Editorial: On the World Cup and memory

What is your favorite World Cup?

That is a question that has been posed quite a bit recently.  This seems to be a question that is posed around this time of the year every four years.  Unfortunately that is a pretty difficult question for me to answer. You see, my birthday is July 5th which means that pretty much every birthday every four years I get a World Cup. Pizza parties and Chuck-E-Cheese are awesome but knockout stage matches on your birthday? Way better.

A side bar: double-bonus if your 21st birthday comes during the tournament. While Portugal-France was on my direct birthday the party itself landed on the third-place match between  Germany and Portugal. If you are sitting around southern Maryland drinking with your friends and needing a match to watch that’s a pretty good one to have on the calendar.

The overall consensus seems to that most people most fondly recall the The World Cup that was around their tenth birthday. That is pretty apt for me since The World Cup of my generation (32, going on 33) was 1994. At the time I was eight, going on nine and we really had not seen much in the way of soccer to that point. Remember this was at a time in which games of any level were not regularly shown on television. Our true outlets for the game were print publications like Soccer Jr. and Soccer America, indoor soccer, and the occasional clip show that aired on Home Team Sports. Leonardtown, Maryland wasn’t exactly teeming with German and English pubs.

So for my brother and I the 1994 World Cup was a pretty big deal. We were soccer mad kids whose dad at one point built us a goal, who would spend hours outside kicking a ball coming up with all sorts of elaborate games to keep our intention. Sure we had toys and video games and all that other shit. But soccer was what stuck with us and to have an event like that come in at that age as huge. It certainly shaped me as a person (I don’t think I would be up at 6am on a Thursday typing this piece up otherwise) and I am pretty sure it affected him too.

Looking back, in terms of specific memories I have from that event there are a few that stick. On the pitch, Roberto Baggio missing the penalty kick to seal Italy’s fate, Sweden forward Martin Dahlin and the diving header, Hristov Stoichkov taking on all of Germany and winning, and players like Hierro and Hagi who could bend balls with ease. Romario and Bebeto were like Batman and Robin for us, two guys who could do absolutely nothing wrong. I remember spending hours with my brother re-watching specific plays of theirs and trying to re-enact them.  To this day, I am not sure if Romario actually did a step-over and I don’t really care to know one way or the other but to us he did and it was something that we tried to do over and over again.

I also wanted to be Jorge Campos, the diminutive Mexican goalkeeper/forward. Even to this day I try and mimic his style and play when I get between the posts. The jerseys were certainly a key factor in that but so was his style. He wasn’t afraid to mix it up with players twice his size and anyone with an older sibling(s) knows that you better be ready to scrap if you are the younger player. For me, it never mattered that he played for a rival of my home country nor did I really care about the social/political implications. I thought he was a good soccer player and I liked watching what I thought was good soccer.

Now at this point you might be asking yourself ‘But Sean, didn’t you watch the United States and wasn’t that the focal point of the World Cup for you?’ Oh we did and much like any kid they were big role models for my brother and I. For me personally, I have three specific memories of the side from that tournament:

1. The Earnie Stewart goal against Colombia. To this day one of my favorite players. At the time I remember being impressed by his silky smooth touches and passes. Later I learned about the Dutch method but at the time I just thought he was class.
2. Tab Ramos’ injury at the hands of Leonardo and Brazil. To this day, I believe that had they not sustained that injury that they may have beaten Brazil. I have never re-watched that match and cannot apply any sort of logic, tactics, or strategy to confirm this argument. This is ‘It’s the fourth of July, it is America’s birthday, and it’s my birthday shortly. You are darn right we are winning!’ logic.
3. The jerseys and the flair.

There’s also a fourth: the death of Andres Escobar. Looking back the shot of him with his hands on his hips and the look of dejection on his face was haunting. But even then I felt sad for him. Own goals suck, everyone knows that. But there was a certain sadness on his face at the time that I couldn’t pinpoint. I wasn’t really aware of the problems in Colombia at the time (remember pre-internet and eight years old) but knowing what I know now that moment really has soured me on that match. While I still enjoy specific moments from that match, any match that results in the loss of life is not a game that I really want to celebrate.

I still loved the United States and was crushed when they were out. But there was still plenty of good soccer to watch and that is what mattered most. That thought has been really been sticking my head over these past few days, weeks, and months when I realized that the United States isn’t going to be in the World Cup. While I don’t have kids of my own I do have an eight year old nephew who is starting to get interested in the game himself. How will I explain to him why the United States isn’t in the World Cup when he wants to watch soccer.

Then I realized something: he probably won’t even notice.  For him, like so many other kids, it will just be about watching soccer and kicking a ball with his dad and his uncle and creating elaborate games with his sister, who will be two midway through the tournament (A Maslin tradition: having birthdays around the World Cup), and his friends that use a soccer ball and very likely do not ascribe to FIFA’s Laws of the Game. It is about the experience itself and watching great players and great moments that I hope will be the thing that he remembers most from this tournament. 1994 certainly was for me.

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