Who Needs Kids When You’ve Got The World Cup?

One of the trickier things about being an adult without kids is that life can often seem to pass you by, without anything solid to hold onto along the path. Weeks, months and years start blending into each other in your periphery until you find yourself coasting by, in a state of forever-present, without any signs or landmarks to show you where you are or how far you’ve come.

Mind you, there is something nice about that state; something light, liberating—but once you’re in your 30s and beyond, it also makes any one year of your life look much like all the rest.

That’s why I always appreciate it when events like the World Cup come around, because they perform the same function for me that a child does to a parent. Sure, the World Cup may never send me a last-minute birthday card hastily signed at a service station, or visit me at the hospice in my dying days to check up on my will me.  But the memories of World Cup throughout the years serve as life’s signposts for me, in a similar way that parents might look at first steps, graduations, trips to the hospital, or whatever else stands out along the bumpy road of their kids’ lives. 

For example, if you were to ask me what was happening in the world, or in my life, in 2010, at first, I’d probably have a look on my face like a dog being asked what they think about a carbon tax. But if I thought about it for a second, I’d realise that 2010 was the year of the World Cup in South Africa, when Spain won the trophy with their tiki-taka brand of passing football, which was so graceful that it almost made you forget about the army of shrieking vuvuzelas you’d hear in the background during every game. (NB - If you were ever feeling nostalgic for their shrill cacophony, listen to James Parkinson’s recent episode about them on 99% Invisible). 

I can clearly remember that I watched the final in Taipei, with my English flatmate Jez, downstairs at the Underworld, a now defunct dive bar and live venue where we spent a lot of our evenings. Underworld didn’t normally show any sport, but I think they must have wrangled up a projector and shown the final for a few friends of the bar that day. 

Underworld was a sort of CBGBs for the indie Taiwanese crowd, a scene hub and tireless promoter of niche local music. It was also the stage where my former band, Roxymoron, played all our formative gigs; a venue with both awful and beautiful sound in equal measure, and a place whose unfortunate closure deeply affected me.

When the local council ordered it to shut down for safety reasons, it felt like an affront to the whole community and all that was good and fun and exciting in Taiwan. Looking back, it’s hard to deny that it was also a dank subterranean cave with a tiny front door and no fire exit. 

If I look further back to, say, 1994, I’d recall that it was the year of the US World Cup, the only one I’ve attended in person. I remember flying to from Mexico City to Washington, DC with my dad for a game between Mexico and Norway, a humdrum 1-0 victory for the Norwegians.

But what I remember even more vividly is that the day after we arrived in Washington, all eyes in the city, in homes and shops and restaurants, were glued to the TV screens showing overhead footage of a highway in California. It was the day of the OJ Simpson police chase. That itself would then spark the memory of the following year, 1995, living in the UK, where the OJ Simpson trial was shown on Welsh TV every single evening, for months on end.

So what will I remember about this edition, the 2022 World Cup? Probably that a) I was in Australia; b) that I participated in the production of a podcast previewing said World Cup; c) that the time difference for most games was dreadful, but that the online SBS On Demand coverage was masterfully conceived (with their combination of Full Game, 25-minute, 10-minute, and 3-minute replay options available). 

I think I’ll also remember feeling icky and conflicted about the fact that Qatar was hosting the World Cup, but also feeling somewhat icky and conflicted about the fact that I’ve never felt icky and conflicted about events hosted in other problematic countries. 

And ultimately, I’ll probably remember that I missed most of the knockout stages of the tournament, because I was away on a 10-day silent meditation retreat which I had booked before checking the exact dates of the World Cup. Yet, through sheer luck, I managed to come out just in time to watch the final—a game which turned out to be more exciting than any celebrity car chase through the streets of Los Angeles could ever be.