Our 2022 World Cup experience

Part III of the three-part Monday mini series (47)

In Part I of this mini-series, we briefly covered the history and significance of the World Cup and used Cristiano Ronaldo as a lens through which it is possible to glimpse the enormity of the impact that football has on the world. In Part II, we discussed the recent history of the Portuguese national football team and some of the issues surrounding the team as the World Cup began.

Today, we’ll bring the focus to our own personal experiences in this football mad country.

It’s hard to say exactly what we thought things would be like here but whatever that was, the reality doesn’t match expectations. We’re not seeing Ronaldo jerseys everywhere (or anywhere, for that matter), not even on game days. We’re not seeing the city around us shutting down for two hours during a match. The Metro is busy while the team is in action, people are still moving about even as every TV in every public establishment is tuned to the game.

Both of us were traveling home during Portugal’s opener against Ghana, on Thanksgiving, and while the TVs were on, there were plenty of empty seats in front of them in both Cascais and Lisbon.

Scott was out and about at the beginning of the second half of Portugal’s second game (vs Uruguay) and saw the same thing. When Bruno Fernandes scored his second goal of the match at the start of extra time, Scott (who got home for the final 20 minutes) threw open one of our wonderful floor-to-ceiling windows, cupped his hand to his ear and heard … nothing. No cheering, no drums, no vuvuzelas, no car horns honking. Nothing. Disappointing.

We haven’t been here long enough to know if this is normal, but we are willing to speculate that it isn’t. And the reasons why we may be having an abnormal experience may have to do with the hot mess that surrounds this World Cup off the field.

In our last post on this topic, we discussed some of the controversy surrounding the Portuguese national team. No conversation about the 2022 World Cup can properly exist without mention of the numerous controversies that have swirled around it for years.

Controversy

FIFA, the governing body responsible for the World Cup, has earned a reputation over decades as one of the most corrupt organizations in the world.

While a complete examination of the previous sentence is beyond the scope of our blog, this article on Britannica.com is a fascinating read. Two statements in particular stand out:

On May 27, 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) disclosed a 47-count, 164-page criminal indictment charging seven FIFA executives with having received $150 million in bribes over a period of more than two decades¹.

and

A two-year ethics probe by former U.S. attorney Michael Garcia yielded a 350-page report that portrayed the organizational culture of FIFA to be founded on greed, secrecy, and corruption².

as does the article’s concluding paragraph, which is too long to reproduce here (but totally worth the read).

And, it’d be a shame to go without the wonderful snark that is The Guardian’s take on this. (In general, we’d be lost without The Guardian’s snark.)

The upshot is that the 2022 World Cup is alleged to have been awarded to Qatar in large part due to a series of bribes paid to individuals who had influence over the outcome of the bidding process. That Qatar won the right to host the tournament was a surprise for a number of reasons, two of the most important of which were:

1. The country had no stadiums in 2010 when it was announced as the winner. They’d presented plans to construct them, but they had no infrastructure already in place.

2. It’s pretty darn hot in the Middle East during June, which is when the World Cup is traditionally held.

The first point has led to a litany of human rights violations that, again, are beyond the scope of our blog (but are detailed by John Oliver if you’re interested); the second has directly affected us. (Remember us? This is a blog about us.)

Because temperatures in Qatar can routinely soar to 50 degrees Celsius/122 Fahrenheit in the summer, the decision was made to shift the World Cup to November/December. That moved the tournament from Portugal’s warm, dry summer season to its chilly, rainy fall. Consequently, many Portuguese municipalities that would typically set up large outdoor Fan Zones for people to gather and watch together chose not to do so. Lisbon was among the places that opted to “‘turn off’ giant screens. If there were large outdoor venues available for us to watch games, we’d go to one for sure.

Football keeps many secrets

One problem we have is that we still don’t know as much as we’d like about the game of football. Yes, 11 players per side, they use their feet to direct the ball into a large net. We get that much.

Beyond that lie mysteries. Bodies fly everywhere (there’s a LOT more contact between players than we realized), sometimes a whistle blows, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the official pulls a rectangular piece of … paper? plastic? out of his pocket and holds it in the air, sometimes he doesn’t. Sometimes the ball is put into play quickly after a whistle, sometimes everyone lines up and a guy kicks the ball towards the goal … or towards the middle of the group of players … or somewhere else entirely. Why oh why is there only one official on the field? That’s an awful lot of ground to cover. How on earth can someone standing on the sideline tell in real time if a player is offside?

And there must certainly be strategies and formations and ways to determine whether a team is playing well or poorly that are simply beyond us. (Nobody’s scored yet. Is that because the offenses stink? Because the defenses are really good? Both? Neither?)

What we really need is to sit and watch a game with someone who can explain what we’re seeing as it happens. Usually, TV commentators do a decent job of that. Here, they’re all speaking Portuguese. They may be saying exactly what we need to know, we just can’t understand it. We follow live blogs of the games we’re watching on TV - The Guardian’s in particular. That helps a little. It’s a one-way, time-delayed street, though, and we have far more questions than answers.

There appears to be no overlap on our Venn diagram between Portuguese Who Play Board Games and Portuguese Who Follow Football. We’re at a loss for experts and are actively seeking volunteers - just drop us a line.

Watching with a crowd

After the disappointing lack of audible neighborhood reaction to a Portuguese goal, we decided we should watch a game in a public place even though doing so requires an indoor venue. Josie’s exciting night scuttled our plans to get out for the Portugal-South Korea game on Friday afternoon but she was well enough on Saturday for us to go to a sports bar to watch the USA-Netherlands match with a group of mostly American expats. While we had a great time catching up with people we hadn’t seen in weeks or even months, it wasn’t an environment conducive to asking questions about the action on the TV screen. It was fun, just not enlightening.

We’d hoped to get out for the Portugal-Switzerland game but we were just too tired. We must be getting old or something. We had plans that required being home immediately after Portugal-Morocco and then … we ran out of runway as Portugal was ousted from the tournament in an upset.

So football remains shrouded. We’ll figure it out. We’re enjoying watching. We’ll like it even more when we understand what we’re seeing. We’ll update you in four years during Portugal’s next World Cup run!

That’s all for now.

Love from Lisbon,

Scott & Amy

1. Emphasis is ours.

2. Again, emphasis is ours.