World Cup Fun

Hello everybody! How goes it? We just got through a pretty terrible heat wave, so things here are peachy again. Classes end in less than a week and I will be leaving for Lebanon that day, so all of the sudden I am very busy trying to plan my two weeks of travel, buying souvenirs, etc. As a result, I have been spending most of my internet time researching various destinations, and have had little time to blog. Now that the World Cup Finals have ended, though, I thought I would write a little bit about what it has been like to watch in Syria.

When I first arrived in Damascus, I could not wait for the matches to start. I pictured the U.S. making a run into the late rounds, and I was excited to experience football fandom in the Middle East. During my second week here, when the first matches started, I watched excitedly with locals and expats alike, but it was not long before I realized that I was embedded in the lair of a sports fan’s worst nightmare: the bandwagoner.

Syria’s national football team is decent, but they have yet to qualify for a World Cup Final, so, predictably, Syrians opted to support the team with the best chance for victory in each match. I should specify that, when I say “support”, I don’t just mean “cheer for”, we’re talking flag-waving, face-painting, horn-blowing, lunacy. Early in the tournament, I had hoped that once some key teams were eliminated this bandwagoning would dissipate. I assumed that by the third round, I would no longer have to endure thousands of phony Italians and Brazilians packing the streets in celebration after every one-sided victory, but, alas, the further the tournament progressed, the more arbitrary and fanatical the ad-hoc alliances seemed to become. Why would a teenager from Damascus care about Argentina at all, let alone enough to wear its flag like a cape?

Despite the annoyance of obnoxious Damascenes constantly rooting for the clear favorite, my friends and I went all over the city, watching the matches in a variety of venues. We watched at outdoor cafes with young Syrians smoking sheesha, and at big open restaurants with families sitting at large tables covered in Middle Eastern dishes. It was always fun, but when it was not a team that I cared for, I usually just defended the merits of baseball against attacks by my European friends.

When the U.S. played Ghana in the first elimination round, we watched it on an enormous public screen and waved my American flag towel when Landon Donavon scored to tie the game. During the game we were each interviewed by a Syrian news crew who asked us the leading question, “why are all the Syrians rooting for Ghana”? I was tempted to give the news crew what it wanted and say, “it’s probably because the United States supports Israel”, but Charles convinced me that would not be wise. On the way home, we were harassed and followed by a group of adolescents who threw rocks at us until a Syrian man yelled at them and they ran off. He later turned out to be gay and propositioned Rob, who has become accustomed to both positive and negative attention from locals who are fascinated by his blonde hair and blue eyes. After our public shaming, things got personal.

All my western friends were sick of seeing Syrians draped in foreign flags, celebrating victories that they had no stake in. Picking a team to support is one thing, but picking a new team for each game is just wrong. The common wisdom amongst expats became, “root against the crowd: root for the underdog”. Now, I have been a Mets fan since I went to Shea Stadium on my 7th birthday, so I know something about rooting for the underdog. Here is what I know about it: It sucks. The thing about underdogs is that they lose 90% of the time. Thrilling as a shocking victory might be, it is rare. When the championship finally rolled around, though, I thought the universe might be offering me a consolation prize for all of the disappointing outcomes: Spain, the clear favorite and Sport’s Illustrated predicted tournament winner, was slated to face the Netherlands, who had never before reached the finals. Surely, I thought to myself, the Damascene bandwagoners will support Spain and, if the Netherlands manages to edge it out, I will be able to see the look of defeat on the faces of all those soulless Syrian sports fans, and laugh. But what I found when I arrived at a café to watch the big finale was worse than I could have imagined.

As if the government had ordered it, the entire population of Damascus had divided into equal parts Spain and Netherlands supporters. Now, no matter what the outcome, at least half of the city would be celebrating when the final whistle blew. At that point, my interest in the match became purely my interest in seeing the World Cup finally end. When Spain scored in overtime, a number of Syrians, dressed in orange to show their support for Holland, cheered wildly. Rob was staring blankly at the large projection screen with his mouth hanging open. Bret had his head on the table. I quit. Give me some upper deck seats to watch the Mets lose any day of the week.

Peace.

- EHB