their torch to younger Italian players; and not to mention that we also won’t be seeing Raul, Trezeguet, Owen, Beckham, etc.. For me, the theme of this World Cup is melancholy.

Then it comes 2014, exact 12 years (in Chinese culture we think 12 years is a full cycle) after my first encounter with World Cup/Soccer. The game of World Cup returned to the Brazil, the kingdom of soccer. As I was doing an internship at New York during that period, I didn’t get too much chance to watch the game. But I would definitely remember the shocking performance by Klose, who was probably then the only player that participated in all World Cups since 2002.

Klose Young forever

As I grow older, there’s just less and less time I could spend to follow soccer, especially after high school. And I am not even sure if I will be able to recognize more than 10 players when I watch the 2018 Russia World Cup. But I will never forget all the memories, good or bad, that World Cup and the game of soccer has brought to me. And hopefully, I will still have the luxury to purely enjoy the game, just as I’ve had since 12 years ago.

 

Reference: none

 

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