Football’s Family Reunion

The oft-quoted commentator “somebody” offered this quip about the men’s World Cup soccer tournament: “The United States is having a giant sleepover with the cousins we never see because our parents hate each other.”

The cousins clearly are less interested in sleeping than carrying on an around-the-clock party.

The World Cup is soccer’s greatest spectacle and global social gathering. Having taken our oldest son to the 2006 men’s World Cup in Germany (beware the bar mitzvah presents you promise years in advance), I can attest that football has a language of its own, one more reliant on a love of the game — and perhaps a pint or two — than any particular dialect.

Last week, I joined our youngest son in the upper deck of the Mercedes-Benz Stadium to watch Czechia play South Africa. This was never going to be a marquee matchup and the 1-1 draw was underwhelming.

But the atmosphere around the game was everything the World Cup should be — colorful, lively, and festive.

Beforehand, thousands of people milled about in the sunshine, taking in the scene, and stood in lines to buy souvenirs, food, and beer.

Inside, the Benz was crowded with fans wearing jerseys, scarves, and flags representing national and club teams from around the world, not only Czechia and South Africa, but also Mexico, England, France, Italy, Argentina, the United States, and elsewhere.

I have a jersey collection, but after some thought, wore a shirt from the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and a hat from the 2006 World Cup.

Our youngest son knows that I am not a fan of the song “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” by Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. (aka John Denver), which has become something of an unofficial anthem at World Cup games. That may explain his glee in joining tens of thousands of people, from dozens of countries, singing lustily about West Virginia, a place most likely could not point to on a map.

FIFA, the Federation Internationale de Football Association, the game’s global governing body, expanded the World Cup field this year to 48 teams.
Worries about diluting the quality of the games have been mitigated by the performance of teams from two island nations, Curacao (population: 156,000) and Cabo Verde (population 550,000), both bolstered by stunning goalkeeper performances.

The scenes at the fan fest in Atlanta’s Centennial Park, during and after Cabo Verde’s heroic and historic scoreless draw with Spain inside the Benz, were epic, people from so many nations celebrating with the fans of the “Blue Sharks.”

Meanwhile, the World Cup party has been led by the Scots. As the “Tartan Army” sings, “No Scotland, no party.” An absence of 28 years from the World Cup will do that.

There were the Scots who moved into an Airbnb near Boston in the dead of night, festooned the exterior of the house with Scottish flags and then, at 6.30 in the morning, introduced themselves to the neighbors with bagpipes.

And when they moved out a week later, again in the dead of night, they draped those flags along the fence of the house across the street and left the homeowner three bottles of their country’s best known product.

While in Boston, the kilt-wearing Scots did their level best to drink the city dry, placed orange traffic cones atop statues (something they fancy doing back home), and joined the Red Sox faithful at Fenway Park in belting out “Sweet Caroline.”

After Scotland’s first two group stage games in Boston, the Tartan Army moved on to Miami (for a match with Brazil), where the police seemed less amused by the orange-cones-on-statues routine.

The Boston Globe waved the Scots goodbye with a full-page salute: “Boston has hosted championships, parades, and celebrations of every kind. But we’ve never hosted guests quite like you all.”

That’s what you get when the cousins visit and make themselves at home.

A similar romance developed in Lawrence, Kan., where Algeria’s “Fennec Foxes” held their base camp. The locals adapted the University of Kansas “Rock Chalk, Jayhawks” chant to “Rock Chalk, Algeria.” Lawrence Mayor Brad Finkeldei said, “We’ve embraced them, and they’ve embraced us.”

Then, there are the Norwegian fans, who seem prone to sitting en masse almost anywhere — be it the bleachers at the center of Times Square in New York City or on the floor of a moving subway train — and, led by a drum, doing the “Viking row.”

At this writing, the positive results posted by teams representing the World Cup hosts — the U.S., Mexico, and Canada — have their fans happy to join the raucous football family reunion.

There are amusing videos online of tourists from around the world delighting in their discovery of Buccee’s and Waffle House, and partaking in such culinary delights as . . . ranch dressing.

In a rare display of humor, the Transportation Security Administration posted a notice warning that anyone leaving the United States with bottles of ranch dressing should place them in checked, rather than carry-on, luggage.

As for those cousins whose parents don’t like each other, the U.S. government has required Iran’s team to leave the United States after each of its games and return to its base camp in Mexico.

To be sure, the world’s ills don’t vanish because of a soccer tournament, but the World Cup has provided welcome examples of people from around the world getting together and getting along.

Perhaps, as “somebody” also was quoted as saying, football is the answer.